the long loneliness the autobiography of dorothy day

And like Dorothy Day I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.ĭorothy Day was truly a remarkable woman.

I did not know it but even then I was looking for the freedom of Bohemia and the solidarity of 'true' work with others. I was already an atheist but it was not her theories, of a pacifist and anarchist transformation of society through faith in Christ that I was after. At sixteen I was reading her autobiography only because she was mentioned in Michael Harrington's memoir Fragments of the Century. I noticed when I checked it out, early in my junior year, that I was the first one ever to take the book home with me.ĭorothy Day was a founder, along with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker, a product of what to some would sound like a contradiction, and to others would sound like a necessity, 'radical left Catholicism'.

In such love was the abundant life and I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.ĭorothy Day was a remarkable woman and because I was always interested in left history, and was always broad minded in my ecumenical atheist way about who was included in the 'left', in 'our tradition', I was happy to find The Long Loneliness on the bookshelf of my post-Vatican, slightly adrift Catholic High School in Fort Myers, Florida. Only then did people really live, really love their brothers. I wanted every home to be open to the lame, the halt and the blind, the way it had been after the San Francisco earthquake.

Id did not want just the few, the missionary-minded people like the Salvation Army, to be kind to the poor, as the poor. I wanted life and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted, though Id did not know it then, a synthesis. And those who were doing it, like the Salvation Army, did not appeal to me. Id didn't see anyone having a banquet and calling in the lame, the halt and the blind. I did not see anyone taking off his coat and giving it to the poor. She is writing of her observations of the contradiction between the message of the Christianity that she knew in her heart, the religion of generosity which said that the poor should be treated as human beings with a human guarantee to love and happiness and plenty, and the Christianity that she saw among the church goers who admired the rich and despised the poor.Ĭhildren look at things very directly and simply. In Dorothy Day's autobiography The Long Loneliness she writes of her world view at age fifteen. The Long Loniliness by Dorothy Day at Amazon

The long loneliness the autobiography of dorothy day