Tuesday, October 3, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The long loneliness of Dorothy Day
There shall yet come peoples, the inhabitants of many cities, and the inhabitants of one city shall approach those of another and say, “Come! Let us go to implore the favor of the Lord.”
A friend’s parents lived in Mexico for twenty years, in a gated community, surrounded by crime but untouched by it themselves. Another friend spoke strongly about his need to establish boundaries to his giving, both for his sake and the sake of those he was giving to.
Dorothy Day did not live in a gated world, and she would disagree with my friend about where to place his boundaries. She knew how often we are cheated somehow by those to whom we are generous. But.
We are sowing the seeds of love, and we are not living in the harvest time.
In our disappointment we might stop giving. But that would not be following the example of Jesus. Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which was populated with communal houses that sprang up across the country during the depression. Like Mother Teresa, she got tough with politicians and bankers to get what she was convinced that Jesus wanted. They did not understand her philosophy, but they often responded to her persistence.
We must give to the point of folly, and we are indeed fools, as our Lord himself was who died for such a one as this. We lay down our lives too, when we have performed so painfully thankless acts, for our correspondent is poor in this world’s goods. It is agony to go through such bitter experiences, because we all want to love.
When Dorothy Day or someone like her appears in your life, does she come representing God? Thomas Merton, a spiritual saint in his own right, thought so. So did Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So did Daniel Berrigan. Their own rightly heroic lives took strong turns toward sacrificial giving when they met Dorothy.
In those days ten men speaking different tongues shall take hold, yes take hold of every Jew by the edge of his garment and say, “Let us go with you, for we have heard God is with you.”
Dorothy Day’s association with pacifism and Communism often got her in trouble, even with her own allies. Her autobiography, written decades before she died, detailed The Long Loneliness of her life. Not that she felt abandoned or left alone by Jesus, though.
Love must be tried and tested and proved. It must be tried as though by fire. And fire burns.
We may be living in a desert when it comes to such perceptions now, and that desert may stretch out before us for years. But a thousand years are as one day in the sight of God, and soon we will know as we are known. Until then we will have glimpses of community in play, in suffering, and in serving.
At Life Vineyard Church in Mahomet on Sunday, a lone guitarist sang “Gratitude,” a new song for me, by Brandon Lake. He sang the chorus over and over, and its “contemplative sound” quieted my soul, even as the lyric called me to shout gratitude at the top of my lungs:
Come on, my soul
Oh, don’t you get shy on me
Lift up your song
‘Cause you’ve got a lion inside of those lungs
So get up and praise the Lord
She died in 1980, but Dorothy Day might well have either written the song or sang it at the top of her lungs. Her inner lion would have roared.
(Zechariah 8, Psalm 87, Mark 10, Luke 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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