Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church

In the past few weeks we have had heard two talks, by Kim Hinrichs and Sean Maddox, about how we can better understand the bible through a more modern, and some might say feminist, lens. So it feels appropriate to share with you today how my own spiritual journey was shaped by an important Christian woman.

In the 1980s I was a student at Kenyon College, a small liberal-arts school set in the gently rolling hills and ample farmland of Central Ohio. To tell you the truth, I was a middling student, easily distracted by parties and friends and youth. I settled on religion as my major, less out of pure intellectual curiosity and more because it was a small department with fewer hoops to jump through than Kenyon’s heralded English department.

In my junior year I took a class called “modern Catholicism” and was assigned a book called “The Long Loneliness” by Dorothy Day. Until that point I’d been studying texts like the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao te Ching and the Book of Job, which were interesting, but also ancient and therefore kind of remote to me. So I was immediately captivated by the story of an American woman whose life had overlapped with my own.  Dorothy Day was born shortly before my own maternal grandmother in the late 1890s, and died in 1980.

For those of you unfamiliar with Dorothy Day, let me tell you a little bit about why she so captured my imagination, and why she is a looming figure in the history of American Catholicism.

Day was raised in Chicago in a middle-class, Episcopalian family. In her youth she was kind of a hippy before her time—she protested against the first world war, worked for a socialist magazine in New York, and was arrested and jailed after protesting for women’s suffrage in front of the White House. She had a child out of wedlock, which is no big deal these days but was pretty scandalous in the 1920s. At the same time, though, she felt deeply drawn to god, especially as presented in Catholicism, and wrote about having a nagging sense that she was on the wrong path.

Her daughter’s birth created such an overwhelming sense of gratitude inside of Day that she decided to have her baby baptized, and to become a convert herself. This meant a painful split from her partner, who she loved deeply, but who couldn’t accept her choice.

Day’s life after that involved blending her religious faith with her social values at every turn. She founded the Catholic Worker movement with a Frenchman named Peter Maurin. Maurin’s journey was similar to Day’s –he was a layperson who lived a monastic lifestyle, always in service to others. They ministered to the hungry and homeless in New York, and opened farming communes. They started the Catholic Worker newspaper, which focused on the concerns of everyday people. This was something new in a church where ideas had long come from the hierarchy, rather than the laity. When I read her book, I got the picture of a woman who provided food and shelter to the poor, but also simply sat with them, bearing witness to their struggles.  Day described the people she ministered to, during the heart of the depression, as “grey men, the color of lifeless trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green of hope, the rising sap of faith.”

I could go on way too long listing her accomplishments, but suffice it to say that I spellbound by her story. So the following year when it was time to write my senior thesis, I naturally gravitated back to her. I wrote with great confidence about Day’s unflinching rebuke of the violence of World War II, even though it created tremendous controversy.

Another part of the senior thesis process at Kenyon was to defend your work in front of your professors and fellow students. Again, I didn’t find it difficult because I had passion for my subject—I got up and expounded on Day’s virtuousness, the ways in which she lived a Christ-like existence, whether difficult, painful, controversial or tedious.

When I was done with my presentation, one of my professors, a distinguished and slightly intimidating older gentleman, looked at me over his reading glasses and said “I always kinda thought that she had a crush on that Maurin guy.”

Huh? What? I protested. What was he talking about? How could he say such a thing? Dorothy Day had buildings named after her, and was being considered for Sainthood, for goodness sake.

My professor’s offhanded comment poked a hole in the helium balloon of perfection that I had created around Dorothy Day. In my young mind her life was the very picture of spiritual purity, and unfettered clarity of purpose.  It’s not that my professor’s mention of a possible crush was so scandalous. Certainly as a college student I knew plenty about unrequited crushes, and the late nights I spent in the dorm talking about them with my friends may have contributed to my mediocre early academic performance.

I think back to that conversation with my professor often, because I am perpetually aware of my own spiritual imperfections. In fact, I think I go beyond mere imperfection—my own spiritual path is full of gaping contradictions.

In some ways the Christian faith has had me from “hello”. Mere phrases from the Episcopal mass of my childhood such as “the peace that passes understanding” and “make me a servant of your peace” warm my soul like a nip of brandy on a bitterly cold day. I can’t get through this church’s closing hymn, the Edelweiss one, without choking up. As a religion major, the word “ineffable” was used a lot. It means “that which cannot be described”. Much of what draws me to church is based on a hunch, and my emotions, and is entirely ineffable.

And yet, I struggle mightily with some of the basic aspects of Christianity. Like, for instance, the Bible. For me, the bible has long been like Star Trek—I know there are deep, important lessons to be learned from it, yet I have a hard time finding my way in to the story. On a positive note, though, I’m happy to report that the “toddler bible” that Christina gave the boys for Christmas is helping me a lot! Hey, you have to start somewhere.

I’m still in the very early stages of learning about Swedenborg—and when people ask me what it’s all about, much to my embarrassment, I have to pass them over to my husband. When people who call themselves Christian commit acts of violence, or spew hatred…well, it makes me want to crawl in a hole. I find it hard label myself the same thing as someone whose actions are so abhorrent. The tininess of our church, the absence of classmates for my sons in Sunday school, can feel like a roadblock too big to get around. The pain and suffering of members of our larger church family—well, they really do feel like too much too bear.

So, what’s a person to do, when one’s spiritual experience feels so deeply flawed. Well, when I was a kid and I was nervous about trying something new, my mother would say “just do your lousy best.” She didn’t mean that I should set out to do poorly. She just wanted me to know that trying and failing was infinitely better than not trying at all. So I’ve chosen to wade hip-deep into the murky waters of my own imperfection. I’ve decided that the best thing I can do is keep showing up.

In my grown-up mind I realize that Dorothy Day’s conversion to Catholicism didn’t mean her own spiritual life was smooth sailing. She spent so much of her life pouring coffee for the drunks of lower Manhattan, who no doubt went back to the bottle again and again, despite her best efforts. It must have been frustrating for her, and I’m glad if warm fuzzies she may have felt around colleague made it easier to show up for work day after day.

I mentioned earlier some of the prayers and hymns that moved me so deeply; I realized as I was writing them down that they all contain the word “peace.” And that’s the crux of it—in spite of all the moments of doubt and confusion, I find moments of deep peace here, and in a world where god lives. Amen.