Radical Gratitude

Mary Jo Leddy's latest book is a meditation on the miracle of the everyday and a guide to discovering what is most real in oneself. That process leads to "radical gratitude" that allows the spirit to soar and experience a great paradox. The freer one becomes, the more one appreciates the earthy things that give true joy and become the path to greater authenticity. For Leddy, ever the wise spiritual director, the path to that authenticity and gratitude also becomes the path to a deeper relationship with the God of ordinary grace. Ever aware of the way zealots morale about changing the world, while themselves being slaves of anger and the need for external order to compensate for an inner void, Leddy unfolds the Christian life as a Way of responding to ordinary grace that in time will make an extraordinary difference. "In radical gratitude, " she notes, "the vicious dissatisfaction with life is broken. We begin to recognize what we have rather than what we don't … we awaken to another way of being, another kind of economy, the great economy of grace in which each person is of infinite value and worth."