Dorothy Day, a hero of mine. A social activist whose major efforts were helping those in poverty and ending wars. The New Yorker has a wonderful article about her this week. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/dorothy-days-radical-faith
Our greatest danger is not our sins but our indifference.
This morning, the only gleam of consolation I had was that when God sends all these troubles and sufferings to the families, he is sending just what they need, to prune them down, so that they bear fruit. If I didn't believe that, I'd be unhappy indeed. How he must love you to be so intent on sending what you need, spiritually. If all were going well and smoothly, it would be really dangerous.
Faith, more precious than gold, is a gift. We cannot give it to each other, but certainly we can pray God to give it to others. Péguy wrote: "When we get to heaven, God is going to say to us, 'Where are the others?'"
I still long to be like Dorothy Day, but not in the ways I used to. I don't want to be radical anymore; instead I long to be sustainable, to remain steadfast. I want to walk faithfully in the direction of my Lord, and I don't want to stop until my very last breath. As Dorothy writes, 'Our arms are linked -- we try to be neighbors of his, and to speak up for his principles. That's a lifetime's job.'
From the Introduction by D. L. Mayfield
[Rayna] never met a Christian. This I am sure is literally true.... mingling as we did, in our life together, and in our life apart, with radical groups, we never met any whose personal morality was matched by a social morality or who tried to make life here for others a foretaste of the life to come.
[1917] was a time of constant agitation throughout the world. Perhaps people were looking for leaders... there would be Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, Roosevelt, men so dominated by ideas that they sacrificed to them countless millions of human beings. This had been no brief period of revolution. Unlike 1776, 1793, 1848, and 1864, we are now in a world revolution which began in 1917, has continued, and is continuing.
[In Dorothy's senior year of high school, her friend] Kropotkin especially brought to my mind the plight of the poor, of the workers, and though my experience of the destitute was in books, the very fact that The Jungle was about Chicago where I lived, whose streets I walked, made me feel that from then on my life was to be linked to theirs, their interests were to be mine; I had received a call, a vocation, a direction to my life.
pickThis is a great and inspiring little treasury of quotes from various sources organized by theme. It‘s the kind of thing I wish I had a few copies of to be able to give them away to people.
TFW your husband coincidentally snags a free copy of a book you had your eye on 🙌
