I continue to be challenged by Dorothy Day! As I have been reading Dorothy Day, Selected Writing by Robert Ellsberg, I am finding myself at a crossroads in my life. I have recently encountered a homeless man near my church (I will call him James). He recently came into the church building, mind you a person that everyone in the church already knows, and introduced himself to me. We sat in the main lobby area and chatted for what seemed like hours. In this instance, I was thinking that as a pastor I would be ministering to James. That was absolutely not the case. My heart broke as James began sharing a very small piece of his story. A story of resilience, and a story that is full of giving. James talked about how he would work street corners for hours simply to give away the money that he earned to individuals who were in greater need. As our time was concluding I stopped to offer a prayer for James. Tears began to roll down his cheeks, but in the next instance he said to me “now it’s my turn to pray for you.” His heart opened up and the words that came out were precisely what I needed to hear. I found myself in a place where I was the one being ministered to rather than me ministering to this wonderful man that I had just met.

So how does that relate to Dorothy Day? Simply put, Dorothy was a humble person who never once considered herself to be more important than any other person. She wrote stories about strikes, unemployment, segregation, and breadlines. Her mission in life was to seek justice, to do good, and to walk humbly. All qualities that we find in the book of Micah. Dorothy made it a point to “travel around the country, visiting houses, speaking, and reporting on the dramatic labor upheavals brought on by the Depression. She made a point of going wherever there was trouble, wherever workers were resisting unfit conditions, to let them know there were Catholics on their side.” (Ellsberg, xxxi).

How often do we not let the disenfranchised know that there are people in this world that are on their side? How often are we stopping to talk to the James’s of this world? How often are we being humble in an effort to care more for others than ourselves?

So here I am…wrestling with these thoughts.