By conservative estimate I have read 20 books about Dorothy Day, one of my heroes. Almost 30 years ago, while working as a Jesuit novice at the Nativity Mission Center, a school for poor boys on the Lower East Side of New York, I picked up The Long Loneliness, her justly famous autobiography. The book was forced on me (albeit in a nice way) by another novice after he discovered that I had no idea who Dorothy Day was.
A few chapters in, I realized that much of the story took place just a few blocks from where I was living, at the nearby Catholic Worker house. I mentioned that to a Jesuit in my community who laughed. “Didn't you know that? You're living in her world!”
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