Throwing Pebbles
“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, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, 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 repeat, there is nothing 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 our friend.”
“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”
I have only come to know about Dorothy Day and her work very recently as I began reading “All The Way To Heaven: The Selected Letter of Dorothy Day”. This work traces her writings via various letters over her career as a peace activist, social activist, and theologian. Though some of her opinions might seem dated by our standards (she had strict ideas around family structure and sexuality) what I have been touched by was her unwavering belief that we can change the world we live in for the better. Her beliefs are rooted in her Catholicism but find a more universal appeal in the tent of love and fellowship. The above two quotes embodied these concepts most directly and have stayed with me for days, as I wrestled with them. Love as a societal force has been advanced by revolutionaries as varied as Jesus, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr, Mother Teresa and John Lennon. The love advanced by these (and others) was not in the strictest terms romantic, it was a public love that can be best described as compassion or empathy. This seemingly timeless thread of love as a force of change running through history is beautiful and hopeful. Our hearts are an inexhaustible well with the capacity to love so much, from the mundane to the ascendant surely if properly calibrated we can move the dial on societal ills. The challenges we face as a species are daunting. For those of us who bend toward cynicism the weight of wanting to drive real change but not knowing how can be crushing. Maybe the inequity that seems ever present is the normal way of thing? Is a world that can appear cruel and unfair merely the status quo? Thoughts like these can consume you unless you turn angst into action and the resulting energy toward love and community, a natural extension of compassion and empathy. During Influencer Conference NYC 2012, I moderated a conversation titled Love as Public Policy, which I hoped, would spark a conversation demanding a public policy informed by compassion rather than special interest. We launched a pebble that day, and over the couple of years since that talk have launched a few more. Many organizations and individuals globally who share a commitment toward systemic change are launching their pebbles as well. We do this in the hope of creating a community empowered by love that will form the “ever widening circle” described by Ms Day. Those pebbles, big and small, have the power to become an avalanche and with it create a dramatic shift in how we live and perceive the world around us. So do not scoff at the notion of the transformative power of love. Instead, extend your compassion to all who need it, embrace and keep each other and create the world we want by sheer will.