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Advent Is A Time Of Waiting, Of Expectation, Of Silence. Waiting For Our Lord To Be Born. A Pregnant Woman Is So Happy, So Content. She Lives In Such A Garment Of Silence, And It Is As Though She Were Listening To Hear The Stir Of Life Within Her. One Always Hears That Stirring Compared To The Rustling Of A Bird In The Hand. But The Intentness Which Which One Awaits Such Stirring Is Like Nothing So Much As A Blanket Of Silence.

-Dorothy Day

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Advent Is A Time

Dorothy Day

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Advent Is A Time Of Waiting, Of Expectation, Of Silence. Waiting For Our Lord To Be Born. A Pregnant Woman Is So Happy, So Content. She Lives In Such A Garment Of Silence, And It Is As Though She Were Listening To Hear The Stir Of Life Within Her. One Always Hears That Stirring Compared To The Rustling Of A Bird In The Hand. But The Intentness Which Which One Awaits Such Stirring Is Like Nothing So Much As A Blanket Of Silence.

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We Plant Seeds That Will Flower As Results In Our Lives, So Best To Remove The Weeds Of Anger, Avarice, Envy And Doubt, That Peace And Abundance May Manifest For All.

The Only Answer In This Life, To The Loneliness We Are All Bound To Feel, Is Community.

One Of The Greatest Evils Of The Day Among Those Outside Of Prison Is Their Sense Of Futility. Young People Say, What Is The Sense Of Our Small Effort? They Cannot See That We Must Lay One Brick At A Time, Take One Step At A Time; We Can Be Responsible Only For The One Action Of The Present Moment.

We're Living In An Age Of Genocide. ...and We Do Believe That There Is Not Only The Genocide Of War, And The Genocide That Took Place With The Extermination Of The Jews, But The Whole Program....of Birth Control And Abortion Is Another Form Of Genocide.... [t]hey Claim The Poor Are Bringing Forth Tremendous Numbers Of Children And So The Solution Is To Kill Them Off.

Tradition! We Scarcely Know The Word Anymore. We Are Afraid To Be Either Proud Of Our Ancestors Or Ashamed Of Them. We Scorn Nobility In Name And In Fact. We Cling To A Bourgeois Mediocrity Which Would Make It Appear We Are All Americans, Made In The Image And Likeness Of George Washington.

Don't Worry About Being Effective. Just Concentrate On Being Faithful To The Truth.

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Working Together

Where Were The Saints To Try To Change The Social Order, Not Just To Minister To The Slaves, But To Do Away With Slavery?

Man Is Not Meant To Live Alone.

An Act Of Love, A Voluntary Taking On Oneself Of Some Of The Pain Of The World, Increases The Courage And Love And Hope Of All.

To Love With Understanding And Without Understanding. To Love Blindly, And To Folly. To See Only What Is Loveable. To Think Only Of These Things. To See The Best In Everyone Around, Their Virtues Rather Than Their Faults. To See Christ In Them!

Two Years Ago, I Was Saying As I Planted Seeds In The Garden, "i Must Believe In These Seeds, That They Fall Into The Earth And Grow Into Flowers And Radishes And Beans." It Is A Miracle To Me Because I Do Not Understand It. The Very Fact That They Use Glib Technical Phrases Does Not Make It Any Less A Miracle, And A Miracle We All Accept. Then Why Not Accept God's Miracles?

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The Biggest Mistake Sometimes Is To Play Things Very Safe In This Life And End Up Being Moral Failures.

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The Legal Battle Against Segregation Is Won, But The Community Battle Goes On.

We Must Always Aim For The Impossible; If We Lower Our Goal, We Also Diminish Our Effort.

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The Best Thing To Do With The Best Things In Life Is To Give Them Up.

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One Of The Disconcerting Facts About The Spiritual Life Is That God Takes You At Your Word.

Just As The Birds Of The Air Are Fed, We'll Continue To Be Fed.

What Else Do We All Want, Each One Of Us, Except To Love And Be Loved, In Our Families, In Our Work, In All Our Relationships?

Our Relationship

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There's Enough Hate In The World. I Command You To Love. And You Have To Make An Effort.

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Recording Happiness Made It Last Longer, We Felt, And Recording Sorrow Dramatized It And Took Away Its Bitterness; And Often We Settled Some Problem Which Beset Us Even While We Wrote About It.

