After reading the second section of The Long Loneliness, I expected to read about Dorothy Day’s journey in her faith, but the reading was just a continuation of her life as a radical. In the next couple of sections, I’m hoping to read more about Day’s impact through her religion because now, she is only writing about her life as a radical in social movements. When the section ended with her relationship building with the Catholic family, I foreshadowed that the next section will probably talk about her faith development. I’m looking forward to this section because I want to see how she incorporates faith and humanities in her life.
Dorothy Day seems relatable to me. I don’t know if it is the way she writes or the fact that I understand her childhood, but I feel like I have a bigger connection with this book than the others. While I was reading this book, I thought about lectio divina which Dr. LaLonde mentioned in class on Friday. I didn’t go so far as to pray while reading the Dorothy Day book, but in some of her stories, I imagined myself right beside her. When she became a nurse, I could see myself also working in the hospital and during her childhood, I could imagine myself on the streets and in the parks of Chicago with my siblings. Through this book, I feel like I can relate to her and develop the same feelings she has in certain situations.
The story that really grabbed my attention was Dorothy Day’s account of the food strike she encountered with her feminist group. There was so much agony and pain that I have never really thought about inside prisons. This section messed with my thinking a little bit. I have always thought that those who commit crimes should be punished, but what about the crimes that aren’t harmful? If the feminist movement would have never happened, there is a good chance that I wouldn’t even be at college right now. Those who suffered, like Dorothy Day, paid for my future. They took sacrifices that I don’t know if I have the courage to risk. After serving her prison sentence and lasting through the food strike, she said, “I would never be free again, never free when I knew that behind bars all over the world there were women and men, young girls and boys, suffering constraint, punishment, isolation and hardship for crimes of which all of us were guilty.” I can’t imagine going through something like the account Day made. She was so determined and truly believed in her cause. I haven’t found something in my life that I am that passionate about, but I hope someday I will find it.
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I thought that this blog hit all the point i was think. Through the reading i felt that Dorothy Day was doing the right thing. The felt like i should try to live my life in the way she did. You used the quote nicely. I thought that i brought the whole piece together.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the readings. I was thinking the same thing. I want to learn more about her growth and personal experience. The radical background gives more of an insight about the person that she developed to be. She is truly an inspiration to me. The part about the crimes that you included on my mind was the same exact things I thought about. Overall, I can't wait to get further into the book.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on the reading. I feel that Day is not trying to push all of her beliefs on to us, the readers, rather she is giving an account of her life such as her childhood, and I really am able to focus much better on her writings that way. I also tried to picture myself alongside Day throughout this section, and it was extremely hard especially during the feminist hunger strike. I just couldn't even come close to imagining what that had to have been like! Day, at the time was only a few years older then we are now, and just thinking about doing something like that never even crosses my mind! It really shows what kind of a person Day was, because it takes something special in order to have the will power to go through all that she did.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to the next section to see where her life takes her as well.
I think you brought up a great and interesting point when you wrote about crimes, both the violent and the non-violent. I believe things like the civil rights movement, women's suffrage, while not violent in the physical sense (disregarding the violence that often CAME with such movements) they were definite social injustices/crimes that infringed on human rights, and those can be just as horrific. A big reason why I feel the human race is always a little bit behind in the fight against the injustices of the world is because I feel that sometimes too much attention is focused on prevention of "war, burglary, rape, and murder" (all heinous acts) and while stopping those from occurring is important, I believe just as much attention should be focused on making sure everyone's civil/human rights REMAIN in tact, because even with checks and balances, injustices still happen. It's not that we as a people don't WANT to see a more just world (i believe humans are inherently good) but it seems to always take special figures like Dorthy Day, Shane Claiborne, MLK, or Ghandi, in order to brings these things to like. Are these people prophets for the modern age? I don't know, but if they are, it shows that prophets weren't just necessary in the times of Old Israel, the have relevance and purpose today because like you said, there is something special about her, and she has a courage to fight through things such as the hunger strike most of us at this age would steer clear of, she may disagree but her courage is not that within most of us, she is "different", she has that "fire", and maybe that's why we as a human race needed her, and why she was able to make the kind of impact that she did.
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