Sister Carol Gilbert, OP

60th Jubilee Reflection

For all that has been thanks, for all that will be, yes! ~ Dag Hammarskjold

Our Dominican charism of Veritas (speaking truth to power) is at the heart of my 60th Jubilee celebration!

Over those past six decades, I have spent time as a Jr. High school teacher, in county jails and federal prisons, experiencing what it is to be one with the poor. I have been a witness for peace in the war zones of Nicaragua during the contra war. I have gathered with an International delegation at the Buechle Air Force Base in Germany to oversee the removal of US nuclear weapons. And I have participated at the United Nations for the passing of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. At present, I live at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C. with immigrant families while testifying for justice and peace to end war and abolish nuclear weapons in the halls of Congress, at the White House and at other places of thoughtless power.

How can I celebrate in our world where the United States is responsible for a genocide in Gaza, and the bombing of eight countries in a single year? How can I celebrate when ICE is in our communities, taking our brothers and sisters off the streets of our cities and killing some US citizens? How can I celebrate the destruction of Mother Earth, while approving a defense budget of over a trillion dollars?

Despite the chaos in our world, I do celebrate! I celebrate being born and raised in Traverse City Michigan. I celebrate my family, my Dominican community and friends. And I celebrate all those who continue to challenge me to be faithful to the words of Micah, “to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Bio
Sister Carol Gilbert was born in MI in 1947 and entered the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids MI in 1965. She was a junior high school teacher, a researcher at the Home for Peace and Justice and involved in a variety of issues: draft counseling, countering nuclear power and nuclear weapons, criminal injustices, poverty and all of the struggles caused by it, U.S. intervention in Nicaragua. Carol spent the next five years living and witnessing at two of Michigan’s Strategic Air Command Bases until both closed when she then moved to Jonah House in Baltimore, MD to continue the work against war, disarmament of nuclear weapons and trying to live nonviolence as a way of life.