The Long Loneliness

I am part of the Order of the Mustard Seed, and this was a book club read, but I wasn't able to attend.

Here is the intro from the Order of the Mustard Seed that I thought was a good summary:

The Long Loneliness – Dorothy Day

Following our last book group read, “Making Room’, our next book opens up very practically, some of the themes it introduced. Christine Pohl mentions Dorothy Day frequently in ‘Making Room’ and so we are going to look at her life a little more and the ways in which hospitality and justice where completely interlinked for her. They were ways in which she determined to live.

Dorothy Day (1897 – 1980), was a brilliant, radical American social activist, writer and journalist. Along with Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement.

 The Long Loneliness is her autobiography. It describes her faith journey and also the ways in which she determined to live her life in ways that worked for peace, justice for the poor, nonviolence and racial justice. Her story is an important one for anyone who longs to live, loving their neighbours as themselves. She demonstrates a faith in action and gives an insight into the sacrifices often needed to place oneself on the frontlines of the struggles for peace and social justice.

Dorothy Day and those with whom she worked, intentionally lived alongside the poor, becoming poor themselves, giving up possessions and sharing all that they had. Through Houses of Hospitality, they gave refuge and home to those experiencing homelessness and also began farms where people could have work.

A dynamic, lifelong pacifist and passionate social activist, Dorothy Day was frequently on the frontlines of protests against racism, war and injustice. These protests often landed her in jail. Her story is one of a woman who engaged her entire life in the injustices that she saw here around her.  It’s a story that echoes with the words of Old Testament prophets and that is focused on the life of Jesus and the ways in which he loved and lived alongside those pushed to the margins.

Through the book, the theme of love is prevalent. To Dorothy Day, love was central to everything. “We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”

And so, in the spirit of that companionship and with the words of Dorothy Day as our guide, the next Book Group is on Thursday 28th April, 7:30pm (BST).

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

The Long Loneliness, published in 1952, is the autobiography of Dorothy Day, the American political activist, pacifist, and cofounder of The Catholic Worker newspaper and movement. While Day has lately been put forth for canonization by the church, she might bridle at that idea: “Don’t call me a saint,” she once wrote, “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” In any case, like Saint Augustine, she spent her early years in the embrace of worldly pursuits—“the wisdom of the flesh is treacherous indeed” she would later reflect—before a conversion led her to focus her considerable energy on “[making] it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.” Her personal testament is as revelatory as Augustine’s Confessions, although the difference in the two books’ perspectives is striking: Where Augustine’s autobiography is a conversation with God, Day’s narrative is a conversation with the world.