Reprinted from The Common Good, No 8, Pentecost 1998
Dorothy Day:
The Only Solution is Love
From the time of her conversion until her death in 1980, Dorothy Day practised a life of voluntary poverty, pacifism, daily practice of the works of mercy, and repeated acts of non-violent resistance to war and systems of oppression. In celebration of Dorothy DayÕs 100th birthday anniversary on November 8, 1997, there was a gathering of some 400 Catholic Workers in Las Vegas, Nevada. The three-day celebration culminated with a Mass and civil disobedience at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, where weapons of mass destruction have been tested as recently as September 1997.
The following is an adaptation of Murphy DavisÕ talk presented at the Las Vegas gathering. She is a partner at the Open Door Community in Atlanta, Georgia, ministering with the homeless poor and prisoners.
Dorothy Day spoke often of coming into the church as an experience of coming home. This coming home was being welcomed to a meal Ð to the companionship of the table. The Mass was central. For the rest of her life she went to Mass every day. When she became too ill and weak to go, it was brought to her.
The work of hospitality was also a daily practice: inviting the poor, the hungry, the forgotten to come in and share food, drink, and table companionship.
It all started and ended with a meal for Dorothy. And so it starts and ends for us. We are fed with abundance. We share what we have, and others are fed. Sometimes there seems to be so little that we cannot see the way. But when we give thanks and break the crust, again and again we find that there is enough.
But just being poor is the hardest work in the world. So many people in mainline culture donÕt have any idea what that means. And it cannot be understood apart from solidarity Ð sharing life with the poor.
When we read the Gospels, we see that Jesus was always interested in getting people together to eat. We have stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes, the great banquet when people are brought in from the highways and byways, eating with friends like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, the Passover supper, fish for breakfast on the seashore, and of course the meal at Emmaus.
Dorothy Day was given a sort of sacramental sense about life. This sense of the holy is what made her a restless wanderer until she found her home in the Church. She came home to the blessed Sacrament, as she always called it; everything else flowed from that.
This has been true of our experience and journey as well. Everything about our work with the homeless poor, and much of our work with prisoners, began with sharing meals together. DorothyÕs theology was basic to understanding that our solidarity, our hospitality, and journey into community must be rooted in the experience of being fed at the table. We came to learn from her that table companionship, the Eucharistic vision, would provide the basis for everything else.
One of the most important gifts of the Eucharist is receiving the eyes of faith to see God in our midst. Matthew 25 teaches us that what we do for the least of our sisters and brothers, we do for God. When we are fed by God, we are given the eyes to see God Ð especially in the suffering of those who are poor and forgotten and condemned.
This is the basis for solidarity, the basis for a preferential option for the poor, the basis from which the poor and oppressed can begin to set agenda in our lives.
Our task in these days is that of loving the poor in a time when the poor, in attitude, in words, and in policy, are hated. We hear so much talk about wanting to make poor people work; getting people off welfare and making them work. But just being poor is the hardest work in the world. So many people in mainline culture donÕt have any idea what that means. And it cannot be understood apart from solidarity Ð sharing life with the poor.
Being poor is the hardest work in the world, but all we can think of is, ÔWhatÕs going to be our next mean policy to pass, our next law to dog people around, harass them, and chase them out of our central city, and get them out of one neighbourhood or another?Õ To love the poor in our day is going against the odds, probably more than in any other age that we know.
The Eucharist is a foundation for solidarity, an ongoing assurance that God has never abandoned us, giving us the faith and the hope that we might find strength to be faithful in our love for the poor.
Matthew 25 says, ÔWhat you do for the least (not only for the innocent poor, but for the guilty poor) is what you do for me.Õ By our solidarity that grows from our table companionship and our Eucharistic vision, weÕre called to reduce the distance between ourselves and the poor, between the privileged and those who are without the basics to sustain human life. We are called to renounce privilege, to step back and step away from the privilege that is given to those of us with white skin, to those of us with a formal education.
