The Fruit of the Spirit

Though the schism of valuing spirituality with respect to social work practice has lessened over the years, there continues to be a gap in our understanding as to exactly what spirituality is and how one might incorporate it within social work practice? It is my contention that social workers should not only be incorporating spirituality within their practice, but also, they should become spiritual exemplars themselves.

Fruit of the Spirit: A Primer for Spiritually-minded Social Workers provides some provocative notions that will spur the reader forward on his/her spiritual development. It introduces to the reader the notion of spiritual differentiation from the animalistic notion of self (which I describe as the "indifferent-heart realm"), to the development of humanistic principles ("craving-heart realm") to the ultimate experience of our purposeful journey of being fully cognizant of our spiritual selves ("pure-heart realm"). This process is exemplified with a gardening metaphor, which the reader can progress from "seeding" (awareness of one's spiritual self and the sowing of spiritual seeds), "weeding" (the structure and care of developing our spiritual selves) and the "harvesting" (the ingesting and granting of spiritual "fruits" that has been produced).

Traditional knowledge of social work practice helps to elucidate the student; whereas, embracing spiritual principles is about transforming and transcending the student to higher levels. The "fruits" that are gathered are the attributes of God (e.g., love, peace, goodness, etc.). There are exercises at the end of each chapter that will assist the reader in developing his/her spirituality.