Day 777: Monday, May 2, 2022

The humble parents of green, the truly meek,

they shall inherit us. They shall deliver us.

Poem: Earthworms

In spring when the garden is sliced and sheared

like fudge, when the earth is scooped,

glistening and sweet as jam on a plate, they glide

out of that dark confection, shocking

in their pink nakedness, their tender lengths

stark and gleaming as sex. The sleek tubes

of their bodies are all undulation and probe,

all liquid under pressure; their work

a gritty industry of digestion: to eat

the dank bones, the dull and matted fur

of beasts and trees, the slathered leaves,

the vegetable marrow, the sallow collapsed flesh

of everything fallen. Three million per acre,

they teem below our feet, pulling their fine,

patient stitches through the thick cloth of ground,

piping all matter through the glue of their guts,

binding the world once more to itself;

bearing its weight on the delicate strands of their muscle.

To pass their way is to go down through the halls

of beginning, to find the seed porch of spring.

The humble parents of green, the truly meek,

they shall inherit us. They shall deliver us.

Poem by Lynn Lyman Trombetta, Steve's sister

Announcement: A Dahlgren Dialogue on

Sister Thea Bowman

Sister Thea Bowman Faithful Life, Powerful Legacy, Continuing Lessons

Tuesday, May 3, 2022 6:00 - 7:15 p.m. EDT 3:00 - 4:15 Pacific

Dahlgren Chapel of the Sacred Heart, Georgetown University and Livestreamed

Reception and Celebration 5:00 - 6:00 p.m. EDT

Dahlgren Quad

Co-sponsored by the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and the Office of Mission & Ministry

Please use this link to RSVP:

RSVP

Sister Thea Bowman, a Black sister from Mississippi who fought racism and worked for justice in the Catholic Church and United States, is being proposed for sainthood in the Catholic Church. Georgetown University is focusing on her life, legacy, and continuing challenges in a major Public Dialogue. This comes as Georgetown is honoring her by naming a chapel on its campus the Servant of God Sr. Thea Bowman Chapel of St. William. Participants:

Ogechi Akalegbere is the 2021 winner of the Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Christian service coordinator at Connelly School of the Holy Child.

Sr. Patricia Chappell, SNDdeN is the moderator of the leadership team for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur U.S. East-West Province. She is the former president of the National Black Sisters’ Conference and the former executive director of Pax Christi USA.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory is the archbishop of Washington and the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).Shannen Dee Williams is an associate professor of history at the University of Dayton. She specializes in women’s, religious, and Black freedom movement history and is the author of the forthcoming book Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle (May 2022).

John Carr, co-director of the Initiative, will moderate the dialogue. Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., vice president for Mission & Ministry, will open the dialogue. In the tradition of Sr. Thea, the Georgetown University Gospel Choir will lead us in song. Georgetown’s Dahlgren Dialogues, co-sponsored by the Office of Mission & Ministry and the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, are a series of substantive conversations with experienced leaders in the context of prayerful reflection on current topics at the intersection of faith and public life. Livestream and Accessibility​ For those who cannot join us in person, the dialogue will be livestreamed and live-captioned. A link will be sent to all those who have RSVP’d on the morning of the dialogue.