The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day

by Dorothy Day, Robert Ellsberg (Editor)

Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, has been called the most significant, interesting, and influential person in the history of American Catholicism. For almost fifty years, through her tireless service to the poor and her courageous witness for peace, she offered an extraordinary example of the gospel in action. Now the publication of her diaries, previously sealed for twenty-five years after her death, offers a uniquely intimate portrait of her daily struggles and concerns.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality, Biography, Religion, Catholic, Christian, Theology

669 pages, Hardcover

First published April 23, 2008

About the author

Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without in any way abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known political radical in the American Catholic Church. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf.

A revered figure within the U.S. Catholic community, Day's cause for canonization was recently open by the Catholic Church.

Reviews

[Michael Clevenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

My heroine, I love how radical this lady was.

Some quotes that stood out.

“She believed that each act of love, each work of mercy might increase the balance of love in the world. And she extended this principle to the social sphere. Each act of protest or witness for peace— though apparently foolish and ineffective, no more than a pebble in a pond— might send forth ripples that could transform the world.”

Dorothy wrote: "We are our brother's keeper. Whatever we have beyond our own needs belongs to the poor….And it is sad but true that we must give far more than bread, than shelter." We must give ourselves.

"Use the inconspicuous events and situations of everyday life as material for sanctification. Do it in obscurity." It is, however "just about the most difficult thing to do." "The final word is love," Dorothy wrote, and she knew that love is not child's play. "At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima [in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov], a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire." "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."

"While she was visiting the Calcutta Missionaries of Charity in 1970, Dorothy told of her refusal and the refusal of other Catholic Workers to interrupt the works of mercy even in wartime, when Jesus' command to "love the enemy" was replaced by the command of the state to kill, starve, and maim the enemy. She explained that her manifesto when the Second World War was declared was the Sermon on the Mount. The Catholic Worker movement, she went on, took Jesus at His word when He told His followers to do good in return for evil, thus overcoming evil by good not by violence."

"In 1976 Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa attended the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia. They were invited to speak on the topic of "Woman and the Eucharist" on August 6, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Dorothy, at seventy-nine years of age, in what would be her last public speech, chided the congress organizers for overlooking the anniversary of the atomic bombing and holding instead a Mass for the military. "Our Creator gave us life and the Eucharist to sustain life," she told the assembly, who interrupted her speech with applause. "But we have given the world instruments of death of inconceivable magnitude… Women are born to nourish, not to destroy life."

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dorothy Day is currently on her way to becoming a saint and I am glad she is! Reading her diaries, you get to encounter a relatable disciple of Jesus. Her writings are filled with self-aware failings, her desire to constantly grow in virtue, her frequenting of the sacraments and retreats, and her wrestling with the issues of her day. Day is known as a “left-wing Catholic” but honestly she should just be considered Catholic since she was simply a woman on a mission, seeking to constantly glorify God.

There are some things she writes that I don’t necessarily agree with but she was also witnessing revolutionary times in the America and the Church as her diaries here capture her life from the 1930s to 1980. I also suppose this book only provides snapshot opinions as it doesn’t contain the articles she wrote for the Catholic Worker. However, at the end of the day she considered herself a traditional Catholic and appeared very much aligned with Church teaching and dogma.

As a Catholic focused on the messages of pacifism, seeing Jesus in the poor, and seeking to promote a society focused on the good, Day is an edifying writer who provokes critical thought and challenges those who walk with Jesus.

Also she was a big dawg - casually friends with Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, and many influential Catholics of her day. Servant of God, Dorothy Day, pray for us!

[Seth Forwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review was orignially written for the Advent 2011 print edition of the Englewood Review of Books - http://erb.kingdomnow.org/

The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day
Reviewed by Seth Forwood

As I was nearing the end of the book and the vibrant life, so sharpened by “harsh and dreadful love” begins to be muffled into the silence of death, a deep sadness surprised me. I plodded through the brief diary entries describing an 83-year-old confined to an upper room at a House of Hospitality for women, ending the near 700 page collection with a somber turn of the page as smooth and quiet as drawing a sheet over the face of the dead. Part of this sadness was due to a friend, similar in spirituality and social justice, recently dying. Yet the palpable sense of loss is the same at the close of earthly life for any holy person, whether a personal friend, admired author or ancient mystic. We are not done with them when they die. Their lives have more to show and teach us. The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day is yet another avenue for those seeking to return to the especially compelling life of Dorothy Day.

