Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness

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In The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day’s autobiography, the reader explores the life, love, and conversion of Dorothy Day through her inspiring life. From the birth of her beloved, baby brother to the death of her dearest friend, Dorothy Day takes the reader on a journey through her own personal triumphs, troubles, and tribulations on her path to finding true happiness in God. Through her everyday encounters with the people surrounding her, she finds God in life. Her ultimate mission in life was to love her fellow children of God and she appropriately ends her narrative by saying, “We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other,” (Day 285). To truly discover God and love God, Day believed we must know all of humanity and through her relationships with her brother and daughter, Forster Batterham, Peter Maurin, and the surrounding community, she most closely comes to know God. …show more content…

She admits to the difficulties she faced with helping to raise her brother. She says, “Sometimes my back and shoulders ached long before he went to sleep, and it was an endurance feat between the baby and me as to who could hold out longer,” (Day 31). She recalls the tough, sleep-deprived nights spent caring for her brother that ultimately created a “profound and never-to-be-forgotten” love for him (Day 31). By discovering her first unconditional love, she first encountered the unconditional love she shared with God. His lullabies were not nursey rhymes, but rather hymns out of her Episcopal Hymnal. Through these small acts of affection, Day began to love and by loving found

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