The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus
By Dorothy Day
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Gold Medal Winner, 2018 Illumination Book Awards, Enduring Light
"This thoughtful collection of Day’s reflections incorporates abundant material for contemplation, all drawn from her extensive writings … [which] reveal Day’s signature honesty and frequent humor in addressing her hopes and fears and the sources of her inspiration…. This welcome compilation provides a window into the fundamental beliefs that undergirded Day’s life of faith." --Publishers Weekly, starred review
In this guidebook Dorothy Day offers hard-earned wisdom and practical advice gained through decades of seeking to know Jesus and to follow his example and teachings in her own life.
Unlike larger collections and biographies, which cover her radical views, exceptional deeds, and amazing life story, this book focuses on a more personal dimension of her life: Where did she receive strength to stay true to her God-given calling despite her own doubts and inadequacies and the demands of an activist life? What was the unquenchable wellspring of her deep faith and her love for humanity?
Dorothy Day
"Dorothy Day, is a modern Catholic saint in the tradition of St. Francis. Her book is an absorbingly well-written series of pictures of her work and that of those she has gathered around her connection with the Catholic Worker, its hospitality house and its community farm. I rejoice with the new hope for mankind because of the kind of work that she and her associates are doing."- Norman Thomas
Read more from Dorothy Day
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Reviews for The Reckless Way of Love
23 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus" is a collection of short excerpts (no more than a paragraph or two) from the writings of Dorothy Day, the activist, pacifist, someday saint? and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement.The quotes are arranged topically under headings related to faith, love, prayer, life, and community and introduced with a short essay by D.L Mayfield. The sources run the gamut from Day's biography to notes she took while on retreat, and I was gratified to find a list citing each excerpt in the back of the book.This short collection hardly does justice to Day's thoughts on these topics, but it's not meant to. Anyone familiar with Day's writings would be happy to have this book for use in personal reflection, while those who have not yet met Day will find it a good introduction to her spirituality that may prompt them to pick up one of her books.NB: I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I received this book as an Early Reviewer.The thoughts and writings of Servant of God Dorothy Day are an inspiration and a challenge to the reader. This compilation was well organized and flowed nicely. It's been a perfect companion during Lent. My one point of contention is with the author of the Introduction. I found it to be more about her than Day and much to long. The "To The Reader" intro would have been sufficient.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This brief book of thematically arranged excerpts from Dorothy Day's writing is just what I needed. As I read the selections each day, they seemed to speak to our collective current situation and to my own individual concerns. Ranging from early in her life to the end of her life, there are words of inspiration for every one who searches for a way to live their faith today.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In this short text, Plough Publishing has collected a wonderful series of writings from Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement. Here, we find writings focused on the inner, devotional life that sustained her for years as a follower of Jesus, caring for the poorest among us. In 17 very easily readable chapters, her understandings of faith, love, prayer, and community are richly explored. Like many great texts, the language is simple while the ideas are transformative, if one only lives out their lessons.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As previous reviewers have noted this book is a collection of excerpts from the writings of Dorothy Day. It is more of a devotional book and is probably not best read in one sitting. As well as private prayer I could see the quotes being used as discussion starters in study groups. I am a strong admirer of Dorothy Day and her radical commitment to actively living God's call in her life. The quoted material in this book is inspiring but overall the book was a bit frustrating for me because I want more than the quick quote. Recently I read [The Duty of Delight: The Dairies of Dorothy Day] which helped me experience the beauty and depth of her spirituality. The two books are very different but if you want to know more of Dorothy Day both her autobiography [The Long Loneliness] and the journals might be a better choice.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I often request books I've never heard of, thinking they might be interesting and I could write a good review. This is a book I've been wanting for a long time and it did not disappoint. Whether Dorothy Day is your role model or not, you will find ideas, guidance, and most of all, your path to following Jesus. It is so honest and not at all proscriptive. No doctrine or dogmatics, just love and encouragement. And it is challenging. Faith, love, prayer, life and community shared in such an authentic way. I wish my journal read as well. An important affirmation from her: following Jesus is no easy task and it is filled wit joy.