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Ellsberg reduced Day's original diaries to less than half by
judiciously omitting quotations from books, retreats, and other
flotsam of daily life. It's still a long book—654 pages—but it's worth
a slow and thoughtful reading to catch the nuances of a great woman's
journey to God through life in the body. As one reads further, a sense
of prayer at all times and in all circumstances becomes a paramount
impression. As Ellsberg writes in the book's introduction, the diaries
give us a "unique window ... on the witness of a woman for whom in the
end, everything was a form of prayer."
Day rarely commented on the political events of the day—even the
sometimes momentous changes that involved the Catholic Worker—and then
never at length. To fill in these gaps, Ellsberg provides a chronology
and an introduction to the book's six parts, which are divided
according to decade. He also contextualizes the thousands of entries
with unobtrusive footnotes, and by occasionally inserting a selection
from her published writing.
He includes a concise history of Day's pre-conversion years, her
meeting with Peter Maurin—cofounder of the Catholic Worker—and the
publication of the first issue of the newspaper on May Day, 1933. The
introduction also contains an overview of the diaries' main
themes—daily life at the Worker; Day's travels; her time with Tamar
and her many grandchildren; her ongoing relationship with Tamar's
father; her skirmishes with the Roman Catholic hierarchy; and, most
consistently, her spiritual life, with its themes of prayer, penance,
and an incarnational love of the natural world.
As Ellsberg points out, "These diaries confirm Thomas Merton's
assertion that sanctity is a matter of being more fully human: 'This
implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for
understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for
appreciation of the good and beautiful things of life.'" We see all
this in The Duty of Delight. The title, from John Ruskin, was
suggested by Day herself; she thought of using it for a final memoir.
PARTICULAR SEGMENTS FROM the diaries delighted, surprised, and challenged me:
On prayer. Prayer and reading occupied a good part of her crowded day,
and I was amazed at how much time alone she was able to find, even
when surrounded by her clamoring community. She often woke up
discouraged and prayed herself into acceptance and fortitude,
reminding herself of the duty of delight. As she aged, Day wrote that
she'd wake to "a half-dead condition, a groaning in every bone, a
lifelessnesss ... a sense of 'quiet terror,' which hangs over us all.
... I turn desperately to prayer. ... And I am saved. This
consciousness of salvation comes to me afresh each day."
On poverty. On Aug. 24, 1950, as the Catholic Workers prepare for yet
another move, she writes: "We are going to lose much of our appearance
of poverty in moving into our new quarters with its larger rooms,
baths, hot water, heat, etc. We must all the more cultivate the
austerity, the detachment, the self-discipline, the interior poverty
we so lack." Yet she sees where her wealth lies: "We have so much, we
are so rich in interests, books, music, friends, ideas. God gives us
such lights that it is a temptation to rest in them."
On capitalism. In late 1948, Day's entry begins with a defense of
private property and ends by describing predatory capitalism: "The
present vast possessions of the Robber Barons need to be overthrown,
cast down, appropriated, decentralized, distributed. ... The power of
the great corporations ... will all be overthrown and that is
something to be looked forward to." Truly, Day was a great American
radical. I see little evidence in the diaries that she read the
European theorists who contributed to Maurin's grand synthesis,
although she was formed by his ideas.
On war. So much sounds as if it were written yesterday. In June 1937,
Day wrote, "Impossible to get real truth in [news]papers." In 1962,
she wrote of the complicity of the First World in children starving in
the Congo: "But woe to us who caused these tears. We white ones." In
May 1966: "How many countries do we arm, to keep the peace, as they
say."
On love. My favorite entry, truly a delight: "I have fallen in love
many a time in the fall of the year. ... [W]hen body and soul are
revived, and in the keen clear air of autumn after a hot exhausting
summer, I felt new strength to see, to 'know' clearly, and to love, to
look upon my neighbor and to love. Almost to be taken out of myself. I
do not mean being in love with a particular person. I mean that
quality of in-loveness ... a sense of the beauty of one particular
human being, or even one aspect of life. It may be an intuition of
immortality, of the glory of God, of [God's] presence in the world.
... It is tied up in some way also with the sense of hope and an
understanding of hope. ... If we did not have this hope, this joy,
this love, how could we help others? How could we have the strength to
hold on to them?"
Just two years before she died, Day wrote, "I like a good long book to
live with for a few weeks." In The Duty of Delight, she—and
Ellsberg—have given us just such a book, one to treasure, to reread,
to quote. I marvel at her constant prayer, gasp at the suffering—both
physical and emotional—and most of all rejoice in hearing the intimate
voice of the Dorothy Day that still means so much to so many of us.
Rosalie G. Riegle is the author of Voices from the Catholic Worker
(Temple University Press) and Dorothy Day: Portraits by Those Who
Knew Her (Orbis).
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