The contents of this book emerge from the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality in New York City and the Saint Thomas Project in New Orleans. Two years of working with people on the margins of society confronted Marc Ellis with a truth and challenge: to delve deeper into his own life and the life of the world so as to begin the movement toward a new society. Since that time, in his travels through Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, Ellis has been exposed to the global dimensions of the situations he experienced in New York's Lower East Side and in New Orleans.
This book is an attempt to work through the questions posed to Ellis over his years among the poor and through his contact with the global issues of justice and peace.
For some, fidelity is a question answered before asked; for the pious through dogma and eternal truth, for the cynic through denial and derision. For Ellis, fidelity is neither assumed nor negated. Rather, it is a struggle through which we search out our own humanity. As human beings born with an unfinished consciousness and into a specific historical context, the struggle to be faithful begins with the historical hour in which we live. This is our burden, but it is also an opportunity to become what we are called to be.