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Whatever I Had Read As A Child About The Saints Had Thrilled Me. I Could See The Nobility Of Giving One's Life For The Sick, The Maimed, The Leper. But There Was Another Question In My Mind. Why Was So Much Done In Remedying The Evil Instead Of Avoiding It In The First Place? Where Were The Saints To Try To Change The Social Order, Not Just To Minister To The Slaves, But To Do Away With Slavery?

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People, Wherever They Are, Can Make A Community.

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When They Call You A Saint, It Means Basically That You Are Not To Be Taken Seriously.

"how Can You See Christ In People?" And We Only Say: It Is An Act Of Faith, Constantly Repeated. It Is An Act Of Love, Resulting From An Act Of Faith. It Is An Act Of Hope, That We Can Awaken These Same Acts In Their Hearts, Too, With The Help Of God.

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Those Who Cannot See Christ In The Poor Are Atheists Indeed.

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The Older I Get, The More I Meet People, The More Convinced I Am That We Must Only Work On Ourselves, To Grow In Grace. The Only Thing We Can Do About People Is To Love Them.

It's Godlike To Love Man - Even In His Sin - Merely Because He's Man.

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If You Feed The Poor, You're A Saint. If You Ask Why They're Poor, You're A Communist.

To Try To Stop War By Placing Before Men's Eyes The Terrible Suffering Involved Will Never Succeed, Because Men Are Willing (in Their Thoughts And Imaginations At Least) To Face Any Kind Of Suffering When Motivated By Noble Aims Like The Vague And Tremendous Concept Of Freedom ... Or, In Their Humility (or Sloth - Who Knows?) Men Are Quite Willing To Leave Decisions To Others 'who Know More About It Than We Do.

When People Are Standing Up For Our Present Rotten System, They Are Being Worse Than Communists, It Seems To Me.

You See I'm Such A Fool That I'm Never Afraid Of Appearing Foolish.

We Believe In Loving Our Brothers Regardless Of Race, Color Or Creed And We Believe In Showing This Love By Working For Better Conditions Immediately And The Ultimate Owning By The Workers Of Their Means Of Production.

When You Love People, You See All The Good In Them, All The Christ In Them. God Sees Christ, His Son, In Us And Loves Us. And So We Should See Christ In Others, And Nothing Else, And Love Them. There Can Never Be Enough Of It. There Can Never Be Enough Thinking About It.

Too Much Praise Makes You Feel You Must Be Doing Something Terribly Wrong.

The Greatest Challenge Of The Day Is: How To Bring About A Revolution Of The Heart, A Revolution Which Has To Start With Each One Of Us. When We Begin To Take The Lowest Places, To Wash The Feet Of Others, To Love Our Brothers With That Burning Love, That Passion Which Led To The Cross, Then We Can Truly Say, 'now I Have Begun'.

Dear God, Please Enlarge Our Hearts To Love Each Other, To Love Our Neighbor, To Love Our Enemy As Well As Our Friend.

Freedom Has Its Roots In Religion.

The Gospel Takes Away Our Right Forever, To Discriminate Between The Deserving And The Undeserving Poor.

Knitting Is Very Conducive To Thought. It Is Nice To Knit A While, Put Down The Needles, Write A While, Then Take Up The Sock Again.

If You Are Going To Try And Change Things, You Had Better Have Your Wits About You.

True Love Is Delicate And Kind, Full Of Gentle Perception And Understanding, Full Of Beauty And Grace, Full Of Joy Unutterable. There Should Be Some Flavor Of This In All Our Love For Others. We Are All One. We Are One Flesh In The Mystical Body As Man And Woman Are Said To Be One Flesh In Marriage. With Such A Love One Would See All Things New; We Would Begin To See People As They Really Are, As God Sees Them.

If I Have Achieved Anything In My Life, It Is Because I Have Not Been Embarrassed To Talk About God.

We Must Talk About Poverty, Because People Insulated By Their Own Comfort Lose Sight Of It.

No One Has A Right To Sit Down And Feel Hopeless. There's Too Much Work To Do.

What I Want To Bring Out Is How A Pebble Cast Into A Pond Causes Ripples That Spread In All Directions. And Each One Of Our Thoughts, Words And Deeds Is Like That.

If You Have Two Coats, One Of Them Belongs To The Poor.

No Matter How Corrupt The Church May Become, It Carries Within It The Seeds Of Its Own Regeneration.

The Work Is More Important Than The Talking And The Writing About The Work.

We Are The Nation The Most Powerful, The Most Armed And We Are Supplying Arms And Money To The Rest Of The World Where We Are Not Ourselves Fighting. We Are Eating While There Is Famine In The World.