The Duty of Delight is not introductory reading for those interested in Dorothy Day’s life and work. Dorothy Day’s own books (especially From Union Square to Rome, The Long Loneliness and Loaves and Fishes), collections of Catholic Worker writings and books written about Dorothy and the Catholic Worker would be better sources for a vision of the movement Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin began bent in works of mercy.

Dorothy uses her diary as a record of her interior fluctuations, a form of remembrance for her joy and catharsis in her sorrow. She mentions that her worries and gripes are smoothed over and made trivial and her prayers are answered with the practise of writing out grievances in solitude. In short, the process of keeping her diary was often the purpose.

So the offerings of The Duty of Delight are not in its theoretical content. Often Dorothy did not sharply separate her personal writings and published ones and there are ruminations on the work and purpose of the Catholic Worker and the Christian faith that propels that work. But the unique offering is in returning to Dorothy’s life from another angle, removing the focus on her activism and attending to the mundane, simple moments of human experience. There is much about bothersome people, daily tasks, repetition and the smallness of these events is a window into how the readers of Dorothy Day do not need to become saints in order to begin practicing the works of mercy at the heart of the Christian life.

The diary begins in the 1930’s about a year after the Catholic Worker’s first publication and continues with some interruptions and absences until nine days before Dorothy’s death in 1980. The passage of time is deceiving throughout the diary entries. Robert Ellsberg tries to ground the diary in the wider world as much as possbile. He provides excellent commentary at the beginning of each decade to establish the mood and scope of Dorothy’s life at the time. There is a chronology at the beginning of the book and insertions of world events in the midst of the entries to try to root them in history.

Two moments in the diary seem to hold together several themes that provide the substance of the book: Dorothy’s time in solitude in the Forties and Dorothy’s final years before death.

In the Forties, a handful of years after reaching a circulation of 100,000, the Catholic Worker drastically emptied. Many, despite the Catholic Worker’s firm pacifist position, enlisted to join the front in WWII and Houses of Hospitality closed down. In this dry period in Dorothy’s life, several crucial influences appeared.

Father Roy and Father Hugo could be, from the amount of repetition in Dorothy’s diary, the most influential people in the life of her spirit. Aside from leading retreats, Father Hugo was her confessor and spiritual advisor and represented to her the personal voice of the Catholic tradition in which she desired to orient her life. This presented a source of renewed spiritual life and also a struggle to find her way through obedience within tradition. Some might put more emphasis on where cardinals and catholic workers clashed, but I believe this time of discipline helped Dorothy to embody obedience while following her conscience as to her work with the poor and for nonviolence under the banner of the Catholic church.

Under the advice of Father Hugo she went on sabbatical. This was a time of obedience, prayer and silence, the potency of which set the foundation for the next forty years of work. In this time apart, surrounded by benedictine monks, ushered into silence and solitude by Father Hugo, Dorothy fed on prayer and rediscovered her vocation to live in community.

Community and it’s burdens were most often the source of the consternation Dorothy writes in her diary. She complains of the smells, sounds and habits of others who live with her. She is frustrated with lackadaisical priests, mumbling through Mass. She grieves through the constant criticism and dispute over petty matters. It was Christ that claimed Dorothy Day’s life and called her to life in a community not of her choosing, but made up of the outcasts of other communities. It was then the burden of community that called her to sustain the constant conflict and difficulty by returning to life of Christ in prayer, penance and her belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To borrow Stanley Hauerwas’ phrase, it is hard to imagine a modern life that would make less sense if the one true God were not fully present in Jesus Christ. During the dry spell of the Forties it seems that Dorothy clarifies both the demand upon her life and source of it.

The lessons of Dorothy Day’s spiritual discipline did not cease when her age began to limit her interaction with others. Rather, with her diaries for a witness, her practiced disposition to prayer and “putting off the old and putting on Christ” blossom in the limitations of age.

