Love Is the Measure

[Sapphire Blue]

Love Is the Measure
By Dorothy Day

We confess to being fools and wish that we were more so. In the face of the approaching atom bomb test (and discussion of widespread radioactivity is giving people more and more of an excuse to get away from the philosophy of personalism and the doctrine of free will); in the face of an approaching maritime strike; in the face of bread shortages and housing shortages; in the face of the passing of the draft extension, teenagers included, we face the situation that there is nothing we can do for people except to love them. If the maritime strike goes on there will be no shipping of food or medicine or clothes to Europe or the Far East, so there is nothing to do again but to love. We continue in our 14th year of feeding our brothers and sisters, clothing them and sheltering them, and the more we do it, the more we realize that the most important thing is to love. There are several families with us, destitute families, destitute to an unbelievable extent, and there, too, is nothing to do but to love. What I mean is that there is no chance of rehabilitation, no chance, so far as we see, of changing them; certainly no chance of adjusting them to this abominable world about them, -- and who wants them adjusted, anyway?

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, and 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 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.

Continued @ http://www.salsa.net/peace/conv/hs8weekconv3-1.html


(from 'By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day', Knopf, New York)

[salin]

1. On the highway today I saw a billboard that is common here

"Repent Today..." And I thought - there are those who are Christians because of a fear of Hell ... and those who chose Christianity because of the message of love. I don't think of Hell - I don't really believe it exists except in a metaphorical sense (living in the absense of love?) - but I deeply and spiritually believe in the power of -and difficult challenge to try to live up to the idea of love. Hence that last line in your thread speaks so much to me. Indeed 'enlarge our hearts...' as there is little so difficult as to subjegate ones human emotions of anger, fear, etc and push those aside to try to find love, and rather than just utter the words - to really embrace what that would mean in each circumstance and to try to live from that position. Thanks for posting this.

[Annces]

2. Dorothy Day - an American Original

[MedleyMisty]

3. I'm not religious

Not at all. But I believe in love. Love of everything and everyone and compassion for all is the only thing that can pull us out of this course to death that we're on.

[Sapphire Blue]

5. Welcome to DU, sleebarker!

:hug: :loveya: :hug:

[MoseyWalker]

4. and this post is a treasure

rec

[patrice]

6. Here's someone who could use a little of your love.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x184680

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Hare Krsna! Hare Rama!