We Have All Known The Long Loneliness, And We Have Found That The Answer Is Community.

Community Living

The Idea That When The Health Of One Member Suffers, The Health Of The Whole Body Is Lowered Is A Teaching Of St Paul Which Is Timeless.

There Is Something So Horrifying And So Sad When People Are Living Alone. That Is Why The Old And Lonely Come To Us.

I Think One Of The Things We Must Constantly Keep In Mind Is, 'if Anybody Hits You On One Cheek, Turn The Other.'

Be Close Enough To People So That You Are Indifferent To The Material. And Also Have Faith.

It Wasn't Until Castro Marched Triumphantly Into Cuba That You Might Say The Whole Thing Grew Into A Marxist Revolution.

Love And Ever More Love Is The Only Solution To Every Problem That Comes Up. If We Love Each Other Enough, We Will Bear With Each Other's Faults And Burdens. If We Love Enough, We Are Going To Light That Fire In The Hearts Of Others. And It Is Love That Will Burn Out The Sins And Hatreds That Sadden Us. It Is Love That Will Make Us Want To Do Great Things For Each Other. No Sacrifice And No Suffering Will Then Seem Too Much.

As Dostoevski Said: 'love In Action Is A Harsh And Dreadful Thing Compared With Love In Dreams.

Don't Call Me A Saint; I Don't Want To Be Dismissed So Easily.

How Necessary It Is To Cultivate A Spirit Of Joy. It Is A Psychological Truth That The Physical Acts Of Reverence And Devotion Make One Feel Devout. The Courteous Gesture Increases One's Respect For Others. To Act Lovingly Is To Begin To Feel Loving, And Certainly To Act Joyfully Brings Joy To Others Which In Turn Makes One Feel Joyful. I Believe We Are Called To The Duty Of Delight.

The Communists In Cuba Didn't Assist Castro In His Revolution. They Weren't On The Side Of The Students. They Didn't Do Anything To Help In The Invasion Or The Long-continuing Struggle From The Oriente Province Down.

We Cannot Love God Unless We Love Each Other, And To Love We Must Know Each Other. We Know Him In The Breaking Of Bread, And We Know Each Other In The Breaking Of Bread, And We Are Not Alone Anymore. Heaven Is A Banquet And Life Is A Banquet, Too, Even With A Crust, Where There Is Companionship.

Our Faith Is Stronger Than Death, Our Philosophy Is Firmer Than Flesh, And The Spread Of The Kingdom Of God Upon The Earth Is More Sublime And More Compelling.

Where Are The Heroes And The Saints, Who Keep A Clear Vision Of Man's Greatest Gift, His Freedom, To Oppose Not Only The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat, But Also The Dictatorship Of The Benevolent State, Which Takes Possession Of The Family, And Of The Indigent, And Claims Our Young For War?

The Theoretician Of The Marxist Revolution In Cuba Certainly Wasn't Castro. It Was Don Carlos Rafaelo Rodriguez. He Was The Theoretician And Very Often People Say He Will Take Over. But I Don't Believe It. I Think That It's A Very Good Combination - The Catholic Man Working Together With A Man Like That Who Has Everything Pretty Well Planned.

What I Read In The Bible Seemed To Me To Be Very Much A Part Of Daily Life.

As We Come To Know The Seriousness Of The Situation, The War, The Racism, The Poverty In Our World, We Come To Realize That Things Will Not Be Changed Simply By Words Or Demonstrations. Rather, It's A Question Of Living One's Life In A Drastically Different Way.

You Will Know Your Vocation By The Joy That It Brings You. You Will Know. You Will Know When It's Right.

As A Child, I Came Across The Bible, But Nobody In My Family Had Anything To Do With Religion. I Just Felt A Profound Truth There That Appealed To Me.

Advent Is A Time Of Waiting, Of Expectation, Of Silence. Waiting For Our Lord To Be Born. A Pregnant Woman Is So Happy, So Content. She Lives In Such A Garment Of Silence, And It Is As Though She Were Listening To Hear The Stir Of Life Within Her. One Always Hears That Stirring Compared To The Rustling Of A Bird In The Hand. But The Intentness Which Which One Awaits Such Stirring Is Like Nothing So Much As A Blanket Of Silence.

My Strength Returns To Me With My Cup Of Coffee And The Reading Of The Psalms.

If We Had Had The Privilege Of Giving Hospitality To A Ho Chi Minh, With What Respect And Interest We Would Have Served Him, As A Man Of Vision, As A Patriot, A Rebel Against Foreign Invaders.

