Dorthy Day

Last night I struggled to say something in this “Diary of a Worm” that was said in 1955 by Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk. My friend Jim Forest in Holland sent this quote below to me today. It says more eloquently the thought I tried to express yesterday. Just a day late (or maybe not). Struggling to say in one’s own words an ageless truth is an okay exercise. The quote is below. Also today my friend Jim Forest sent me a review of a recently published book: “The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day”. Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker, as many of you know, was a living saint that I was blessed to meet in life. Since all the papers of Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day are in the archives at Marquette, the book was published by the University of Marquette Press. I wonder what Dorothy Day would have thought of Marquette, the home of her records and diaries, being the home to four departments of military science for nine colleges and universities. As her granddaughter said in the MU Peace Petition “My grandmother Dorothy Day would be weeping today about the role that Catholics are playing in the endless war making.” You can read more about the diaries in an article in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Dorthy Day amd Thomas Merton were both naturally interested in nature, gardening and rural life.

“Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race, which is intended to be one organism and ‘one body,’ will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but also of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from the failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my own integration in Christ”. — Thomas Merton, “No Man Is An Island” New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955; p 16

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