Summary: Relishes life on the land, saying it is a place to retreat to, find God, and to go forth from as apostles. Summarizes five retreat talks whose focus is to increase the desire for sanctity, to a more complete love of God. Gives examples of her failure to love and the struggle to renew love of God and neighbor.

Summary: Describes the hustle and bustle around the farm--planting, building, cooking. Ruminates about conversion, calling each person to a revolution beginning with themselves--to make a start toward a new way of living based on distributism. Says distributism is neither communism nor capitalism but based on individual ownership of land, tools, workshops, and factories. Keyword: economics

Summary: Affirms that all men are brothers--a view shared by Communists and Christians alike. Disavows violent means of change and cites Peter Maurin's pacifism. Love requires suffering and the Cross is the path to joy and life.

Summary: Reviews several books on voluntary poverty, especially Poverty by Fr. Regamey. Elaborates on the joy of, objections to, and purpose of voluntary poverty. Rejects capitalist and communist solutions to real poverty, pointing to decentralization and distributism as the answer.

Summary: Culling newspaper accounts of the newly elected Pope, John XXIII, she describes him as a man who loves the soil and family. Includes quotes from his first public address on love of the poor and condemnation of preparing for war. Explains what it means to struggle for justice and to do so "even if by force," a phrase the Pope used.

Summary: Detailed description of her daughter Tamar's home in Vermont and the Hennessey family's life. Mentions the 25^th anniversary celebration of the Catholic Worker and all the "old timers" who came. Lauds Ammon Hennacy's penitential fast for out nations dropping the first atomic bomb.

Summary: Promotes non-violent resistance to atomic bomb testing and all preparations for war. Defends the Catholic Worker's civil disobedience actions in refusing to participate in civil defense drills. Says all Americans need to atone for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as she anticipates being jailed again for her protest.

Summary: Meditation on dying and praying for the dead. Enumerates the many people on a list kept in her missal. Recalls that Fr. Zachery, her confessor, taught her that "There is no time with God."

Summary: Denounces the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and is outraged at the jubilation in the press. Juxtaposes words and images that contrast the evil of the bomb's destruction with God's creative love. Keywords: pacifism, war

Summary: Praises God for May, the month of Mary and full of beauty. Recalls the Catholic Worker began in May sixteen years ago and summarizes their program and the many allied movements of the lay apostolate. Says their pacifism and distributism distinguishes them from other movements. Focuses on voluntary poverty as exemplified in Peter Maurin's life, especially since he became ill. Reflects on holiness and the call to all to become saints. Includes quotations from her winter's reading. Keywords: Gandhi, machine, philosophy of work

Summary: Finally Tamar's son Eric is born. She comments on the child's baptism and the beginning of her own faith. Considers the role of women as nourishers and upbraids herself for being self-indulgent, quoting St. Theresa of Avila at length on penance. As signs of Spring arrive they move to a "new-old" house and she plans to return to New York.

Summary: Passionate condemnation of UMT (Universal Military Training) as un-Catholic and atheistic. Advocates Catholics become conscientious objectors. Condemns Americanism and rabid anti-Communism.

Summary: Surveys the rural area around the Easton, PA, farm from "a distributist point of view" visiting a bookbinder's shop and complaining about polluting factories. Laments that the Catholic Worker hasn't produced more craftsmen. Enumerates all the work projects underway and the schedule of retreats. Joyfully announces the birth of her second grandchild, Susanna.

Summary: In the face of a world in turmoil--atom bomb tests, food shortages, impending strikes, destitution--an exhortation to "love as Christ loved, to the extent of laying down our lives for our brothers." Tells of a priest whose work made him "a perfect fool for Christ." Says "we confess to being fools and wish we were more so."

Summary: Urges personal responsibility to embrace voluntary poverty, to work at occupations that address human need and that do not support war, and to admit that we are responsible for the class structure of society. Thus revolutionary change is required, small personal steps and it is an effort that lasts a life-time.

Summary: Describes her and 18 others' arrest and court appearances for civil disobedience after demonstrating and not taking shelter in an air raid drill. Speaks of the courage and suffering needed in battle and in using spiritual weapons. Going to jail is one way of visiting the prisoner.

Summary: A graphic description of how she and 29 others were treated by the police, jailers, and courts after arrest for protesting air raid drills against nuclear attack. Gives a reason for the protest and decries the inhuman aspects of their treatment--crowding, lack of food, waiting. Notes: "What a neglected work of mercy, visiting the prisoner."

Summary: Reflects on how hard it is to leave the cares of the Catholic Worker as she begins a pilgrimage to other CW groups. Extols efforts at rural self-sufficiency (e.g. wool making) in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and visits friends in Minneapolis and Chicago.

Summary: Six tender obituaries of Workers who had died the past year, each highlighting the person's special qualities. Comments that since "There is no time with God" our prayers for the dead are as if said before their death.

Summary: Argues that distributism is the only alternative to the US economy. Distributism is an alternative to capitalism and socialism built around "the village economy" and a more just distribution of wealth. Quotes four modern Popes in its support. Summarizes its principles with the following Statements: "land is the most natural form of property" "wages should enable man to purchase land" "the family is the most perfect when rooted in its own holdings" "agriculture is the first and most important of all arts." (See also DOC #159 and DOC #161)

Summary: First of a series of articles on distributism (see DOC #160 & DOC #161). Against the backdrop of harsh city life she points to life on the land as a way to find zest in life. Distributism is a third point of view, neither Communism or capitalism. "The aim of distributism is family ownership of land, workshops, stores, transport, trades, professions, and so on." Recommends reading Belloc and Chesterson as an introduction to it.