What We Would Like To Do Is Change The World...by Crying Out Unceasingly For The Rights Of The Workers, Of The Poor, Of The Destitute. We Can Throw Our Pebble In The Pond And Be Confident That Its Ever Widening Circle Will Reach Around The World.

The Works Of Mercy Are The Opposite Of The Works Of War, Feeding The Hungry, Sheltering The Homeless, Nursing The Sick, Visiting The Prisoner. But We Are Destroying Crops, Setting Fire To Entire Villages And To The People In Them. We Are Not Performing The Works Of Mercy But The Works Of War.

The Saying Of Vatican Ii Is Above All, 'conscience Is Supreme.'

Once A Priest Told Us That No One Gets Up In The Pulpit Without Promulgating A Heresy. He Was Joking, Of Course, But What I Suppose He Meant Was The Truth Was So Pure, So Holy, That It Was Hard To Emphasize One Aspect Of The Truth Without Underestimating Another, That We Did Not See Things As A Whole, But Through A Glass Darkly, As St. Paul Said.

A 'dictatorship Of The Proletariat' Becomes Again Another Dictator.

Every Marxist Group That I've Known Has Its Theoreticians.

It Is People Who Are Important, Not The Masses.

We Are All Called To Be Saints, St. Paul Says, And We Might As Well Get Over Our Bourgeois Fear Of The Name. We Might Also Get Used To Recognizing The Fact That There Is Some Of The Saint In All Of Us.

Over And Over Again, People Had To Disobey Lawful Authority To Follow The Voice Of Their Conscience. This Obedience To God And Disobedience To The State Has, Over And Over Again, Happened Throughout History. It Is Time Again To Cry Out Against Our 'leaders,' To Question (since It Is Not For Us To Say That They Are Evil) Whether Or Not They Are Sane.

Everything A Baptized Person Does Each Day Should Be Directly Or Indirectly Related To The Corporal And Spiritual Works Of Mercy.

Of All The Charges Made Against The Communists These Days Of Congressional Investigations, The Charge Of Loose Morals Is Seldom Heard, So Very Loose Have Become Those Of "christian" People.

The Final Word Is Love.

Most Of Our Life Is Unimportant, Filled With Trivial Things From Morning Till Night. But When It Is Transformed By Love It Is Of Interest Even To The Angels.

Love And Ever More Love Is The Only Solution To Every Problem That Comes Up.

There Could Be A 'community Of Communities' Rather Than A State. They Would Be United In Some Way But Without Any Governing Body. It Would Be Made Up Of Unions, Credit Unions Instead Of Banks. There Would Be No More Lending At Interest. There Would Be No More Money Lenders.

Idealism In The Young, I Guess I'm Saying, Is Curiosity As Well As Goodness Trying To Express Itself.

A Conversion Is A Lonely Experience.

And I Was To Find Out Then, As I Found Out So Many Times, Over And Over Again, That Women Especially Are Social Beings, Who Are Not Content With Just Husband And Family, But Must Have A Community, A Group, An Exchange With Others. A Child Is Not Enough. A Husband And Children, No Matter How Busy One May Be Kept By Them, Are Not Enough. Young And Old, Even In The Busiest Years Of Our Lives, We Women Especially Are Victims Of The Long Loneliness.

Paperwork, Cleaning The House, Dealing With The Innumerable Visitors Who Come All Through The Day, Answering The Phone, Keeping Patience And Acting Intelligently, Which Is To Find Some Meaning In All That Happens-these Things, Too, Are The Works Of Peace, And Often Seem Like A Very Little Way.

God Meant For Things To Be Much Easier Than We Have Made Them

I Have Been Disillusioned, However, This Long, Long Time In The Means Used By Any But The Saints To Live In This World God Has Made For Us.

Thank God That He Has Permitted Us To Live Among The Present Problems. It Is No Longer Permitted To Anyone To Be Mediocre.

Communities Are Made Up Of The Unlovable As Well As The Lovable.

Voluntary Poverty Isn't Going Around With Some Burlap Bag Around You And Imitating The Poor. It Means Being Indifferent To The Material, Doing As Christ Said. He Went And Sat Down With The Rich And Zachaeus And Publicans And Sinners.

When It Comes To Labor And Politics, I Am Inclined To Be Sympathetic To The Left, But When It Comes To The Catholic Church, Then I Am Far To The Right.

