Dorothy Day: Living the Beatitudes for All the People

Yesterday was the great Dorothy Day's birthday.

I wonder what she would be thinking of the state of the U.S. today.

Because many of you won't know who Day was -- she was born in NYC in 1897, two years before my own grandmothers -- she was a journalist and Catholic reformer who co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper and worker movement.

This movement aimed to unite workers and intellectuals in shared activities from farming to education, as well as starting "houses of hospitality" for the urban poor.

She is up for sainthood and has my vote because of her staunch support for the Catholic "preferential option for the poor" social teaching which prioritizes the needs of the most vulnerable in ethical and political decision making.

During her lifetime, Day protested the Vietnam War and was arrested in 1973 in California while demonstrating support for the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez.

This country's "christian" culture, largely founded on Calvinist Protestantism, could probably use an injection of thinking and action like that of Day's, which is grounded more in the Beatitudes than in the Commandments.

Today's U.S. culture and economy has continued to evolve through the "robber barons" of the early 20th century (Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, etc.) to the tech oligarchs of today (Musk, Bezos, Thiel et. al.).

In channeling this Dorothy, I think we will not be well as a nation until we give up our single-minded focus on the accrual of personal wealth and happiness and focus more on the common good -- in our daily choices, actions, and public policies.

"Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matthew 25:40)

A necessary saint for our times. Remembering Dorothy Day on her birthday.

Minority Report

The dogs appeared to be fairly alarmed Tuesday evening, no doubt from our energy, and uncharacteristically huddled up together...

I am no stranger to feeling in the minority but this week is a good reminder to us all that it is not a good feeling and therefore one no one should have.

As I arrived home from work yesterday afternoon, two sheriff's deputies SUV's, blue lights and sirens screaming, rocketed down the island past our house. Shortly thereafter, a pickup truck came out of nowhere up to my bumper then raced past, cutting aggressively close to my vehicle.

These are both ordinary events in our rural world. But I am jumpy. It's not grief I feel as much as dread: the feeling you have in waking from sleep that something bad has happened and your life is forever changed.

I went through years of physical harassment and discrimination in my youth for being a queer woman, and have been grateful for the progress we've made that made such experiences not gone but more rare as I've grown older.

Baby dyke at 14 in 1975, in the chair where I 
devoured Jill Johnston's Lesbian Nation.

Yet I can feel that again: that uneasy, insecure sense one has when one is forced to recognize their minority status. The feeling, and oppression, our citizens of color as well as women and queer people have always had and continue to confront. The privileges of my education and skin color have granted me a bit of a pass for the past couple of decades, for which I am grateful.

None of us should ever feel threatened by being in the minority -- including those who "took back" the country with this week's election.

In many ways, it is a "taking back:" a grab for power made ugly by language and action by people who our culture has made to feel insecure -- predominantly white men but others who hope to rise to the top, too. The white European culture on which this continent was colonized as a nation is one of hierarchy, material wealth, and yes, violent extremism. In this way, this election is a "going back" to the rot at the root for which we as a nation, unlike Germany or South Africa, has never gone through truth and reconciliation.

No one should be made to feel less than others, or threatened for who they are by the power of a majority. That's not the point of truth and reconciliation. It's not about blame. It's about mutual, shared understandings.

We don't need power over each other for everyone to have enough if some don't grab more than their share. But turning around this deep, deep culture -- based on the patriarchal accrual of wealth and power at the expense of others -- is proving difficult to evolve.

It is seductive. We all buy into it. We participate.

To think of "education" as some sort of elitism is a tragic component of all of this, yet we have created this problem, too, by putting education financially out of the reach of too many. We all have helped to create this "elite" by not fighting hard enough to ensure everyone has what they need to participate and to succeed.

Only 37.7% of U.S. citizens has a college education. Yet in 2022, the median earnings for those with a bachelor's degree were a shocking 86% higher than those with a high school diploma, and college degrees have been a de facto requirement for those holding public office and making the policies that impact us all.

So I've been part of a minority all along -- just the one holding power.

We need to listen to those who voted to return Trump to office, and seriously consider their reasons without dismissing anyone.

We can do better.

And as Kamala said so beautifully in her concession speech yesterday afternoon at Howard University: the fight for equity and justice for all continues. It's never been a short fight. It's easy to be exhausted by chaos and fear and we need to re-think, re-create, re-gather for the long haul. We all have accountability, we all have responsibility, we all have a part to play, now and every day.

If you missed Kamala's speech, delivered at Howard University because the young people are those who need our greatest concern, you can listen here: https://youtu.be/d9FVB6-7BN0?si=fOHO5Ic1TtvqJQyl

#newblogpost

#seekequity

#EndThePatriarchy

Things Were Not Better Then, Get Out and Vote

From the family archives: me in yellow, my baby brother (we are both adopted), and my two older cousins (with the oldest devil on his knees to make for not too much height discrepancy!) at this time of year in the mid-1960's.

We tend to romanticize our childhoods. The "things were better then" mode of believing.

I became an American Studies major because of my love for what I believed was the promise offered by this country, a belief I held in spite of many political arguments with my Dad, 5+ political assassinations, numerous racial killings, Wounded Knee, Kent State, no Title IX or other equal rights and protections for women and gay people, and one presidential resignation due to criminal activity all occurring during my childhood.

I have always believed in the as-yet unfulfilled promise of a Constitution which might hold many diverse immigrants together under a rule of law, seeking the most benefit for the most people; a promise that one day might offer reparations to the indigenous people from whom our colonizing ancestors stole this land and the African people they enslaved for profit.

I fell in love with FDR and Eleanor because through their belief in investing in people through the common good of government they pulled this nation from the worst economic depression ever, one suffered through by my teen parents and grandparents, a depression created by those who would seek to inflate profits at the expense of others.

