Stoking the Fire
Leo 3 // Dorothy Day & tending our inner courage
We made it! Everyone is off to school (and mostly adjusting) and today I have my candle, my coffee, and even my sweater (blessed cool weather!) and I am sitting at my back patio table. I’m writing to the sound of a soft breeze through the trees, and the gentle murmuring of our chickens. I hope your morning (or whenever you’re reading this) is bringing you some calm. Thank you, truly, for reading.
When I first decided to do a decan walk1 and methodically learn about the minor arcana of the tarot, I was a bit intimidated. What if I ran out of the things to say, what if the card didn’t spark or inspire anything for me, what if I couldn’t make any connections to my life? But every single week, I look at the card and wonder “what will you show me?” and within a few days the connections start coming together. A podcast, a song that my partner recommends, a text from a friend - unrelated ideas begin to sort themselves into a pattern in my mind and I sit down to write with all my puzzle pieces ready to be put together. Magical.
This week as my kids returned to school, I picked up a book that I have been wanting to read for months. Dorothy Day has been a figure that I’ve admired for years and
has been a writer I’ve appreciated (loved!) for about as long! The title, Unruly Saint, is such a perfect description of a woman who I’ve come to associate with radical faith & unwavering commitment to her own inner fire. And this book is a real gem.
As we wind down Leo season, our final decan corresponds to the 7 of wands. Last week we saw the central figure fight for power and then have their moment in the sun. This week the figure is defending their position - 6 wands are pointed at them and trying to knock them from their pedestal. Many decks describe this card as solitary, lonely2, a time to defend yourself or your beliefs against the critical masses. And I literally can’t think of a better example of that solitary figure than Dorothy Day. She stood her ground against greedy & unjust systems with her courageous inner fire burning bright.
Dorothy was a precocious, sensitive kid and as she grew into young adulthood she found it intolerable to witness the destitution of working class people in her community (she came of age at the turn of the century & entered adulthood during the Great War & Depression). Her empathetic heart and independent spirit led her to social activism - mainly socialism & anarchism - and when she converted to Catholicism in middle age, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement. I really can’t encapsulate her story into a few paragraphs, so I’m just going to say read DL’s book, or Dorothy’s autobiography, or this book written by her granddaughter. She was a truly remarkable human.
It’s significant to me that last week, I wrote about the special election in my state and the connections I saw to the 5 and 6 of wands. Now this week I’m reading about presidential debates and watching the line up (even as one candidate is getting mugshots) and just feeling an overwhelming sense of … exhaustion? Dismay? I’m not sure. But it certainly isn’t courage. My inner fire is just embers and those 6 wands are coming at me from all sides.
I’ll never forget the feelings of isolation when I was in evangelicalism and I realized the people around me didn’t actually want to do the things that Jesus seemed to say were most important. As a sensitive, earnest kid it all seemed so plain to me - Love God. Love your neighbor. Only take as much as you need. Give the rest away. Live at peace with others. But within white, American evangelicalism the beatitudes are more akin to “Blessed are the wealthy, for they shall inherit the earth and tax breaks” and “Blessed are the believers, for their theology is correct.” I relate so much to Dorothy and her feelings of dismay and isolation that she felt for so much of her life. For her it was plain, if you have two coats give one to the poor. Even within her Catholic community she saw rampant hypocrisy that compelled her to start her social programs and hospitality houses. She refused to conform to the systems around her that contributed to poverty, isolation, and oppression.
When I see the 7 of wands, I see someone standing up and shouting: another world must be possible! It requires a tremendous amount of inner courage to resist the cultural systems that seem to shout louder with every passing day. These systems (most of them upheld and defended by the religious majority) are failing so many - the poor, the working class, mothers, the disabled, refugees. In my city, like countless others, people are working themselves into the ground and barely making enough to get by. The climate crisis rages on and it barely gets a shrug on the debate stage. And meanwhile, our kids are attending underfunded schools and participating in lock-down drills3 instead of learning.
“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.”
- Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness
One of my favorite stories is of the last time Dorothy was arrested for civil disobedience at the age of 62. During the Cold War, the state of New York made it a misdemeanor to refuse to participate in civil defense drills. Dorothy, along with a few religious & anarchist friends, refused to “take cover” as an act of protest against the nuclear arms race. Her sign read: “Why should the resources of human genius and the riches of the people turn more often to preparing arms… than to increasing the welfare of all classes of citizens and particularly of the poor?” In other words, Why do we put guns before people? What would she think of our world today?
Dorothy, and the 7 of wands, asks: How can I stand up for what I believe? How can I tend to my inner fire to face this suffering world with courage? How can I disrupt or resist the unjust systems of the world? Everything she did was centered on action. She disdained thoughts & prayers. And she acted on behalf of her neighbors. “She saw the face of Christ in the faces of the poor around her. And anyone she came into contact with, she invited to do the same4.” Her disruptions were always grounded in community5. If our efforts are focused too broadly, our fire can be snuffed out. But when we focus on the people right around us we can share our inner light - igniting spark after spark after spark.
Dorothy Day6 cast a vision for a world where people care for one another, where people live in community, and where governments distribute wealth instead of hoard it. She was unruly and contradictory - in activists spaces she was too religious, in Catholic spaces she was too radical7. She had an inner fire that burned bright, that lit up the people around her and inspired a movement of care and social change. May we all cultivate a courageous inner fire like Dorothy. If we did the world would be a much, much better place.
As we head into a new season of political debates and presidential nominations…a quote and a blessing from the end of Unruly Saint //
“Oppression in any of its forms means death…. Liberation brings life. God liberates because God is the God of life.” - Gustavo Gutierrez
“May we continue to hunger for God but ensure our neighbors never hunger for bread. May we believe in love. May we believe in a God of life. And may we find each other on this journey, committed to it being long but not quite so lonely as we thought it would be.” - DL Mayfield
Dorothy’s spiritual memoir is literally called the Long Loneliness!
I wrote about stoking my inner fire (rage) around lock down drills a few months ago. Gun violence is the issue of our time that requires Dorothy-level courage and resistance!
From the introduction of Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day’s Radical Vision and its Challenge for Our Time, by DL Mayfield.
I’ve crowned Dorothy the Queen of Wands - for her fiery, maternal, passionate drive for justice. If I made my own deck, I’d have her sitting at her writing desk with a big jar of sunflowers, a cigarette in her mouth, and a black cat at her feet: beautiful, creative, resolute.
She had an abortion, was a chain smoker, got arrested multiple times, and spoke her mind.
"Just a little Christian Anarchism as I wait for the bus…" I mean, such a vibe!
Dorothy Day and Tarot, I love it!!!!!!