A certain distinguished school leader, when asked when he would retire from his work, replied, "the day that I wake up and do not want to go to work." A reply such as this perhaps strikes the modern ear as senseless. For many of us, work fills the greater portion of our daily lives, but do we feel ourselves thereby fulfilled? Especially today, we may often feel trapped in what seem like unspectacular sisyphean cycles.

This week, R. J. Snell, editor-in-chief of Public Discourse and director of the Center on the University and Intellectual Life at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, talks to HeightsCast about the virtues of work and its opposing vice, acedia. Drawing on insights from his book, Acedia and Its Discontents, R. J. helps us think through how these concepts are realized in the context of family life and life on campus.

As we will hear, our everyday work is the ordinary means by which we participate not only in the perfection of God's creation but also in the perfection of our very selves. Our work is where the rubber meets the road; it is where mere aspiration is turned into actual reality. Ultimately, work is where heaven and earth merge. In realizing this often hidden truth, we may thereby discover that divine drama which is not a sisyphean cycle, but a spiral staircase.

Chapters

1:17 Work as a gift
- 2:22 Error of thinking that work is a result of the Fall
3:23 Garden of Eden as in a state of potency: Adam and Eve are called to fill it
5:30 Work as part of being made in the image of God
7:15 How work fulfills us
7:35 Husbandry of the self
8:25 God's rule through our own self rule: participated theonomy
10:08 Work as the primary way of exercising self-governance
12:50 Cultivating the soil: on the way to beauty
14:25 The friendly universe
- 15:50 Grace perfects nature
16:41 The three tests of good work
- 18:45 The integrity of work and the worker's integrity
- 19:30 Bright-eyed children
- 21:25 Work as furnishing God's house
24:03 Education as cooperating with Grace

26:07 Acedia: a hatred of reality
27:05 Judge Holden and the desire for radical self-autonomy
30:00 Desert Fathers on acedia and the refusal of God's friendship
31:00 Sloth as the vice of our age
31:36 Natural history as the counter to acedia and reductionism
35:03 The little foxes: recognizing acedia creeping in
35:55 What you are doing now is where God is calling you
37:40 The divine drama of the most mundane things
38:50 Sabbath and rest

Also on The Forum

OptimalWork series with Kevin Majeres
Why We Need Exposure to Nature by Eric Heil
What Is the Difference between Free Time and Leisure? by Joe Bissex

Additional Resources

Reviving NHS General Practice and Lifestyle Medicine with Dr Ayan Panja #10

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Outro

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