Things weren't "better then" no matter how securely some of us were lucky to be held by our families and our privilege.

We have had to struggle for women and people of all colors to be respected and to have equal rights -- and we are still in the middle of those struggles, as this year's election makes all too clear.

We have had to struggle to counter the violence on which the country was founded, a struggle that continues today in the form of regulations to reduce gun violence.

We have had to struggle to ensure everyone has food on their plate, a secure place to live, and equal access to education, struggles that continue to exist today with our public education structures under fire and corporate profiteering. That we have allowed "real estate" to become a bank for too many -- as if any of us can own this planet -- hurting those with the least among us.

Through it all, I am still that American Studies scholar and lover of this nation. But now we are again afflicted by something that has haunted our entire history -- a type of hateful divisiveness and lust for unchecked power that would we have put to bed generations ago.

You can call it human nature. I like to be more precise, and call it white patriarchal colonialist culture, referencing those who are still trying to keep power and riches to themselves at any cost, spewing hate at anyone not meeting their standards for "who is an american."

We are all Americans, and we are all going to vote.

Please do not say you love me and then vote for people who will remove my rights as a woman or a gay person. Please do not say you support my work and then wonder if a woman is strong enough to be our President.

Please vote for the people who want to welcome those in need in ways that make sense for our communities; for those who want to end, not instigate, violence; for those who believe in government by, for, and of the people; for those who show love and respect for all.

These principles are my American heritage, one of which I remain proud.

And because I #votemyvalues, next week I will be voting for the first woman for President of the U.S.

How about you?

The Depressions of Elections

Every presidential election year I fall into the same hole.

What depresses me is not that an offensive, incompetent man has chosen to run for the highest and most important position in our democracy.

They've been doing that for decades and until we tell them to stop, at the ballot box, they will continue.

It's that almost 50% of the public are willing to support such men, their words, and their behaviors.

Help me out here, friends.

Where have we failed as a country so that, for so many, ethical behavior -- right speech and right action, words and actions that show generosity, empathy, and compassion for others -- no longer matters?

As a people, instead of rising toward an ever more inclusive and caring society that spreads prosperity for all, we degrade ourselves and our children.

As a culture, mainstream white america seems to insist on the cheap. We insist cost is all that matters. We pursue money over quality of life. We reduce life to money. In our myopic focus, we are willing to sacrifice each other and the planet to pursue what we feel entitled to. We do not hold life, including the food we eat, sacred. We will eat whatever cheap food to which our bodies have become addicted, no matter how bad it might be for us, no matter how the creation of this fake food itself is killing our planet.

We are struggling with addictions we do not name and for which we do not care. And still, there remain those who are food insecure.

Fewer and fewer of us go to church to lift ourselves above the daily grind, to help us practice putting others before ourselves. And even for some who do go to church, the "prosperity gospel" encourages those people to put themselves and financial gain above others. Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan recently sat beside candidate Trump and laughed while he used profanity to demean others. WTF.

Our families have been broken -- not by women's insistence on working and having our own lives, but on men's inability to handle that and on their subsequent absence. Fact: not enough men show up for their children. This is not a single mother problem. It is an absent men problem.

Our schools can't tell the difference between separation of church and state and values-based education. Teachers are like salmon swimming upstream to their deaths from exhaustion, fighting a battle no one of them individually can win.

Our problems in this country are systemic, and cultural. They are deeply rooted in this nation's violent history and the cultures of our progenitors. When we solve our problems, we do it together, not as individuals.

At the end of the day, how can we convince those who are so afraid -- afraid they will lose the little power they have, afraid of those who do not look like them or speak their language, afraid of what real education might bring to the lives of their children and to the world they will then create, afraid of our own accountability for destruction of the planet -- that if we choose, we have an abundance in which we can hold each other, without exceptions, with tenderness, care, protection?

I am and will always vote for those who know that politics, and good government, are about setting models for behavior. The polis is and always has been a common area in the middle where we come together from our different perspectives to jointly solve our problems. And yes, we are all flawed. We all make mistakes. How we handle those mistakes is a big part of leadership.

We can never each get all that we individually want and we need to stop trying because it is those attempts -- based on a belief each of us is deserving to have life exactly as WE want it -- that are killing us, and our planet.

Leadership is a sacred trust: stop defaming it. Stop cheapening it.

Most of all, stop supporting those who do.

End of October rant. Thank you to those who listened!

The Universe's Light is Always Moving

There are many times the universe sheds light on important matters in unexpected ways.

Our bodies are meant to move, my friend Meg Dellenbaugh, a bodywork and movement therapist, always told me. They are machines geared toward movement, with joints and ligaments the pistons and gears and the heart and lung the engine.

They are not meant to sit in front of desks and screens day and night.

Yet this is the culture we built. And then all of us wonder why we are literally "sick and tired."

At the "cancer cathedral" this week for my partner's penultimate treatment, talking to the doc about fatigue.

She repeated something she has said several times: in order to have energy, you need to fill up the tank. And the way you fill up the tank is to move. It is to condition your body. While this also expends energy, it fills up the tank in a way that is absolutely required.

And so it's a Catch-22, my friends: when in pain - move. When tired - move. This is when it is both most difficult and most necessary.

I think, in the way we have built our culture, that most of us need to be re-conditioned! This is just one of the many reasons why our fishermen do not want to give up their way of life. They move all day, living in their bodies on the water. Is it also destructive of these same bodies? It can be. We wear out. But what the hell are we saving ourselves for?

I am so lucky for the dogs, for long walks every day, for a childhood of sports that taught me to love gyms and bikes and movement.

I hope you are, too. Go out and wear your body out today. Use your body up. That's what it's here for.

#bodymechanics
#movementismedicine
#reconditioning