Dorothy wrote about her experience in solitary confinement in prison for doing non-violent disobedience. She reminds us that suffering can open us up so we become far bigger than our own ego, we learn to identify with others who are suffering. She writes:
All through those weary first days in jail when I was in solitary confinement, the only thoughts that brought comfort to my soul were those lines in the Psalms that expressed the terror and misery of man suddenly stricken and abandoned.
Solitude and hunger and weariness of spirit—these sharpened my perceptions so that I suffered not only my own sorrow but the sorrows of those about me. I was no longer myself. I was man. I was no longer a young girl, part of a radical movement seeking justice for those oppressed. I was the oppressed.
I was that drug addict, screaming and tossing in her cell, beating her head against the wall. I was that shoplifter who, for rebellion, was sentenced to solitary. I was that woman who had killed her children, who had murdered her lover.
Suffering can empty us of ourselves and put us more in touch with others with their suffering. The via negativa teaches us important truths, including how we are all connected. Dorothy continues:
The blackness of hell was all about me. The sorrows of the world encompassed me. I was like one gone down into the pit. Hope had forsaken me. I was the mother whose child had been raped and slain. I was the mother who had borne the monster who had done it. I was even that monster, feeling in my own heart every abomination.
Thich Nhat Hanh writes of parallel experiences, how he was the young girl raped on a boat fleeing the Vietnam War; and he was the pirate doing the raping. When ego melts either in the Via Positiva of awe and wonder and ecstasy or in the depths of despair and suffering, we learn our oneness with others and with the universe anew.
Dorothy talks elsewhere about her vision for bringing about a better world, a modest kingdom/queendom of God on this earth, perhaps, a “beloved community” in King’s language. This is her manifesto.
We are not expecting utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man.
We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now, ‘all the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, ‘I am the Way.’” The Cross is there, of course, but ‘in the Cross is joy of spirit,’ and love makes all things easy…
And she stuns us with her bluntness that so marries the via negativa and the via positiva, the Christ and each of us as other Christs. Love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, of each of us, but it is the only answer….To the saints, everyone is child and lover. Everyone is Christ.
Banner Image: “Dorothy Day Portrait.” Photo by Jim Forest on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Is it your experience that the via negativa teaches how we are all connected and how universal suffering is? Do you learn important things from times of darkness and despair? Do you agree that love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing at times–but that it is the only answer? And everyone is another Christ?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations, pp. 302-304
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings in Creation Spirituality.
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
2 thoughts on “Dorothy Day on Love & Action as a Harsh & Dreadful Thing”
An interesting testimony about the connection between Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton is given by Jim Forest, a former Catholic Worker who knew them both, at https://uscatholic.org/articles/201110/work-hard-pray-hard-on-dorothy-day-and-thomas-merton/. I especially liked the story of the “well-dressed woman who came to the Worker, took a diamond ring from her finger and handed it to Dorothy. Dorothy thanked her politely with no more fuss than she would if the woman had brought a dozen eggs. A little while later a woman that we didn’t particularly enjoy seeing showed up. [. . .] She was, as far as we could tell, genetically incapable of saying thank you. Dorothy reached into her pocket and said, ‘I have something for you’—and gave her the diamond ring. I don’t know if it was me or somebody else who went to Dorothy afterward and said, ‘You know, Dorothy, I could have taken that ring up to West 47th Street to the Diamond Exchange, and we could have paid her rent for years to come.’ She responded, ‘Well, if she wants to sell the ring and go to the Bahamas, she can do so. But she might also like to just wear the ring. Do you think God made diamonds just for the rich?’”
DD = Diamond squared indeed.
Yes… Yes… Yes… Yes… Being & Becoming… I Am deepening my spiritual awareness/consciousness of my Loving Diverse ONENESS with All of ongoing Co-Creation~Source’s Divine Loving Flow in the Sacredness of the Eternal Present Moment….