On Pilgrimage
14 September 2020 “On Pilgrimage”
Going to confession is hard. Writing a book is hard because you are “giving yourself away.” But if you love, you want to give yourself. (Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness)
For all its darkness, pain, and suffering, this pandemic has quietly brought many gifts as well. Easy for me to say, I know, since to date, I’ve yet to lose a loved one to the coronavirus (though I fear I may soon), all my family members have maintained decent health, and both my job and my wife’s have remained intact. Those in and of themselves are cherished gifts, of course, which I give thanks for, though probably not enough. And there have been others, all of which have helped mitigate the on-going stress of juggling work, child-rearing, and all-family-all-the-time togetherness. Grace notes sung beautifully into the void, stars in the sky’s deep darkness.
One of them has been a reconnection with the work of Dorothy Day. And in truth, with her spirit too. Reading through her books again, and reflecting on her life of witness, I’ve felt a deeper kinship than I had before. Perhaps in the past I was a bit too hung up on her “mistakes”: the times she just nodded along with the Church dogma and hierarchy; her use of gender-exclusive language (though it was perfectly typical of her time); the passages in her columns and books that could have done well with significant editing, lacking the beauty and polish of Augustine or Merton; or maybe (most ridiculous of all), the simple fact that she was a woman, and I’m a man.
But recently, aided by grace I’m sure, I let her in more freely, embraced her on her own terms. Since March, many of us have been struck by the staggering lines for food, the quick swelling of the unemployed, and the increasingly large and desperate homeless population. These, of course, were her people, her family, her Body with which she broke bread countless times, always finding the Bread of Life within them too. The sharpened focus many of us now have upon the most basic necessities— which we never should have lost in the first place— started me seeking out Day again. And soon, with some trepidation, to call her Dorothy.
I have found treasures, many cups of cool, clear water in these parched times. Dorothy’s specific combination of talents— as a writer, reader, activist, and missioner— her deep calling to work for systemic justice while sharing life shoulder-to-shoulder with the poorest of the poor, and her specifically Catholic grounding, for better and worse, have helped me feel a warm kinship with her, a kind guide on this pilgrimage of life.
And so I’ve named this space, as well as this specific column today, in her honor, to invite her pilgrim spirit to guide my words, and your reading. Her column in the Catholic Worker was titled On Pilgrimage, and one book of her selected columns shares that name.
O dear Lord, you may be thinking, yet another blog. Doesn’t this fool know any better?
Well, that’s fair, on both counts. There is indeed too much out there to read, and it’s naive of me to think anyone will want to add this to their heap. And yes, I am a fool, in some respects, doing a fool’s work. My only hope, beyond begging your occasional indulgence in this space, is that I do so in the spirit Dorothy wrote of in 1946, after having gone through the whole period of the “good” war screaming her throat raw that no war is actually “good.” We confess to being fools, and wish that it were more so.
This space will hold reflections and wonderings about the life of mission, in the spirit Dorothy and others have been inspiring me to live it: as a writer, teacher, activist, husband, parent, son, and brother to the human and non-human Family. I can’t promise the prose (or the poetry) will always glisten, or that I’ll never ramble or rant, only that everything here will be heartfelt, honest, and try to go to someplace deeper. I’m offering this space as a part of a practice of faithfulness, trying to detach from the results and give God’s holy mystery some room to move around and breathe. In these times, I daresay, that’s something that could be useful.
I hope you’ll occasionally find something in this pilgrim’s journal (hey, we could call it a “Plog,” right? A Pilgrim’s blog?) that tastes like cool, clear water. And that you’ll pass the cup to someone else, who also might be thirsty.
Allow me to finish by continuing that passage from The Long Loneliness…
You write as you are impelled to write, about man and his problems, his relation to God and his fellows. You write about yourself because in the long run all man’s problems are the same, his human needs of sustenance and love… [it’s] a harrowingly painful job. I feel I have done nothing well. But I have done what I could.