The end of Dorothy’s life was one of the most moving sections of the collection. The reader is so present to the turmoil and activity of most of Dorothy’s life that when she begins succumbing to old age, the shift is tangible. Yet the constant work on inner disposition and spiritual practice that Dorothy documents during the previous four decades enabled her to welcome the infirmities of old age in the Seventies.

When the final years approach, they are tormented with the rapid closing in of existence. The entire entry marked “September ‘77” follows, “If I did not believe profoundly in the primacy of the spiritual, the importance of prayer, these would be hard days for me, inactive as I am.” Memory goes, “I’m losing my mind” Dorothy writes near the end when she can’t remember what day it is when she wakes. Time shifts imperceptibly and she is left adrift.

She is more and more bed-ridden or hobbled to her room in Maryhouse. Her world’s limits are all enclosed by the barriers of an aged body, and she adapts her sense of the holy to the limits of her age. Often she writes of the ailanthus tree outside her window or “[l]ittle patches of green pushing out thru cracks in the sidewalk.” She records simple, little moments. “Sun on tree. ‘The world will be saved by beauty.’” is all she writes for January 23, 1978.

She retreats into far away memory of childhood, her life with her common law husband and her friends before her conversion. It seems as if, after years of serving the stranger in Houses of Hospitality, she returns in her memory and prayer to gather those who were once close and became strange after her conversion. She remembers many old friends just by receiving news of their death. Praying for the dead is a special practice for Dorothy. It is a constant repetition throughout her diaries that “There is no time with God.” Perhaps she was drawn to the outcast and lost so thoroughly that it was a natural compulsion to intercede for the dead. Such is the constancy of Dorothy’s disposition, that even while her life ebbed away, she kept stoking the coals of prayer and thanksgiving, gathering the beauty of God with those remembered and lost.

Then, much too abruptly, the entries cease and Dorothy dies. Robert Ellsberg, once again using his editor’s allowances to benefit the reader, includes a prayer found in her final journal that gives some conclusion and summary to Dorothy Day’s life other than the silence of the diary. It is a sign of our misattributed veneration of saints (the topic of one of Dorothy’s most famous quotes, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”) if, in the shadow of her absence, we lose sight of the life of Christ propelling Dorothy to such a radical and compelling existence. To recognise this as the source of her commitment to works of mercy and peace means that the reader must acknowledge they too are provided everything needed to continue the work of Dorothy Day. Those who have read much but done little in the way of the Catholic Worker’s works of mercy and peace should be challenged to begin in their own lives.

For those busy at the works of mercy for the broken, lost and poor, Dorothy’s diary will be familiar in many ways. The experience of being with the “least of these” is, in turns, so uniquely disappointing and strangely beautiful that it resonates on the page for those who have shared similar experiences. The Duty of Delight provides solidarity and encouragement for those tiring of doing good. Dorothy’s example is simple and reflective but has depth: read the psalms, find balance in a life full of prayer, listen and learn from local spiritual teachers, participate in the Eucharist as the very life of your body and soul.

In The Duty of Delight we find that these often hidden acts of prayer and worship sustained one of the most compelling Christian activists of our time. It is a facet of Dorothy Day‘s life that provides a model of hope for those weary with work in the Kingdom of God and a challenge for those who consider that work reserved for more holy individuals.

[Kathyk21 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Duty of Delight gives a deep look into the life and mind of a strong, dedicated, impassioned woman of the 20th century. Dorothy Day was committed to living a life of poverty in order to serve the poor among whom she lived. She was a gifted and talented writer who could easily have been popular and wealthy, but she chose to give all she had to help the destitute. These diaries begin in the 1930s and continue over 50 years. Dorothy was an active participant in the history of those conflicted and dramatically changing years. Reading her pacifist response to war; her refusal to support a government at war; her love for the Catholic Church; her totally immersed commitment to the poor throughout a lifetime of consistently living the values she held, was painful. Her view and care of the impoverished, out of work, drug/alcohol dependent, mentally ill, was not romantic. It was dirty, smelly, noisy, bug-infested and unappreciated. The poor she served complained, lied to, and stole from her. Church leaders questioned her activities. The US government harassed her with law suits and imprisonment. Reading her diaries left many questions about serving the poor and Dorothy's contribution. True believers of the "Occupy..." movement would be well advised to learn from Dorothy Day's commitment to making the world a place where people can be better human beings.
This was a challenging book to read because while I am sure there has been much editing done, to the number of journal entries, much more editing is needed. There seemed to be far too many entries which added little to an understanding of Dorothy. The footnotes and editorial comments were of tremendous help in understanding people and events that were concurrent with Dorothy’s journal entries.
If you have a great desire to look into Dorothy Day’s life and heart, I strongly recommend The Duty of Delight. She is an enigma, a sinner, a saint, a very controversial person.

