The Action of Light

"The working class daughter of a Jewish mother and Sicilian father, Joan Di Stefano was working to help with the bills at fourteen. A few years later she was "slinging drinks" to pay tuition for her classes at the San Francisco Art Institute. At seventeen, while working at Macy's in downtown SF, on her lunch-breaks she often visited a bookstore around the corner. That's where she picked up a copy of Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island. As she told me, "I would read a couple of pages and keep thinking about it. So that book always kind of stayed with me." Joan's story is unique and over forty years later, her connection with Merton led to quite an astonishing series of events..."

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