Tonight my wife and I watched a documentary about Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, called Don’t Call Me a Saint. I had seen the movie at its premier at the archives at Marquette University a few years ago and purchased a copy. Because of my Catholic Worker association, the writer, director, producer, Claudia Larson sent me two. I gave one to the local Catholic Worker community and reluctantly one to a couple of film makers from Brazil who were doing a film about Dorothy Day. I finally got around to purchasing another one and tonight we watched it.
This time, as I’m just finishing reading the book on the diaries of Dorothy Day, The Duty of Delight, edited by Robert Ellsberg, I saw the video in a new light. Usually one thinks of Dorothy Day with the poor, living in wretched conditions in the city, and how she started a movement, Catholic Worker, to do the works of mercy with “God’s ambassadors” (as the other co-founder of the Catholic Worker, Peter Maurin, called them).
Now watching the movie I see, as in the book, Dorothy’s attraction to nature, be it her beach house on Staten Island, the Catholic Worker farms, or time with her daughter and family in the country. In the video in one of letters to the father of her daughter she brags about how all their grandchildren live in the country and in nature.
Now I see Dorothy drawing strength from her time in nature to face the harsh realities of living with the poor in the city. I can relate to this. In my busy days of doing errands for others, today taking someone to hospital for monthly medications, tomorrow driving someone to visit his mother in a nursing home, or talking with persons, working around the house or writing on the computer, my real sanity seems to come from the time each day I try to make for working outside in the gardens, in nature.
The soil saves the soul from the busyness of the daily routine. Nature refreshes and gives us new life and drive to face another Day.
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