REFLECTION ON DOROTHY DAY AND HER DIARIES

I first met Dorothy Day at the funeral Mass of Bill Gauchat in Avon, Ohio. He and his wife Dorothy were great friends of Dorothy Day, who with Peter Maurin co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement in New York City. The Gauchats established a Catholic Worker House in Cleveland to promote peace and to eliminate poverty, homelessness and unemployment.

I did not know Dorothy Day personally, but I met her again at the City Club of Cleveland where she addressed a group of conservative Catholic lawyers, most of whom favored the death penalty.

The lawyers listened politely but seemed disinterested in her speech until the last ten minutes when she blasted the judicial system in Chicago where the judge ordered Black Panther leader and political activist Bobby Seale’s mouth taped shut because Seale was so disruptive in the courtroom. She wanted to know why the judge would not let the jurors hear what Seale had to say. Why were they afraid to listen to him? She received scant applause when she finished, and most of those lawyers left the room in red faced anger. I was greatly amused that this frail lady in a blue dress could upset them with her words.

I had not thought of Dorothy Day until recently when I read in Commonweal magazine of March 28 that Orbis Books would publish Robert Ellsberg’s The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day. Here are two paragraphs he wrote in Commonweal about her and her diaries that provide very good material for reflection.

“Many people tend to think of saints as otherworldly heroes, close to God but not exactly human. Dorothy’s diaries confirm Thomas Merton’s observation that sanctity is a matter of being more fully human: ‘This implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for appreciation for the good and beautiful things of life.’

To be human is constantly to fall short of the ideals one sets for oneself. Dorothy Day was no exception. There are frequent reminders in her diaries of her capacity for impatience, anger, judgment, and self-righteousness. She herself points them out. And so we are reminded that holiness is not a state of perfection, but a faithful striving that lasts a lifetime, one expressed primarily in small ways, day after day, through the practice of forgiveness, patience, self-sacrifice, and compassion.”

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