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book wasn't so much a collection of uplifting thoughts as an almost diaristic collection of excerpts from Dorothy Day's writing and letters, I believe including actual diary excerpts in some instances. I knew going in that Dorothy Day was a Catholic social activist, possibly controversial in the church. What the book presents is a portrait of a woman who spent her life trying to do good, and the personal struggles she experienced within, including examination of her reasons for doing so. It was a portrait of how it isn't always easy to help others, and it certainly wouldn't be easy to make it your life's work. Some of the writings were about how you wish that people would react differently, more appreciative, making more of your efforts, and some were about how she recognized that as a flaw in herself. Sometimes, reading, I thought that she should have been more compassionate towards someone, or more humble, and yet she devoted her entire life to helping people, and I haven't, and it made me think of the internal struggles that might cause you, as you strove to live out that sort of life. It isn't an easy collection you can dip into when you need to be uplifted, but it is a thought-provoking book about what living a Christian life can really mean.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5“The Reckless Way of Love” is a devotional consisting of selections from the writings of Dorothy Day. The subtitle, “Notes on Following Jesus” aptly describes the underlining spirit of the book. The compiler, Carolyn Kurtz, has divided the book into five thematic sections:The way of: Faith, Love, Prayer, Life, and Community. This book is a practical book; in that it is a call to action, and not merely a reflection. Certainly I would be surprised if one would not be moved, or at least challenged, upon reading it. The book reminded me, in its easy conversational tone, of another spiritual devotional work found in St. Faustina’s “Divine Mercy” diary. It is a book not to be devoured in one sitting despite being relatively short at 149 pages, but best read a little bit at a time. In that manner, it is a great bed-side book, and would be a fitting book for daily Lenten reading. I’d highly recommend this book both as personal reading, and as a gift to others.
Book preview
The Reckless Way of Love - Dorothy Day
Introduction
by D. L. Mayfield
I PICKED UP A BUTTON about a decade ago with a quote attributed to Dorothy Day on it: If you have two coats, you have stolen one from the poor.
I loved this saying, loved the strength of conviction, the easy black-and-white application. I read more about Dorothy and became smitten. Her severe face and warm hands and intense sound bites were so soothing to my soul as I first read of her life and work and the Catholic Worker movement she helped start. I affixed that button to the front of my one orange-plaid corduroy coat and tromped around my neighborhood during the cold, gray Portland winters, hoping others would read it and be changed. If I am honest, a part of me wanted others to know how radical I was, how I had eschewed the things of the world, how hard I was trying to follow Jesus.
Now, years later, I have three coats: the orange-plaid corduroy still (even though the pockets have ripped), a raincoat (since I live in Oregon), and a longer, warm coat I bought for the three winters I spent in the Midwest. My Dorothy Day button now lives in a junk drawer, because I can’t bear to wear it if it isn’t true. Should I give one of my coats away? To whom should I give it? I live and work in a refugee and immigrant community; there are dozens of people I know who could use a coat. How do I pick? How do I navigate the enormity of the needs of the world, and my own response to them? I still don’t know. And yet, even as I think these thoughts and feel like a failed radical, the words and life of Dorothy Day mean more to me than ever.
I take some comfort in knowing that Dorothy struggled with these same questions and contradictions throughout her life. Her feelings, I suspect, were complicated, since she was a unique and complex woman. She was driven, proud, dogmatic. She lived with fierce conviction in solidarity with the poor. She was also unsure, doubtful, and depressed from time to time due to the enormity of the suffering surrounding her. From a young age, Dorothy showed evidence of both her passion for justice and her quick mind. She was an activist, a sharp student, a curator of deep conversations. Her biographer, Robert Coles, noted that she was quick to dismiss her early life, preferring to talk instead of her conversion to Catholicism and how she met Peter Maurin, with whom she cofounded the Catholic Worker’s newspaper and houses of hospitality. But the threads of her personality and strong convictions and engaging writing style were already all there, and her years of struggle and wandering no doubt contributed to her profound empathy for those who suffer.
