The Dorothy Day Pilgrimage
itinerary for a self-guided tour around the Village
In honor of our event at the Catholic Worker Maryhouse on 12/13, we’re unlocking this very spicy piece. RSVP to the event here.
Dorothy Day’s name frequently appears in the pages of this Substack, as she is not only one of our ideological influences but is also one of our patronesses. We’ve been known to invoke the Servant of God’s intercession for the success of our endeavors. Whenever we host events at the Catholic Worker Maryhouse in the East Village, I’ve made it a point to visit the bedroom in which she spent the later years of her life (and died) to pray for our contributors, benefactors, and followers (and frenemies), as well as to pray for her cause for canonization (which is currently being processed by the Vatican).
As a “princess of paradox,” Day’s political, social, cultural, and spiritual vision masterfully weds the seemingly conflicting tensions that Cracks in PoMo attempts to give space to. An anomaly for her unconventional views, merging a earnest commitment to social progress and deep esteem for the wisdom of Catholicism’s spiritual, moral, and political precepts, she was often pegged both as a “radical progressive” and a “conservative prude.”
Day and the CW’s political project—mainly rooted in an anarchistic mode of distributist thought— is often criticized for being utopian, too idealistic, and detached from reality. I concede that this is largely true. Day’s project was more prophetic than realistic; it served to “raise the bar” and incite people to aspire to pursue higher ideals, rather than to be resigned to accepting the current system as it is.
Though her political project may not have been realistic, her lifestyle—dedicated to love, community, serving God and neighbor—was. Her spiritual and cultural ideals, if not her political ones, ought to be taken quite literally. For, as we insist here at Cracks in PoMo, it is futile to establish political (and moral) ideals without first developing our existential (ontological, aesthetic) ones. Thus why we place more emphasis on thought and culture than on politics, and why we (like the CW) aim to be a home to people of diverse political ideologies. We may not all agree on the secondary factors, but what unites us it our commitment exploring to what is most essential: the flourishing of the heart and mind.
People often quote Dorothy when she insisted that people not “call her a saint,” as she didn’t want “to be dismissed that easily.” This was not to say she didn’t want to be canonized (she left that in the hands of God and the Church), but because she didn’t want her lifestyle to be written off as something particular to a separate class of spiritual elites. “That’s the way people try to dismiss you. If you’re a saint, then you must be impractical and utopian, and nobody has to pay any attention to you.” All people can strive to live radical charity and hospitality for God and neighbor.
On several occasions I’ve referenced having led a “Dorothy Day Pilgrimage” around the Village. And while I hope one day to host a Cracks in Pomo Dorothy Pilg for our followers, I thought to lay out the Pilgrimage’s itinerary for those who are interested in walking it on their own time. We’ll include below the pilgrimage stops and the meaning behind them, hoping that those who make it will pray for our platform, for our city, and for the outpouring of love, happiness, and esteem for beauty and truth in our hearts…and if you’re not a praying person, that you’ll keep these intentions in your hearts.