Here's another fave: "We the living, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing." Guess who said that? Give up? Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I believe she's a saint now. Died one week after Diana Spenser. The famous Albanian nun who gave her life to the service of God through serving the poorest and most miserable of his people on the streets of Calcutta. A fellow in the church I have recently stopped attending claims to have spent eight years in St. Teresa's service and wrote a book about it. I take his word for it even though we don't really hit it off. Another friend from years gone by spent six weeks visiting her in Calcutta back in the eighties. I have never had the privilege of knowing Mother Teresa, having only read about her. She made quite a splash when she was here in Vancouver in 1976 for the World Habitat Forum where she gave the keynote address. Then I learned more about her through my friend who later visited her and obtained Malcolm Muggeridge's book about her: "Something Beautiful For God."
I read other things about her and I was sold. I wanted to be like her, or at least I was aware that I might have a similar calling. I was only twenty-one so please cut me a little slack here. Instead of going to Calcutta I found work as a home support worker (then known as home makers) where for less than a living wage I worked my butt off caring for elderly, disabled, chronically ill and terminally ill people in their own homes. This became my career for more than a decade. I did not join the Roman Catholic Church but I did begin attending a High Anglican Church (St. James) in Vancouver and was soon attending mass every morning. Good enough even if close but no cigar.
My way of life was austere. I was living in a one bedroom basement apartment. I walked or bussed everywhere (still do) and since I couldn't afford vacations I would take annual retreats at a nearby monastery. Living close to God and serving Christ through caring for the most vulnerable people was the most important feature in my life (still is).
When I first came across this quote I did not have a clue to whom it was ascribed. It was in the window of a second hand store in Gastown in the neighbourhood I was working in. For four years from 1985 to 1989 I did home support in Canada's poorest postal code, aka the Downtown-Eastside of Vancouver. My employer was St. James Social Services Society (now St. James Community Services, and I believe that they have changed their name again.) It was founded in the early Sixties by May Gutteridge, an upper class English woman whom I had the privilege of knowing during my time at St. James. She is no longer with us and is likely up there somewhere comparing notes with Mother Teresa. Mrs. Gutteridge did have a rather old-fashioned, prosaic and classist approach to care giving and service providing, I'm afraid, and I'm not sure that she ever learned the difference between apostolic service and noblesse oblige. As a motto for St. James Social Services Society she chose a line from the seventeenth century Anglican hymn by (I think) John Dunn, "Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be."
That line used to make me gag (still does). I suggested to my supervisor the "We the willing" quote instead. Of course she wouldn't countenance it. It sounded too dreary, bleak and cynical, I was told. Of course I agreed, since I did rather want to keep my job, but I could only ponder how eloquently and accurately the saying portrayed exactly the kind of dance and struggle with burn out that I was feeling at the time after nearly three years of chasing cockroaches, wiping shit off walls, dodging fists, cleaning up feces and urine, delousing, taking care of the dying, sixteen hours a day on occasion and oh this so beautifully fit exactly how I was feeling and exactly what we were doing. Perhaps had it been already known that this was a quote by Mother Teresa it would have been accepted after all.
On a more positive note I also find in this quote what I learned and how I have grown doing this kind of work. Yes, I was very willing, spurred on by the love that God showered upon me, and I was being led by the unknowing since so much of this work was experimental and exploratory, commanding us to be relentlessly creative and courageous as each day we stepped into the abyss. Also, our various leaders and administrators really did not have a clue and we usually ended up having to do their thinking for them. I was doing the impossible for the ungrateful and somehow was still able to smile through it. This was also miracle work. I ended up perpetually doing so much, for so long, and with so little that I became capable of doing anything with nothing and this is an ability that I retain to this very day.
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