The Long Loneliness 📚

 It's been a while! 

Life is busy but beautiful! Things on my plate at the moment include a Sound of Music Orchestra with shows starting next week (and an 8hr rehearsal this Sunday!), my final week at St Catherine's, and prepping for holidays. But with work winding down I've had more of a chance to read!

I've been attempting to read some of a spiritual book as I sit down to eat breakfast each morning, and I finally finished Dorothy Day's 'The Long Loneliness' today. 

According to Wikipedia, "Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and anarchist who, after a bohemian youth, became a Catholic Christian without in any way abandoning her social and anarchist activism. She was perhaps the best-known political radical in the American Catholic Church."

I know hardly anything when it comes to politics, American history, or the Catholic Social Worker movement. So maybe this wasn't the greatest book choice for me 😂

But despite all that I read the whole thing (may have skimmed over some parts). I envy Dorothy for her amazing memory and ability to remember very precise details and names - my memory is terrible...

I enjoyed learning about her journey to Catholicism and her willingness to leave behind all she knew, (including her husband). She had such a radical way of life and truly cared for all people. And her story highlights God's providence. 

Here are a few (maybe more than a few) quotes that stood out to me - all still very relevant to society today I think! 

(Note: Probably not allowed to reproduce/copy down anything from the book - oops - the front cover says "except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews" This is critical right? And I'm obviously very brief 😅 Please someone tell me if I need to take down these quotes!). 

"I loved the church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me. Romano Guardini said the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from His Cross, and one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the Church"

"Peter [Maurin] made you feel a sense of his mission as soon as you met him. He did not begin by tearing down, or by painting so intense a picture of misery and injustice that you burned to change the world. Instead, he aroused in you a sense of your own capacities for work, for accomplishment. He made you feel that you and all men had great and generous hearts with which to love God. If you once recognised this fact in yourself you would expect and find it in others. "The art of human contacts" Peter called it. But it was seeing Christ in others, loving the Christ you saw in others. Greater than this it was having faith in the Christ you saw in others without being able to see Him. Blessed is he that believes without seeing."

"Ritual, how could we do without it? Though it may seem to be gibberish and irreverence, though the Mass is offered up in such haste that the sacred sentence, "hoc est corpus meus" [This is my body] was abbreviated into "hocus-pocus" by the bitter protestor and has come down into our language meaning trickery, nevertheless there is a sureness and a conviction there....we have too little ritual in our lives."

 "We were constantly confronted with the fact that on the one hand our daily papers, radio commentators and now television [and social media!] were shaping the minds of the people, and yet they were well responsive to basic and simple religious truths. They were attracted to the good; they were hard-working, struggling human beings living for the day, and afraid of the unknown. Once that sense of fear of the unknown was overcome, brotherly love, and mutual love would overcome fear and hatred."

"'All men are brothers.' Going to the people is the purest and best act in Christian tradition and revolutionary tradition and is the beginning of world brotherhood. Never to be severed from the people, to set out always from the point of view of serving the people, not serving the interests of a small group or oneself."

"For Christ Himself, housed in the tabernacles in the Church no magnificence is too great, but for the priest who serves Christ, and for the priesthood of the laity, no such magnificence, in the face of the hunger and homelessness of the world, can be understood."

"Peter's Christian philosophy on work was this. God is our creator. God made us in His image and likeness. Therefore we are creators. He gave us a garden to till and cultivate. We become co-creators by our responsible acts, whether in bringing forth children, or producing food, furniture or clothing. The joy of creativeness should be ours. But because of the Fall the curse is laid on us of having to earn our bread by the sweat of our brows, in labour...But when he [man] overcomes the obstacles, he attains again the joy of creativity. Work is not then all pain and drudgery."

"The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother, and living close to him in community so we can show our love for Him."

"Suppose you want to go to California and it costs a hundred dollars. You have fifteen. It is not enough so give it away. Give it to the poor. Then you suddenly have twenty-five and that is not enough and the only thing to do is give it away too. Even seventy-five. That is not anough. Tell the Lord you want more. Throw it away recklessly, You will get back your hundredfold. You will get what you need. Maybe it will come in graces. Maybe it will cover your spiritual needs, not just your physical. But sow, sow!..He who sows sparingly, reaps sparingly. (Father Roy) 

"The same principle always worked. If we are ever rushed for time, sow time and we will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done. Spend time with the poor. sit and listen to them...Sow kindness and you will reap kindness. Sow love and you will reap love." 

"Where there is no love, if you put love, you will take love out." (St John of the Cross)

"Without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith that works through love is the mark of the supernatural life. God always gives us a chance to show our preference for Him. With Abraham it was to sacrifice his only son. With me it was to give up married life with Forster. You do these things blindly, not because it is your natural inclination - you are going against your nature to do them - but because you wish to live in conformity with the will of God."

"It is not only for others that I must have these retreats. It is because I too am hungry and thirsty for the bread of the strong. I too must nourish myself to do the work I have undertaken; I too must drink of these good springs so that I may not be an empty cistern and unable to help others."

"But the final word is love. At times it has been...a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire. We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet too, even with a crust, where there is companionship. 

If you made it this far, congrats!! If you didn't already pick it up, Dorothy Day was all about love! 

I'll leave you with this great quote: