Escape To the Beach: Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Adapted from Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday
Dorothy was a New Yorker born and bred, an urban dweller from her early bohemian days in Greenwich Village to her elder years on the gritty Lower East Side. In the shadow of glittering skyscrapers, corporate wealth, and global power, Dorothy Day’s New York was one of soup kitchens, picket lines, political protests, jail time, and communal living.
No worldly ambition drew Dorothy to the city; rather, it was great love that kept her there. “I do not know how to love God except by loving the poor. I do not know how to serve God except by serving the poor,” this woman, at once politically radical and theologically orthodox, remarked. “Here, within this great city of nine million people, we must, in this neighborhood, on this street, in this parish, regain a sense of community which is the basis for peace in the world.”
Dorothy Day lived her convictions to the end of her life at age eighty-three. Yet from her spartan combination bedroom-office in the noisy, crowded Catholic Worker Maryhouse among the tenements of Lower Manhattan, she wrote, “I am restless for the beach, not too far away, where I can enjoy the beauties of sunrise over the bay and the sunset.” The same Dorothy who labored tirelessly on behalf of the oppressed, who went to prison to oppose war, never stopped longing to be by the bay. Whenever she could make an escape, Dorothy fled to the respite of a “tin roofed fisherman’s shack” perched on Raritan Bay, the rough bungalow she had purchased in the 1920s. “One of the joys of Staten Island is that one can get down there after a grueling day in New York, and for thirty-five cents find oneself on a deserted beach,” she explained.
Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker comrades sometimes heard her quote St. Teresa of Avila: “Life is but a night spent in an uncomfortable inn, crowded together with other wayfarers.” Still, they knew her to be a part-time hermit whose exhausting work and life compelled her to slip away to the beach, for space to be by herself, to think and pray and write. One young Staten Island neighbor remembers being told, “Dorothy is here this weekend. If you are playing house, keep off her porch.” For those rare restorative days, Dorothy was to be left alone to savor a space all her own, a rickety beach chair, a salty breeze.
TRY THIS
Reflect upon Dorothy Day’s words:“One of the joys of Staten Island is that one can get down there after a grueling day in New York, and for thirty-five cents find oneself on a deserted beach.”
Are you feeling the pressure of a tough day? A fisherman’s shack may not be waiting for you, but think about a getaway within reach, somewhere you could go with your equivalent of thirty-five cents: a bike ride, a walk, or a short drive away. It might be a public park, a hiking path, a walking trail, a hidden garden, a pond—a spot where nature offers some quiet and beauty.
Can you make a plan to go there today or in the next day or two?
What tools, toys, or props will you take with you?
What sights or experiences do you expect to find there?
As you picture your place, write a few words about it, beginning with Dorothy’s words: “One of the joys of [this place] is . . .”