Last week, with the generous help of the Notre Dame Club of Harrisburg, we renovated one of the rooms in the Catholic Worker house. This room will be named the Dorothy Day room and be themed accordingly. After a ceiling light was installed, spackling was done on the walls, dirt and dust removed, and a fresh new coat of paint was applied. I want to personally thank Dan Cassidy of the ND club for his efforts in helping to accomplish this goal just in time for a potential new community member’s visit.
As Dan and I worked (mostly Dan working and me trying to learn), a story I read during undergrad at Notre Dame came to mind that I shared with him. In his book Legacy of Love, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, shares a parable about a young man who keeps a very disorganized, dirty, and cluttered apartment. He eventually falls in love with a girl who gives him a rose one day. When he brings the rose back to the apartment, he finds a dirty and moldy vase which he cleans for the rose. However, there is no clean table to put the vase on so he must wipe off the table. But then the table looks out of place in the context of the room so he cleans the entire room. But then that room looks out of place in the context of the whole apartment so little by little the entire apartment becomes clean and beautiful.
That phrase ‘little by little’ is a favorite of Dorothy Day’s. The Catholic Worker movement has always been and always will be focused on the little and compassionate actions. Arun Gandhi’s parable of the rose reminds me of Dostoevsky’s fable of the onion, which was another of Dorothy’s favorites:
“Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I remember to tell God? Then he remembered and said to God: once she pulled up an onion and gave it to a beggar woman. And God answered: Now take that same onion, hold it out to her in the lake, let her take hold of it, and pull, and if you pull her out of the lake, she can go to paradise, but if the onion breaks, she can stay where she is. The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: here, woman, he said, take hold of it and I’ll pull. And he began pulling carefully, and had almost pulled her all the way out, when other sinners in the lake saw her being pulled out and all began holding on to her so as to be pulled out with her. But the woman was wicked as wicked could be, and she began to kick them with her feet: ‘It’s me who’s getting pulled out, not you; it’s my onion, not yours.’ No sooner did she say it than the onion broke. And the woman fell back into the lake and is burning there to this day. And the angel wept and went away.”
Those that gave their time during renovation, advice on furniture and decoration, money for supplies, donated pillows, clothes hangers, beds and sheets, have all given a rose or an onion to the Allison Hill community. Whether we are currently the beautiful woman in love or the wicked woman who is alone, we are all called to give that little rose or onion. Little by little we will improve the conditions of the house, and little by little, as Peter Maurin would say, we will strive “to make the kind of society where it is easier for people to be good” because when people are good, people are happy.