[Douglas Donaldson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book combines the various journals kept by Dorothy Day into one readable volume. The founder of the Catholic Worker social movement in the 1930s, the entries begin in 1932 and continue until her death. What I have read so far documents the beginning of the Hospitality Houses nation wide during the depression and the struggles to keep them in operation. Eventually, the book will take me through her work during WW II, the Vietnam war and the racial unrest of the 1960's and her last three decades. I'm loving it!

[J.D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subtitle to this is exactly what you're getting this book. The Diaries of Dorothy Day. Covering several centuries, although these were edited down to included only those selected for the book you truly get much of day to day life from her. Many of her diaries don't seem to cover the big events that take place throughout her life, but the normal occurrences and reactions to living in the community, being a person of influence and her interaction with faith. Unfortunately there is very little time given in the book with extra context of what was going on so I would mostly recommend this book for anyone who has a pretty good understanding of her life. This is definitely not for the casual reader. I would have appreciated this book a large amount more if the book was the same size but was split more equally between a biographical element and her letters. As it stands, there were large segments that were exceptionally mundane unless you were a direct associate of hers.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edited daily notes from Day's lengthy career with the Catholic Worker houses that spanned over four decades. It's not systematic at all--she has written other books that do that--but it does present her unvarnished reactions to situations and people that aren't always pretty. That makes her all the more admirable and accessible and inspiring: she didn't do the things she did in her remarkable life because she was somehow superhuman, but in spite of very human responses, family worries and occasional health problems.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me several months to finish this collection of entires from Dorothy Day's diaries, but it was worth it, reading a few pages every now and then.

Dorothy Day is honest, revealing her joys and sorrows, lamenting her failures of impatience and judgment. But her delight in the ordinary - from the opera on the radio to a book by Dostoevsky to the pigeons on the house across the street.

You get a glimpse of her love for the poor and her struggle with enduring some of them.

There are references to her public life as well as to the events of the day.

It's a book to be meditated over.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read but I do wish there was more context of her life. A welcome accompaniment for a full bio.

[Debbie Hoskins]

I have been reading this periodically. It is by the couch, which means I'm more likely to read it then those books by the bed.

[David Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely. Just lovely. I had little to no understanding of Day at the outset but she is shaping my faith and piety and leadership through her diaries.

[Ms.Shep · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love this book. Dorothy Day was quite the woman to help so many people in her patient way. I hope later in the future to re-read her diaries.

[Darleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me almost a year to read, but thankfully diaries allow for days and weeks in between reading. Overall, I deeply appreciated Dorothy Day's reflections on life experiences, current affairs, and especially the books she read. She was an avid reader. I wish the editor had made a list of all the books she mentions. Instead, I made a list of them myself until I ran out of space in the extra pages in back. It offers a rich array of books and articles. The range of fiction she read is especially impressive. If someone is looking to write a dissertation or book on Dorothy Day, a study of her reading would be interesting.

In addition I found her honest acceptance and matter of fact processing of her quirks and foibles reassuring. Over and over she would notice after the fact how she had lost her temper; she would bring this to prayer; she would make amends (sometimes); and she would resolve to act differently. And finally, her reflections on the myriad of challenges in Catholic Worker reveal her perseverance in the face of trials.

To satisfy my own curiosity I wish she had processed more deeply some of her beliefs. Instead she often merely states them and moves on. For example she made it clear that she is not a feminist, but doesn't really explain why. But these are her diaries. She didn't need to explain or justify. She clearly wasn't using her diaries to rehearse justifications of anything she believed.

The entries in the last year or so of her life become consistently brief and she comments regularly on her forgetfulness and other factors of her old age. I found these to be important reflections in their own right on aging and coming to the end of life.

