Remembering Dorothee Soelle

Catholic New Times, April 11, 2004 by Maureen Bauer-McGahey

Soelle believed that a conversion moment is an invitation a soul cannot refuse. She had a clear sense of living the Gospel. This is what gives voice to God in the world. To become aware of the silent cry in the world is to become one with it. "It is the way God dreams today and we should not let God dream alone. God who stands with the marginalized is always hidden in the world and wants to become visible."

In her book Against the Wind, Soelle tells of how Dorothy Day had periods of complete exhaustion, sorrow and pain, as does any human being who hungers for justice and peace. To live without tears is to live in a culture that is poor in expression and incapable of feelings. "We deny the need for a Spirit that comforts and leads into truth. We have forgotten the prayer for the gift of tears. In spirituality, what is inward is to become outward, visible and audible."

"When we experience pain and joy with others, everyday life is hallowed. Our lives and experiences are not casual things to be discarded, but treasures worthy of being remembered, reflected upon, lamented and named."

Soelle moves me with her deep understanding of suffering.

"The difference between despair and hope is struggle. To struggle is to resist feeling ineffectual and incapable of making a difference.

"We are created to be agents of hope. Those who have hope and share it through their lives and deeds, truly believe in God." The hope that is within us will be angry at seeing it diminished in others and will give us the courage to do something about it. To struggle is also to pray.

In her life and writings, Soelle made God's compassion understandable, not as an alternative to justice but as its deepest expression. Her words act as a sort of loving telegram to the world, reminding us that the true love of God places itself within the reality in which we live. "God's Spirit wants to make us courageous and capable of truth. God wants to be born in us." Seeing justice defeated is not in vain. Soelle saw her life as that of a theological worker who tried to tell something of God's pain and God's joy. "I see myself as a link in a chain, as a large-wave pattern. I am not the whole thing. I am part. The root bears me."

Soelle understood faith as a mixture of trust, fear, hope and doubt. She was grounded in the intensity of life and knew true joy. For all these reasons she speaks profoundly to the modern heart.

Robert McAfee Brown, speaking of her life, said, "Join her. It will be worthwhile. She presents her faith on her authority, which she has already donated to the glory of God."

Maureen Bauer McGahey writes from Perth, Ont.