‘The Long Loneliness’: A Search for Faith and Justice
A review of ‘The Long Loneliness’, by Dorothy Day; Harper & Brothers, 1952.
It is a cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words; but some pictures really do say a great deal about their subject. The photo above shows Dorothy Day, at the age of 76, about to be arrested for supporting Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers at a protest in California. She was arrested many times in a life marked by energetic activism for the causes in which she believed. In September 2015, Pope Francis spoke of her along with Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Thomas Merton, saying ‘Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.’ The Long Loneliness is her spiritual autobiography.
Day was born in 1897 in New York. She had four siblings. Her parents were nominal Christians, but rarely went to church. When her father, a sportswriter, took a job at a San Francisco newspaper, the family moved to Oakland, California; but the 1906 earthquake struck soon after, destroying the newspaper and leaving the family to rely on strangers. Their kindness stayed with Day and taught her not only the strength of Christian community but that human dignity could endure through devastation.
The 1906 earthquake struck soon after, destroying the newspaper and leaving the family to rely on strangers.
Day was interested in religious ideas even as a child. She read the Bible; began to go to church at 10; studied the catechism; and was baptised and confirmed in 1911, when she was 14. But she read widely: Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Huxley. She was drawn to stories of injustice. The family’s move to Chicago showed her the reality of urban poverty, and her sensitivity to inequality grew. She became restless. Indeed she came to question the sincerity of Christian churchgoers, who did not seem to practice what they preached:
Children look at things very directly and simply. I did not see anyone taking off his coat and giving it to the poor. I didn’t see anyone having a banquet and calling in the lame, the halt and the blind. And those who were doing it, like the Salvation Army, did not appeal to me. I wanted, though I did not know it then, a synthesis. I wanted life and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted it for others too. I did not want just the few, the missionary-minded people like the Salvation Army, to be kind to the poor, as the poor. I wanted everyone to be kind. I wanted every home to be open to the lame, the halt and the blind, the way it had been after the San Francisco earthquake. Only then did people really live, really love their brothers. In such love was the abundant life and I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.
The family’s move to Chicago showed her the reality of urban poverty.
She finds expression for her feelings in politics. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she joins leftist circles, reads anarchist and socialist writing, and becomes disenchanted with tradition. She drops out, keen to have a real, practical impact on the world, and goes back to her hometown of New York City. And it is here that she throws herself into the heady bohemian world of activism in Greenwich Village. She works for The Call and The Masses, covering strikes, protests and the emerging suffrage movement. She comes into contact with struggling workers and the poor, which sharpens her sense of injustice and inspires her to do more. She is moved by the courage of those fighting for change; but she soon grows disillusioned with the infighting and self-centredness of the activists she meets.
Her personal life is chaotic. She falls in love with Lionel Moise, a man who is charismatic but unreliable, and gets pregnant. Her account of her decision to abort the child, a decision she regretted deeply for the rest of her life, will break your heart. In the aftermath she felt a profound emotional and spiritual emptiness. ‘I had no faith to sustain me,’ she writes. The experience changed her. Even as she led a rebellious, unconventional life, she was now searching for something more meaningful.
Her account of her decision to abort the child will break your heart.
Day goes from job to job, relationship to relationship, restless and yearning for purpose. She falls in love again, with a man called Foster Batterham, and gets pregnant. During the pregnancy, she feels God drawing closer. She finds His presence undeniable. She feels his ‘strong arms’ around her, approaching a ‘union with Him who is all in all.’ She reflects on the tension between her radical past and her growing faith. The birth of her daughter, Tamar, completes her conversion. But Batterham, a staunch atheist is dismayed. Forced to chose between him and the Church, she chooses the latter. It is painful: she has doubts. She expects rejection by her political peers.
In the final section, Day co-founds the Catholic Worker movement with Peter Maurin, bringing about the synthesis for which she has always hoped. Anarchist in outlook, it is a group of independent communities whose aim is to ‘live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.’ It shows hospitality to those on the fringes of society. Here Day’s narrative here is joyful and evocative. There are crowded soup kitchens and long days at the Catholic Worker newspaper. Day must endure Maurin’s maddening idealism. But her faith sustains her, sustains her through the hardships of poverty and fatigue. We are asked to consider whether charity of this kind is even possible to keep up over time without faith.
Here Day’s narrative here is joyful and evocative. There are crowded soup kitchens and long days at the Catholic Worker newspaper.
Day’s writing is striking in its simplicity. We perceive humility, warmth, sincerity. She draws readers into her world but never succumbs to self-pity or moralising. Citations from Scripture and world literature enrich her narrative, but she is never showy. Like Dante’s pilgrim, she describes entering the Inferno, climbing the mountain of Purgatorio and finding herself in the glittering cosmos of Paradiso, moved by faith, sustained by faith, living in Oakeshott’s ‘contemplative mode’ as one whose life has been lifted from the realm of prose to that of poetry.
The Long Loneliness is a book about love: love of God, love of one’s neighbour, and the hard work love demands. What makes Day so laudable and compelling is that she was a woman both of action and ideas. She would not content herself with the study or contemplation of injustice. She acted. She wanted to set things right. That applied equally to attacking the Church when its teachings outraged her conscience as it did to protesting justice or serving the poor. She rightly saw her loneliness not as a mere state, but as reflecting a yearning for purpose and meaning, that is, a yearning for the God who is love. ‘We have all known the long loneliness,’ she writes; ‘and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.’
