Spiritual Diversity in Social Work Practice: The Heart of Helping

I was once participating in a workshop on spirituality at a national social work conference that became quite heated at one point. An experienced social work educator present attempted to cool the atmosphere by saying ‘Well, we all create our own spirituality in our own way’. A voice from the back of the room replied ‘Don't you go assuming that I have to have “spirituality”’. That second voice came back to me when reading this book because Canda and Furman, for all their openness and accessibility, do most certainly assume that the reader will have a spirituality: ‘Every social worker is involved in a spiritual journey, in his or her own private life, as well as in the course of professional work. This book is about that journey, that compassion’ (p. 16). Any readers who might be made uncomfortable by the claiming of compassion as a spiritual concept should probably avoid this review and this book. For any reader who can go along with such thinking, this book offers rich rewards.