The Spiritual Journey of a Misfit

Book excerpt: As someone who has been guiding people through the catacombs of their own lives for decades, Francis Dorff, O. Praem. is uniquely qualified to tell stories that evoke personal experiences of the treasures residing within each of us. Readers may recognize their own lives reflected in his description of: being “a stranger in a strange land,” wondering where to turn when a door to one’s “promised land” closes in one’s face, exploring intimations of a Loving Mystery beneath the surface of all of life, embracing parts of our life that we have been neglecting, and creatively getting to know our own deepest self. This book will encourage those of us who are yearning to live more peacefully with others to see how we can “meditatively journey together to the underground place within us that is deeper than all our differences.” Those who are feeling stuck may find some help in Fr. Dorff’s insight into how “widening the scope of my attentiveness has a lot to do with my being able eventually to take a creative next step.” And everyone can be inspired by the author’s “experiment with loving” and how many different forms this loving can take over the course of a long, rich life. Here is a personal invitation to learn how to live with the ongoing tensions between solitude and community, meditation and ministry, “getting it all together” and letting it all fall apart—as well as being a misfit and a mystic on a deeply personal pilgrimage.