The Long Loneliness By Dorothy Day: A Community Analysis

Community and social work are integral parts of any faith or religion. Many faith based individuals work towards their definition of social justice. Activism and volunteering strengthen one’s faith as well as gets them involved in the community. My volunteer experience, while not very extensive, still gave me a picture of what it can be like to work for social justice. Over the summer, I helped out at my local library with the children’s activities. While this may be different on the outside from what Dorothy Day had experienced and discussed in autobiography The Long Loneliness, it still comes from the mind frame of helping the community and the people in it. Day had motivation from her Catholic faith to dedicate her life towards social work,
Her activism stems from her immense belief in Catholicism and trying to live God’s word closely. She served the community, hers as well as others, because she believed it would help bring her closer to God and that it was what He wanted his followers to do. In her autobiography, Day relays the message that God wants everyone to help one another by saying, “We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other” (Day). She is explaining how, to be closer to God, one must in turn be closer to the people surrounding us. Her way of going about this was to provide help in the
Everyone had to pick somewhere to volunteer at and write about. I truthfully chose the library because I figured it would be easy. And for the most part it was. But just because the job details were easy, did not mean I gained nothing from the experience. Working with the children made me realize just how much something simple like helping with crafts at the library could benefit someone else, even in the smallest way. One of the days I was volunteering, I was helping a few kids make a craft. I did not do much to help them, as they were old enough to do it mostly on their own. But at the end of the session, one of the little girls came up and hugged me and thanked me for helping her. I was surprised because I had not done much at all. But I think sometimes people appreciate more that someone cared enough to do something, rather than how large the task was. This experience also presented the point that there is a lot to gain from social work, even if it is just knowing you made someone’s day a little better. Day discusses this in her autobiography, saying, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community” (Day). The answer to wanting and solitude comes from other people. Individuals need to get to know strangers and help them in order to enrich both of their