Dorothy Day Day

This wouldn't be a proper hoboblog without the occasional mention of early-twentieth-century rabble rousers. Given the date and my current living situation, it's especially appropriate to remember Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day. Many a vagabond, turned away from the flophouse, was able to find shelter in one of her inner city "houses of hospitality." Tonight, on the anniversary of her death, we went out and toasted over tacos (Mexican beer for the Benedictine sisters, ice water for me!) to this lovely lady and her incredible legacy of nonviolence and social outreach.

"It is people who are important, not the masses," she wrote in her autobiographical "The Long Loneliness"...and she loved to quote Dostoevsky, "love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams." I really think this is the principle by which she lived her life. The quote, by the way, comes from this passage in the Brothers Karamazov:

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don’t be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it-at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.

and is reiterated again in the book, maybe more clearly:

It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,” observed the elder. “He was a man getting on in years, and doubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately--how could I really be of use to the actual, specific people in my community? Large-scale service meant for large groups of people is great in many ways, but there is just something different about unexpected and personal acts of kindness...how sincere they feel, and how moving they can be. They acknowledge the dignity and astonishing, amazing otherness of the people we live with, work with, stand in line at the grocery store with.

My first week in Erie, I was terrified. Everyone I met spoke of the street I live on with a kind of reverent fear. "I wouldn't walk alone there," they cautioned. "Even on a Sunday afternoon. Even in broad daylight. And definitely not as a 23 year old woman." I didn't know what to expect, and had no one, really, to ask. One day a woman from work who I didn't even know that well brought in her bicycle because she thought I could use it while living here. The bicycle was beautiful--a blue beachcomber--and was incredibly useful to me, but more than anything I was startled and grateful for her kindness, and how it was meant specifically for me, when I had felt I was in a town full of strangers.

Or when Sister Sallie, from the Priory, came down early to help me finish the dinner I was cooking. "I had a feeling you could use some help," she'd said. She set the table as I frantically chopped vegetables. She even found a little seasonally-appropriate centerpiece and lit some candles. By the time the other sisters came in, no one would have guessed what a near-disaster it had been.

Or when Naina, a refugee from Bhutan, calls to invite me to eat with her family. Every week, with the same message: "Meghan! I want for you to take dinner at my house!" she says. "You have no family here to eat with! I do not want you to feel alone, because I love you so much!" Sometimes, even knowing I won't be able to make it that night, just hearing Naina's message makes my whole day incomparably better and easier.

There are so many other examples I could give, and every time it's been such a simple and such a profound thing...to feel like out of an anonymous crowd somebody is looking you in the eye and, with some small gesture, is showing that they sincerely care about you. I have been the recipient of so, so much thoughtfulness in this city that at first felt dangerous and foreign to me. People are amazing...and the unasked-for kindnesses they exchange never fail to seem holy. This is everything Dorothy Day stood for. Happy Dorothy Day Day, everybody. Go get some tacos and ice water.