"The Oasis," by Dorothy Day

Laid out as a poem for your reading pleasure, here’s an excerpt from a Catholic Worker column Dorothy Day wrote in 1946, under the title, “Love is the Measure”:

We confess to being fools
and wish that we were more so…

What we would like to do
is change the world — make it
a little simpler for people
to feed, clothe and shelter themselves
as God intended them to do.

And to a certain extent,
by fighting for better conditions,
by crying out unceasingly
for the rights of the workers,
of the poor, of the destitute —
the rights of the “worthy”
and the “unworthy” poor
in other words, we can
to a certain extent
change the world.

We can work for the oasis,
the little cell of joy
and peace in a harried world.

We can throw our pebble
in the pond and be confident
that its ever widening circle
will reach around the world.

We can give away an onion.

We repeat, there is nothing
that we can do but love,
and dear God —
please enlarge our hearts

to love each other,
to love our neighbor,
to love our enemy
as well as our friend.

+ Dorothy Day