A Magician of Paradise
There is a story told about Dorothy Day that is instructive of her essential spirituality: iit goes something like this... a guest in the New York Catholic Worker began to get increasingly angry and belligerent -- finally, he entered the Kitchen area and began to berate a volunteer Worker. Shortly, he had the Worker in a headlock while still giving full vent to his anger... all the while Dorothy sat behind this scene peeling potatoes... Finally, the guest ran out of both energy and anger and walked away. The still trembling Worker turned in exasperation to Dorothy and asked, "Why didn't you do something?" To which Dorothy calmly replied, "I was doing something. I was praying for you." Suddenly realizing that he was not actually hit or hurt, the Worker proceeded to return to his task...
With the continuing hoop-la about "Saint Dorothy", this story is especially important: does it reveal a level of sanctity that might inspire the rest of us? Or does it instead reveal a magician at work? "Huh?" You ask? Dorothy has certainly been called many things, while alive and ever since, but "magician"? Oh, to be sure, the rather mundane definitions of "magic" and "magician" are of little insight as to the meaning of Dorothy Day. But, according to the "American Heritage Dictionary" sitting right here on my desk -- with dictionary and spell check right on the computer -- has the definition I was thinking of: "A mysterious quality of enchantment." There, that is what I want to say!
Yes, I've read The Long Loneliness, Loaves and Fishes, and Dorothy's other writings through The Catholic Worker and assorted biographies and collections of her writings. She has been variously described as strong-willed, hard-nosed, deeply spiritual but also quite oppressive, from among many opinions: as well as heroic, wise, and kind: a saint, in other words. And I have long referred to her as "Saint of the Gutter Beautiful"... Ah, so now we are getting somewhere...
Why did Dorothy, throughout all of her long years leading the Catholic Worker Movement, so frequently refer to the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky? And why did she so frequently quote Dostoevsky's line: "The world will be saved by beauty"? Why indeed? Here was a writer who excelled in the drama of the human condition: we are contemptible! We are easily corrupted. We are vile: filled with an infinite capacity for violence, hatred, cruelty, rapaciousness, oppression, injustice, and on and on. Our very sad history is not in the least way a story that we have completed! Every day we write the same lines and every day we live the same bitter experiences: killing harming destroying here there and everywhere... We are the ultimate collective manifestation of "ugly"...
And yet, and yet... this is precisely where the "mysterious quality of enchantment" comes in to play! In the midst of -- right under the nose of -- "ugly", there is the beautiful! Oh, I don't mean the flashing nipple or flexing muscle; I don't mean the trinkets of consumerism or the thrill of victory in battlefields or sports stadiums: I mean the "Beauty" of loving: "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love" (Simone Weil) expands for the magician into, "We were created by Beauty, for Beauty, to become Beauty." The enchantment of seeing that which is within and beyond the obviously seen, is in fact or at least, in the "mystic", the secret vocation of the magician, that, and calling it forth: by naming that which is "ugly" as, in truth, beautiful: how else can any one of us explain Dorothy's willingness to live and work in a House of Hospitality for nearly fifty years? Eee-gadz, can you imagine that?
So the homeless alcoholic or drug addict is brother or sister -- or the very Face of Christ! The victim of domestic abuse and her children are the Holy Family. The ranting of a derelict is the Chant of the Divine Names. The trash in the gutter exists on just this side of Revelation -- on the other side, separated by the thinnest of veils, is the Promised Land overflowing with the Milk of Beauty and the Honey of Harmlessness: enchantment: it takes a magician of the spirit to see through the misery of Time, and into the Divine Beauty of Every Good Possibility. It takes a magician of paradise to remember our very divinity and to slowly and steadily remind us of who we really are.
With the continuing hoop-la about "Saint Dorothy", this story is especially important: does it reveal a level of sanctity that might inspire the rest of us? Or does it instead reveal a magician at work? "Huh?" You ask? Dorothy has certainly been called many things, while alive and ever since, but "magician"? Oh, to be sure, the rather mundane definitions of "magic" and "magician" are of little insight as to the meaning of Dorothy Day. But, according to the "American Heritage Dictionary" sitting right here on my desk -- with dictionary and spell check right on the computer -- has the definition I was thinking of: "A mysterious quality of enchantment." There, that is what I want to say!
Yes, I've read The Long Loneliness, Loaves and Fishes, and Dorothy's other writings through The Catholic Worker and assorted biographies and collections of her writings. She has been variously described as strong-willed, hard-nosed, deeply spiritual but also quite oppressive, from among many opinions: as well as heroic, wise, and kind: a saint, in other words. And I have long referred to her as "Saint of the Gutter Beautiful"... Ah, so now we are getting somewhere...
Why did Dorothy, throughout all of her long years leading the Catholic Worker Movement, so frequently refer to the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky? And why did she so frequently quote Dostoevsky's line: "The world will be saved by beauty"? Why indeed? Here was a writer who excelled in the drama of the human condition: we are contemptible! We are easily corrupted. We are vile: filled with an infinite capacity for violence, hatred, cruelty, rapaciousness, oppression, injustice, and on and on. Our very sad history is not in the least way a story that we have completed! Every day we write the same lines and every day we live the same bitter experiences: killing harming destroying here there and everywhere... We are the ultimate collective manifestation of "ugly"...
And yet, and yet... this is precisely where the "mysterious quality of enchantment" comes in to play! In the midst of -- right under the nose of -- "ugly", there is the beautiful! Oh, I don't mean the flashing nipple or flexing muscle; I don't mean the trinkets of consumerism or the thrill of victory in battlefields or sports stadiums: I mean the "Beauty" of loving: "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love" (Simone Weil) expands for the magician into, "We were created by Beauty, for Beauty, to become Beauty." The enchantment of seeing that which is within and beyond the obviously seen, is in fact or at least, in the "mystic", the secret vocation of the magician, that, and calling it forth: by naming that which is "ugly" as, in truth, beautiful: how else can any one of us explain Dorothy's willingness to live and work in a House of Hospitality for nearly fifty years? Eee-gadz, can you imagine that?
So the homeless alcoholic or drug addict is brother or sister -- or the very Face of Christ! The victim of domestic abuse and her children are the Holy Family. The ranting of a derelict is the Chant of the Divine Names. The trash in the gutter exists on just this side of Revelation -- on the other side, separated by the thinnest of veils, is the Promised Land overflowing with the Milk of Beauty and the Honey of Harmlessness: enchantment: it takes a magician of the spirit to see through the misery of Time, and into the Divine Beauty of Every Good Possibility. It takes a magician of paradise to remember our very divinity and to slowly and steadily remind us of who we really are.