Poverty Is A Strange And Elusive Thing. ... I Condemn Poverty And I Advocate It; Poverty Is Simple And Complex At Once; It Is A Social Phenomenon And A Personal Matter. Poverty Is An Elusive Thing, And A Paradoxical One. We Need Always To Be Thinking And Writing About It, For If We Are Not Among Its Victims Its Reality Fades From Us. We Must Talk About Poverty Because People Insulated By Their Own Comfort Lose Sight Of It.

If You Are Rushed For Time, Sow Time And You Will Reap Time. Go To Church And Spend A Quiet Hour In Prayer. You Will Have More Time Than Ever And Your Work Will Get Done. Sow Time With The Poor. Sit And Listen To Them, Give Them Your Time Lavishly. You Will Reap Time A Hundredfold.

Women Think With Their Whole Bodies And They See Things As A Whole More Than Men Do.

I Have Long Since Come To Believe That People Never Mean Half Of What They Say, And That It Is Best To Disregard Their Talk And Judge Only Their Actions.

We're Under Obligation To Love - That's The Commandment.

Our Problems Stem From Our Acceptance Of This Filthy, Rotten System.

I Offered Up A Special Prayer, A Prayer Which Came With Tears And Anguish, That Some Way Would Open Up For Me To Use What Talents I Possessed For My Fellow Workers, For The Poor.

When You Love People, You See All The Good In Them, All The Christ In Them.

They Cannot See That We Must Lay One Brick At A Time, Take One Step At A Time.

Some Can Go Further Than Others.

Together With The Works Of Mercy, Feeding, Sheltering, And Clothing Our Brothers, We Must Indoctrinate.

Food For The Body Is Not Enough. There Must Be Food For The Soul.

Women Think With Their Whole Bodies

Your Love For God Is Only As Great As The Love You Have For The Person You Love The Least.

With Prayer, One Can Go On Cheerfully And Even Happily. Without Prayer, How Grim A Journey!

We Are All One Body, We Are All One.

I Firmly Believe That Our Salvation Depends On The Poor.

Often We Comfort Ourselves Only With Words, But If We Pray Enough, The Conviction Will Come Too That Christ Is Our King, Not Stalin, Bevins, Or Truman. That He Has All Things In His Hands, That 'all Things Work Together For Good For Those That Love Him.

Working Together

We Certainly Can Try To Grow In Love, And It Is Good Practice, This Giving What We've Got, Whether It Is A Cup Of Coffee Or Money To Pay The Grocery Bill.

I Too Complain Ceaselessly In My Heart And In My Words Too. My Very Life Is A Protest. Against Government, For Instance.

I Cannot Worry Much About Your Sins And Miseries When I Have So Many Of My Own. I Can Only Love You All, Poor Fellow Travellers, Fellow Sufferers. I Do Not Want To Add One Least Straw To The Burden You Already Carry.

Think What The World Could Look Like If We Took Care Of The Poor Even Half As Well As We Do Our Bibles!

The Mystery Of Poverty Is That By Sharing In It, Making Ourselves Poor In Giving To Others, We Increase Our Knowledge Of And Belief In Love.

You Can Spend Your Time Agonizing Or Organizing.

The Only Solution Is Love.

We Want No Revolution; We Want The Brotherhood Of Men. We Want Men To Love One Another. We Want All Men To Have What Is Sufficient For Their Needs. And Now - Strange Thought - The Devil Has So Maneuvered That The People Turn From Him Because Those Who Profess Him Are Clothed In Soft Raiment And Sit At Well-spread Tables And Deny The Poor.

Brotherhood Of Man

For Me Christ Was Not To Be Bought For Thirty Pieces Of Silver But With My Heart's Blood. We Buy Not Cheap In This Market.

Words Are As Strong And Powerful As Bombs, As Napalm.

Certainly We Disagree With The Communist Party, As We Disagree With Other Political Parties Who Are Trying To Maintain The American Way Of Life.

I Really Only Love God As Much As I Love The Person I Love The Least.

It Is Penance To Work, To Give Oneself To Others, To Endure The Pinpricks Of Community Living.

Community Living

Do Not Give To The Poor Expecting To Get Their Gratitude So That You Can Feel Good About Yourself. If You Do, Your Giving Will Be Thin And Short-lived, And That Is Not What The Poor Need; It Will Only Improvish Them Further. Give Only If You Have Something You Must Give; Give Only If You Are Someone For Whom Giving Is Its Own Reward.

Love Casts Out Fear, But We Have To Get Over The Fear In Order To Get Close Enough To Love Them.

We Are Not, Most Of Us, Capable Of Exalted Emotion, Save Rarely.

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