Even in this collection of her writings you can find diverging thoughts – she writes of always hiding her sadness, and also of the importance of feeling the full force of emotions. These contradictions reassure me, reminding me that she is human like me, and invite me into her journey. Instead of holding her up as a saint to admire, these writings instead portray an ordinary person simply trying to walk the road of following Christ. In documenting this continual journey, Dorothy Day ended up talking constantly about struggle and cultural isolation. As she writes in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
Community is a buzzword these days, primarily for people who don’t quite understand how taxing true interdependence can be. As someone impatient with platitudes, I have always been drawn to Dorothy Day’s kind of community. I was electrified by the way she wrote about the poor and the suffering and the proper response of the Christian (self-sacrificial love). And I was challenged by the example set by her houses of hospitality, where the homeless and desperate could stay and people could live and work side by side.
Robert Coles remembers how, the first time he met Dorothy, she was chatting with an intoxicated older woman. She looked up and saw Coles waiting and asked him, Were you waiting to talk to one of us?
Already quite famous, she didn’t assume Coles wanted to talk to her more than he might want to talk to her neighbor. With that simple question, Coles says, she cut through layers of self-importance, a lifetime of bourgeois privilege, and scraped the hard bone of pride
(Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion, xviii). Dorothy Day had absorbed the beliefs of her beloved Christ so deeply that she truly lived as if everyone was of equal importance in a world that applauds hierarchy and prestige.
I am not Catholic, and yet Dorothy Day’s attitude to faith has impacted me greatly. I grew up in a conservative church that emphasized personal piety and correct doctrine, but at some point those no longer seemed sufficient as guidelines for life lived in community. Living and working with refugees, the challenges that the poor face soon overwhelmed me – they were the splash of cold water that woke me from my stupor. It was then that I discovered Dorothy Day’s books, and she became a guide into a wild new world of following Christ on a downwardly mobile path.
And oh, would I need some wisdom and guidance for that journey! For years I had been too busy working for the Lord
to spend much time learning from others, especially others who were different from me. I’m a doer. I like to get my hands and feet in the mess of the world. This, I’ll admit, is why the writings of Dorothy Day reached out and grabbed me initially. I identified with her iron will and the practical ways she strove to meet the real and tangible needs of those affected by poverty and war.
What made her such a radical? Was it the kerchief she wore in her hair? Her intense writing style? Her involvement in politics while refusing to be conscripted into any political party? Was it her lack of material possessions or her firm belief in the inherent dignity of all people? Or her commitment to the church despite her differences and disappointments? I thought it was a combination of all of these things when I first discovered Dorothy in my early twenties. Now, over a decade later, I have a different answer: her radicalness stems from the transformative love of Christ she experienced throughout her very long and sometimes very lonely life.
Wherever she turned, Dorothy saw Christ up on his cross. One of her rules of life was to seek the face of Christ in the poor. She found him there, and in so many other places. Christ was the person in line for soup and bread; Christ was the drunk woman having the same conversation over and over again; Christ was the enemy combatant; Christ was the priest she disagreed with; Christ was the young person begging for spiritual direction; Christ was in every reader she wrote for, including me, including you.
Dorothy Day’s eyes were first opened to the inequalities of our world when she saw the long lines of people waiting for bread during the Great Depression. Mine were opened the day I realized my refugee neighbors had only been given eight months of assistance by the government and were now expected to be assimilated as fully-functioning members of society. For non-literate, tribal, rural, Muslim Africans plopped down in the middle of Portland, this was ludicrous at best and heartbreaking in reality. I was nineteen years old and dove headfirst into helping these refugee families navigate life in America. I moved into their community and tried to hitch my life to theirs. I ran homework clubs and