If there is anything that the scriptures and the Eucharist teach us, it is that the poor are not a problem to be solved, as we hear so often in the common parlance of our day. The poor are not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be loved. They are a sacramental presence among us.
The poor are not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be loved. They are a sacramental presence among us.
In the Eucharistic vision we are given the eyes to recognise, and to love, GodÕs presence among us Ð Jesus Christ in the strangerÕs guise. It all, of course, becomes a joke without the Eucharist. It is incomprehensible to the rest of the world who lack a vision of the holy in the ordinary.
The table companionship and the Eucharistic vision are the basis for our hospitality. If solidarity brings us to the table with the poor, then the grace is, that at the table we can learn to love the poor. Love is the only solution. Here we come face-to-face with the depth of the vision of hospitality.
Solidarity is the political expression of the Eucharistic vision. Hospitality expresses the love of table companionship. By hospitality we are drawn into the Mystical Body of Christ.
Ed Loring, my partner, the love of my life, is known from time to time to adopt a certain refrain that he repeats again and again. Last yearÕs refrain was ÔJustice is important, but supper is essential.Õ Without supper, without relationship, without love, without table companionship, justice can become a program that we do to other people. So justice is important, even crucial. We hope to give our lives to the justice struggle, but supper is essential. What we must do, what we are graced and gifted to be able to do, is to sit down and to eat together, to open our doors, our homes, our hearts, and our very selves to the needs of others.
The works of mercy and hospitality are important, not just in and of themselves, but in a particular way in our times as a social/political expression. There needs to be a public character to our work of hospitality. It must be done in the open so that it is seen, so that everyone can remember that it is possible to love and welcome each other.
We need to open our own hearts. We need to confront our own racism, our own misogyny, our own class hatred. As we welcome our sisters and brothers, we learn to take on these battles within ourselves.
Resurrection hope is a gift any time and any where that the power of love is shown to be stronger than death. Any time love overcomes death, despair, and hopelessness, we see truth and hope reborn and resurrection. ThatÕs the hope we share in community.
In the meantime, we are encouraged by the stories, the memories, and the hope of love prevailing in whatever small ways, and sometimes even in the big ways.
Any time love overcomes death, despair, and hopelessness, we see truth and hope reborn and resurrection. ThatÕs the hope we share in community.
One of the great gifts that Dorothy Day gave us for the journey of community is companionship with those living and working out her vision. The community that we get to share and celebrate is one of the best and truest gifts. In the end for Dorothy, as for all of us, it comes back around to the table, to the companionship with our God and with each other. Here we receive food and drink for the journey, which gives us the eyes to see GodÕs presence among us and on the road with us all along.
When the burden of it all seemed unbearable to Dorothy, her response was to say that she had to deepen her spiritual life. Her daily celebration of Mass was a part of that. The joy that was there to be celebrated for Dorothy and for us, brings us again to the table, just as Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples before his hard and tortuous journey to state execution. That vision of the banquet is ours to share because when Jesus sits at the table he says, ÔThis is my body.Õ What we are fed is the substance, the material stuff, of GodÕs presence. God is love, the scriptures say, and the Feast is a Feast of Love.
One way to understand the Eucharist and table companionship is to know we are fed by love. We are eating bread and drinking wine that we pass to one another, but we are being fed with love Ð a love that sustains us and becomes the basis for all that we have, and are, and do. It helps us to remember that GodÕs loving kindness is present even in this violent, war-mongering, broken world. God comes and tells us that the cosmos, at war with itself, is still shot through with the glory of God. We need the table companionship, the sacrament, because we live with a mystery that is so deep we lack the words to define it. We have to act it out. We have to have a drama to try to approach the depth of this truth, to appropriate this truth in bread and the mystery of the holiness in our lives.
In the depth of the mystery, we remember the story and we are Ôre-memberedÕ Ð put back together again, in solidarity, in hospitality, in community Ð healed, re-membered, restored.
Dorothy Day said, ÔWe know our God 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.Õ Thank God. Amen.