I annotated my copy heavily so I can go back and reread sections. I doubt I'll reread the entire thing, but am glad I made it through once.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book begins with an introduction describing how Dorothy Day kept a diary when she was younger. In doing so, she felt "recording happiness made it last longer," and "recording sorrow dramatized it and took away its bitterness." This habit she developed at an early age was maintained (probably with less frequency) in her adulthood as well. The introduction also tells us that her words "derived their meaning from the consistency, courage, and faithfulness of her life." The book then provides us a chronology from 1932 to 1980, which gives the reader context for the diary entries that are upcoming. The book is then divided into six parts by decades - 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980. Each part provides some further background information to give us additional context for the time period and what was going on in her life at the time. At 700 pages, this is a very thick book. I don't plan on reviewing this title, as I wouldn't want someone to review my personal diary (if I kept one). I will just say that the book is well-organized and provides us great insight into the mind and reality of this possibly soon-to-be saint. If you would like to know more about her than just what was written about her, then you should check out this book and its companion book All the Way to Heaven.

[Wade]

These are the edited diaries of Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, released (per her wishes) 25 years after her death. The diaries trace her personal reflections on the Catholic Worker and Houses of Hospitality, their struggles financially, politically, and with the Church heirarchy. Ellsberg has helpfully and judiciously added notes to the text, supplying a first or last name when omitted by Day, explaining long gaps in the diaries or providing context for major events that are not noted explicitly by Day herself. Often, he quotes from her other writings to provide a description of a person when they are introduced to the diaries.[return][return]A question raised in other LT reviews is whether this is best read on its own, and whether a linear (straight-through) reading is useful. The timespan covered here is immense, and some of the entries seem to be repetitive or add little; however, it is the accumulation of these details that flesh out the picture of how Day's activism for the poor and for peace spring from her faith. I would agree, however, that reading her other pieces, especially biographical work, is a useful precursor to reading the diaries themselves.

[Jonathan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dorothy Day has become one of the famous lay American Catholics. In 1933, with Peter Maurin, she co-founded the Catholic Worker movement; a movement whose aim was to remake American society; socially, and economically, in the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This diaries gives one a look into the mind, heart and soul of Dorothy Day, during the many decades she guided, and inspired the CW movement.

It provides a intimate portrait of an activist, organizer, writer, mystic, mother and grandmother. And also allows one to encounter the very human person that was Dorothy Day.

[Lee Spitzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would definitely recommend this book.

There are tremendous insights recorded, many quite poignant. Key journey themes such as loneliness, social action, obedience, prayer and friendship are covered.

Of course, being an edited volume, I have to wonder what was left out. Nevertheless, reading Day's reflections made me appreciate and admire her greatly.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the CW movement to have a LOT of logical holes--such as pacifism in everything, even in the fact of WWII--but there were some excellent things she writes about, including a rule of life and a reading list. :)

[Al Owski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The gift of Dorothy Day was not just her life, how she helped the "least of these", but that she wrote it down, for us to learn about her journey. Raw, unvarnished insight into the life of one who chose the narrow way of following Christ.

[mary catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just wasnt into this book. I deeply admire Dorothy Days commitment to pacifism and social justice but I have to admit this book was boring.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Dorothy Day is one of my true heroes, along with MLK, Mandela, Lennon, & Lech Walesa.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this on Goodreads giveaways

[Gregory Hillis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really needs to be read AFTER reading a biography (I recommend Jim Forest's All is Grace).

[Jennie Macgoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

L-o-n-g book, but so worth it. One of my heroes.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

When people think of a Saint, they might begin by envisioning someone who lead an extraordinary life.  So many of the well-known Saints formally recognized by the Catholic Church seem to have something ‘special’ that makes them stand out from the ordinary.  Maybe it was being persecuted or even martyred for the faith.  Or, it might be a person considered a Doctor of the Church with their teachings have a huge impact upon those that came after them.  Regardless, those types of Saints make it seem like you have to really stand out from the crowd to be declared a Saint by the Church.

