Breaking Bread: Dominique Dawes and Mother Angelica
If you could have dinner with one person who is no longer with us, and whose obituary was published in The New York Times, who would it be, and why that person? Not Forgotten is asking that question of a variety of influential people this summer in a series of posts called Breaking Bread.
Today we have Dominique Dawes, the first African-American female gymnast to win an individual medal. Nicknamed “Awesome Dawesome,” she went on to compete in three Olympics.
If I could choose to have dinner with somebody who has passed away, I would choose to dine with Mother Angelica.
Mother Angelica was the nun who founded the largest religious network, Eternal Word Television Network, starting with only $200. She is the only woman to have founded and led a cable network for over 20 years.
I’d invite Mother Angelica to my home and have her sit at the head of our table, alongside my husband and two baby girls. The meal I’d cook would be soul food (I grew up on it), consisting of chitlins, collard greens, cheese grits and candied yams. Mother Angelica would understand this meal: She was raised around blacks and poor Italians in a tough Canton, Ohio, neighborhood. She knew people, she understood their plights, she was one of them!
And she knew resilience most of all, raised by a single mother from an early age after her father had abandoned them.
I’d ask her to say the blessing, then proceed to ask her a few things about her life and about fortitude. A priest once told me that it’s very difficult to have a relationship with your Heavenly Father after your earthly father has abandoned you. I often wondered how she overcame this abandonment, learned to forgive her father and ultimately trust in God?
She was a cloistered nun, in a convent, yet she was seen by hundreds of millions of people worldwide as the host of a series on EWTN. How was she able to embrace both of these so very opposite vocations? (I am an introvert by nature, and performing in front of millions during the Olympic Games gave me anxiety, as does speaking at events in front of thousands now.)
Over dinner, I’d be fascinated to hear from Mother Angelica about how she channeled her own pain into a larger purpose. And I would ask her how I might help others, whether they suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction, physical ailments or the pain of abandonment or divorce. Her whole life, after all, was dedicated to helping others, especially the disenfranchised.
Mother Angelica, I would ask, how can we here on earth emulate what you did, even in a smaller way, offering help to others in a world that so desperately needs it?
www.nytimes.com/…/dominique-dawes…