Love is the Salty Measure

Dorothy Day wrote this in 1946, under the title, “Love is the Measure”:

We confess to being fools
and wish that we were more so…

What we would like to do
is change the world — make it
a little simpler for people
to feed, clothe and shelter themselves
as God intended them to do.

And to a certain extent,
by fighting for better conditions,
by crying out unceasingly
for the rights of the workers,
of the poor, of the destitute —
the rights of the “worthy”
and the “unworthy” poor
in other words, we can
to a certain extent
change the world.

We can work for the oasis,
the little cell of joy
and peace in a harried world.

We can throw our pebble
in the pond and be confident
that its ever widening circle
will reach around the world.

We can give away an onion.

We repeat, there is nothing
that we can do but love,
and dear God —
please enlarge our hearts

to love each other,
to love our neighbor,
to love our enemy
as well as our friend.

+ Dorothy Day

November 8 is the birthday of American activist and writer Dorothy Day, born in 1897. After a time as a radical journalist and activist in New York City, she converted to Catholicism and, along with the French Catholic activist Peter Maurin, began a publication called The Catholic Worker devoted to issues of justice, poverty, and human rights. The first issue, in 1933, cost one penny — and it still does today. In that inaugural edition, Day wrote that the paper was “For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight. For those who are huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain. For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work.” The discussions provoked by The Catholic Worker led to the creation of “houses of hospitality” in New York City and across the country, where people without homes, especially women, could seek shelter, companionship, and assistance.

Her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, published in 1952, is a modern classic. She said, “My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the Psalms.”