For those following different causes for canonization, Dorothy Day is one individual who is on the road to being named a Saint by the Catholic Church.  And, if you look at her life, you’ll see someone who’s life could be considered ordinary with her actions being something that any of us could do.  However, not everyone headed the call like she did in such a faithful way.

Never heard of Dorothy Day before now?  Don’t fret, you would not be alone as I had not heard about her until a few years ago.

Dorothy Day was a Catholic convert who became an advocate for social justice, founding the Catholic Worker and helped open homes around the country that reached out to the poor and homeless.  Rather than just fundraise and talk the talk, she walked the walk living in the homes and sometimes even sharing her room with someone who needed a place to stay.

The Duty of Delight is not the first work by Dorothy Day out there.  It is the first one I’ve had occasion to read.  It also happens to be an edited collection of her diaries spanning from early of 1934 up until the days immediately proceeding her death in 1980.  Given the decades of her life covered, it is no wonder that the book weighs in at over 700 pages!

While she had many entries that were short and seemed to be more of a catalog of her comings and goings, there are other entries that provide more of a glimpse inside Ms. Day’s thoughts and feelings.  You can also see the struggles she had between her ideals and dreams and the reality of life for the path she’s chosen.  Finally, you can see the changing landscape of America through her eyes as she ministered to those less fortunate souls.

One thing that Mr. Ellsberg (editor of this work) has done is to add footnotes with further explanation about the people or places referenced in her diaries.  For someone like me with little knowledge of her life, this is a wonderful addition to the text.  (It makes me wish I had left some sort of key for my own diaries as some entries during my high school years were somewhat coded and I no longer have a clue who I was mentioning and trying to ‘cover up’ for fear of someone reading it.)

I have to confess that I have not finished reading this book.  However, with it’s release in paperback format upon us, I did not want to let it sit unmentioned.  I can say that the nature of this work makes it a bit more labor some to read.  Yet, I find it a wonderful glimpse into her life and inspiration to faithfully do the ordinary of the life God has called us to live.

The retrospective person inside me also wonders if maybe Dorothy Day does share something with all those well-known Saints of old ~ she lived her life to glorify God and not seek accolades in the process.  Humility – it’s a wondrous virtue!

Disclaimer ~ I was sent a galley copy of the book to facilitate this review.  No compensation was provided and all opinions are my own.

[Emily Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very inspirational. Love reading diaries they really capture the joy, inner thoughts, and boredom of people who we idolize. I think Dorothy deserves her admiration - got a lot of quotes I want to save from this one:

- astrology is his passion so we must take it seriously
- You can’t preach the gospel to men with empty stomachs
- Filled with resolutions - first to pay every possible attention to my own soul
- I have had this completely alone feeling. A temptation of the devil, and to succumb to it is a lack of faith and hope
- On suffering: we don’t make enough of suffering, we do not rejoice in this coin, it cannot be avoided, it just descends on one
- It makes one unhappy to judge people and happy to love them
- I do not have to retire to my room to pray. It is enough to get out and walk on the wilderness of the streets
- It is not enough to present a picture of conditions. One must get there to share that poverty.
- I was healed this day of hemeroids which I have had for several years
- I must send her my Antonia stories of pioneers will give her courage
- Newman says the tragedy is never to have begun

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good, I used 6 renewals at the library trying to finish it though. Read after D.L. Mayfield’s biography, “Unruly Saint.”

“As Péguy said, when we face God he will say, ‘Where are the others?’”

Peter Maurin: To create a society where it is easier to be good!!

“The difference between a dead-weight knowledge and a living rich experience can never be enough expressed. Everyone knows too much, feels too little. […] Pray that some great thought will click. Pray to become aware, to will to live in Presence. […] To pray always, to create the propitious atmosphere. Let the men give the lecture, women create atmosphere.”

[Renee Goodwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Dorothy Day as she saw herself, nothing more and nothing less. Those who believe she was a saint will be disappointed in her grumpiness; those who vilify her will be disappointed in her sanctity. Ellsberg's footnotes provide helpful context and information about the many people she mentions.

[sare · Rating 5 out of 5]

How you feel about this record of a life depends, i think, on how you feel about Dorothy Day

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and Inspirational Diary

Day writes about her life and faith in ways that are relatable. The ordinary entries are full and interesting. She lived a full life.