I've been inactive on here for quite some time... life kind of overwhelmed me. I plan on writing a bit to explain my past year at school, but for now, I have this to share!
I'm beginning to read a book for my internship class called "Dorothy Day Selected Writings". I've not even left the preface and introduction yet, but there are already things I've loved. Here are a few snippets:
"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.
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. . . . I am a journalist, not a biographer, not a book writer. The sustained effort of writing, of putting pen to paper so many hours a day when there are human beings around who need me, when there is sickness, and hunger, and sorrow, is a harrowingly panful job. I feel that I have done nothing well. But I have done what I could." -Dorothy Day
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. . . . I am a journalist, not a biographer, not a book writer. The sustained effort of writing, of putting pen to paper so many hours a day when there are human beings around who need me, when there is sickness, and hunger, and sorrow, is a harrowingly panful job. I feel that I have done nothing well. But I have done what I could." -Dorothy Day
"... she believed in the need for a new model of holiness in our time. This intuition came to her even as a child. Recalling her first encounters with the lives of the saints, she described her admiration for their heroic ministry to the poor, the weak, and the infirm. But, already, there was another question in her mind: "why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? . . . Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?" Dorothy Day's vocation was planted in that question."
and
"Like a true disciple, she (Dorothy Day) was able to reconcile her love for the church with keen suffering over its sins and failings. Like the saints she revered, she was able to mediate the message of Christ and the challenges posed by her moment in history."
- Maryknoll 2005
"Hospitality, she insisted, meant more than serving a meal, offering a bed, or opening a door; it meant opening one's heart to the needs of others. . . . Dorothy understood the Incarnation to be an ongoing fact: God had once and for all assumed our humanity, and we could not hope to know Him without also turning to our neighbors in love. Such love was not merely a passing glow, but something concrete and active. It meant extending fellowship, sharing bread with the hungry, clothing the naked, standing beside those who were outcast and persecuted." - Robert Ellsberg
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