Robert Ellsberg: Finding the holy in the ordinary

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Finding the holy in the ordinary
Robert Ellsberg is publisher and editor in chief at Orbis Books, a division of Maryknoll. He became a Catholic in 1980, largely through the influence of Dorothy Day, while he was living at the Catholic Worker House in lower Manhattan. After studying theology at Harvard Divinity School he joined Orbis as editor in chief in 1987. He is married, has three children, and lives in Ossining, New York. He is the author of three books on saints, All Saints, The Saint's Guide to Happiness and Blessed Among All Women.

He has just completed editing the diaries (1934-1980) of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day and now is working on a collection of Day's letters.

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Episode 1: Learning from Dorothy Day (24 min.)
As a 19-year-old college student, Ellsberg found himself searching: searching for understanding, searching for community. He tells Tom Fox: "I found myself at the Catholic Worker almost by accident, attracted there not really by the Catholicism (I didn’t really know anything about that), but by the example of Dorothy Day, who seemed to embody a Gandhian spirit of living non-violence as a way of life in a consistent fashion. I felt that it was a place where I might learn something." Thirty years later, Ellsberg would edit Day's writings, diaries and letters.

Episode 2: Being holy, being happy (19 min.)
Are saints more preoccupied with being happy than holy? Tom Fox asks Ellsberg. Well, he replies, you have too look carefully at what "holy" and "happy" means. Holy doesn't mean being perfect or superhuman. Holiness is "expressing your humanity in the deepest sense," Ellsberg says. And happiness isn't "feeling good." Happiness is "being centered and focused and balanced in the deepest sense." body