Dorothy Day - The World Will Be Saved by Beauty - An Intimate Portrait of my Grandmother by Kate Hennessy

I read this book because my brother Joel mentioned he had read it, and I was curious about Dorothy Day. I'd heard of her but did not really know who she was or what she did, other than she'd helped the poor with some kind of house for them.

Kate Hennessy, the author, and as you can see by the subtitle, granddaughter of Dorothy, wrote the book with her unique perspective of having grown up with Dorothy Day as her "granny" and Dorothy's daughter Tamar her mom.

The book explores the relationship and lives of both these remarkable women. They were very different. Dorothy Day loved to talk and she participated fully in the world. She was arrested several times for participating in walks and marches. She gave and gave and gave -- her time and her money and her care. Tamar, her daughter, had what I would call a rather rough childhood. Dorothy loved her, but Tamar was in and out of schools and also lived in various homes at different times, as Dorothy went on speaking tours. Day was sometimes quite critical of Tamar. And Tamar was resentful that her mother did not encourage or help her to get a degree. Day felt that degrees were "bunk," and even though she encouraged others to pursue education, she did not encourage Tamar in that way.

Tamar had some resentment towards Day but a huge, steady love. Tamar married early and had seven children. Day stayed with Tamar and her family for many long visits, becoming a vital part of the children's growing up, as well as of Tamar's life.

I found this book engaging. When I was a kid and my mom would take us to the library, as I chose books I would often open several spots and see if the book had lots of quote marks -- conversations. It was a good sign if it did that it would be interesting. This book has lots of conversations. It's not just narration of what happened, but a story of the lives of Dorothy, Tamar, and Kate, the author, herself.

Day started the Catholic Worker, a newspaper. She reported on strikes, lynchings, the life of sharecroppers, Hitler's persecution of the Jews, and more. "She wanted a paper not only for blacks and whites but written by both, to impress on her readers that the paper was for all workers."

The first house, in New York, inspired many more. It was a home for people who were on the fringes - homeless, poor, sometimes mentally ill. The house (this and its other iterations throughout the years) was called the Catholic Worker, like the paper, and it was a kind of by-product of the paper. Once people started reading the Catholic Worker, people who were inspired by her ideas came and took on various jobs for the paper. Others in need showed up and Day could not not help them. The houses were ramshackle and often beyond poor - commonly infested with rats and bedbugs. But it was a community. Tamar said she grew up in the Worker. Although her life was hard, she said, "It was the world that taught me that people weren't always so kind and hospitable. Growing up at the Worker, I thought everyone was good and kind."

One of the things that kept coming to my mind while I was reading this book was the fact that there is a movement to make Dorothy Day a saint. Having grown up a pastor's daughter, I knew that people called by God were truly "ordinary" people like me (although I did think of my dad as rather saintly, too). This book made that clear again. Dorothy Day made mistakes, she lived a rather rough and ready life, her daughter both loved and resented her, she was not some kind of superhuman saint, in the way the stories of saints can sometimes make you feel they were. Recently, having learned of MotherTeresa's struggles of faith, it brought that fact home again. The saints are people. I guess it is their dedication to God's work that makes them saints.

As I wrote this, I thought of the parallel truth of Jesus as fully human and fully God. Those statements can't really be facts in the way we think of facts. Yet they are true. One of the things that makes Jesus the central figure in my life, my Savior, is the fact that he was human. I can turn to him with anything and he understands, because he was human, too. Yet, he must be God, too.

For Day, her faith was vital. She went to mass every day. "The church was the community, she felt, and Mass became a time to stop and take note of the sunlight and of her fellow humans, to take a breath and feel God touching the heart and the mind. In such moments of peace and stillness, all her fears and questions would fall away, the path would rise up to meet her, and the calling would feel so clear it was as if it had all been taken out of her hands."

Dorothy Day came to the end of her life surrounded by her family and friends. She spent some years in a simple cottage by the beach, which she loved. Her final days were in an apartment in the city. Throughout her last days, she still tried to answer correspondence but was often confused. She told stories to her loved ones and read.

The subtitle of the book is "The World Will be Saved by Beauty," a quote from Dostoevsky's book, The Idiot, that Day often quoted. I purchased the book but have not read it yet. I've read some online articles about the quote and the book. I feel like there's a lot to these words, and I need to think, read, and meditate on them. I like this quote from one article, by Michael D. O'Brien:

The beauty that will save the world is the love of God. This love is both human and supernatural in character, but it germinates, flowers, and comes to fruition only in a crucified heart. Only the heart united with Christ on the Cross is able to love another as himself, and as God loves him. Only such a heart can pass through the narrow gate of the Cross and live in the light of Resurrection. The good news is that this resurrection begins here and now.

Some of what I read reminds me of what people say of Flannery O'Connor, who is a greatly revered writer with a strong faith. In her stories, there is a seemingly broken person (like the "idiot" in Dostoevsky) who is actually like Christ. In turn, this reminds me of the Biblical verse that says, "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength." (I Corinthians 1:25). Maybe these all get at what Dorothy Day was saying when she quoted, "The world will be saved by beauty."