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A favorite story of #DorothyDay, who died Nov 29 1980. When she was a child in Chicago, Dorothy went to visit her friend Katheryn Barrett in a neighboring tenement apt. Bursting into the kitchen she found Katheryn’s mother kneeling on the floor saying her prayers. 
Mrs Barrett said Katheryn was out and then proceeded with her prayers. Day writes, “I felt a warm burst of love toward Mrs. Barrett that I have never forgotten, a feeling of gratitude and happiness that still warms my heart when I remember her. ...
“She had God, and there was beauty and joy in her life.” Day’s own later life was marked by drama, but the memory of this little scene never left her. “There were moments when, in the midst of misery and class strife, life was shot through with glory. ...
At yesterday’s #DorothyDay symposium at Maryknoll both her granddaughter Kate and I spoke about the lessons we had learned from her. In my case those lessons began when I went to work with her when I was 19. Here was my list:
1. From Dostoevsky: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” Dorothy was not sentimental—she knew the sights and smells of life among “the insulted and injured. It was exhausting and unrelenting.
2. And yet you had to learn to see beneath the surface of things. There is beauty everywhere, a dimension of truth, goodness. Dorothy could recognize that—in sunlight, on the waves on the bay, in a tree, in an act of kindness. Her underlying attitude was gratitude.
