Midway through Lent

We're at the halfway point today: three weeks from Ash Wednesday and three weeks before Spy Wednesday, the final day of Lent (Holy Thursday doesn't count). I am already looking forward to Laetare Sunday; how about you? 

Day keeping good company on my bookshelf.

One of my Lenten heroes is the sometimes crotchety, always honest Dorothy Day. There are some Catholic figures who impress me enough that I look up a book, maybe two, to learn more. Dorothy Day does not fit in that category. I first read her conversion story From Union Square to Rome years ago, following that with The Long Loneliness (a spiritual autobiography). Her Loaves and Fishes (the story of the Catholic Worker movement) led me to another book by the prolific writer, this one on Peter Maurin, the man Dorothy Day credits with being the father (and originator) of the Catholic Worker movement, a man given wholeheartedly to the Gospel and its demands (and, in his focus on the life of the mind and "the clarification of thought," a fine match for Blessed James Alberione).

At that point I found the biography by the excellent Robert Coles (who had spent some time with the Catholic Workers and knew Dorothy in person), and in the Chicago convent library there was a massive (and highly researched) biography of Day by William Miller.

Finally, more of her own writings were edited and released: Her diaries, from the mid-1930s through her last month of life, were released as The Duty of Delight (25 years after her death, as stipulated, I presume, by Dorothy herself). This book is as big as (maybe bigger than) Miller's biography. I couldn't put it down.  (Someone, maybe TH, got me a copy for the first Buy a Nun a Book Day!) And most recently, I read her collected letters in All the Way to Heaven (the title being from a saying of St Catherine of Siena: "All the way to Heaven is Heaven, because Jesus said, 'I am the Way'.")

You would think I had read enough, right?

But just this week Plough Publishing sent me a courtesy copy of The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus from the writings of Dorothy Day. Short selections from Day's biographical writings, from her diaries, from her articles in The Catholic Worker are distributed under several headings: A Way of Faith; A Way of Love; A Way of Prayer; A Way of Life; A Way of Community. It is now my guidebook for the second half of Lent (though I wish I had had this for Ash Wednesday!).

Good News! I have a copy of The Reckless Way of Love to give away.  I want to get it in the mail soon so the lucky recipient can finish Lent with Dorothy (and me). To be entered in for the random drawing, comment here about the Catholic personality who intrigues you the most and then (by Friday) share the link to this blog post on your favorite form of social media with the hashtag #nunblog