Dance Of Death

I was disappointed to hear how uninterested Mother Teresa was in social activism when I learned of her elevation to official sainthood.  She believed that following the gospel and being faithful to Christ through a devotional life dedicated to serving the less fortunate was all that was required.  She expressed absolutely no interest in movements towards social change or reform.  I did find this a bit saddening but it really didn`t surprise me much.  For all her saintliness the woman was also an Albanian peasant with little formal education to balance and inform her intense devotional life.  I suppose it could also be convincingly argued that with all the good she did in her ministry to the poor, unwanted and dying in Calcutta, and the huge influence she has had on others, was already enough.  It only takes a spark to get a fire going.

Mother Teresa was one of my early Christian mentors and for years, as much as I could, I tried to model my life around her pattern: daily mass (Anglo-Catholic as opposed to Roman): days spent in caring for the sick, unwanted and dying: devoting my life, my youth, everything, to serving and honouring my Lord Jesus Christ.  My life would still have been compromised in her judgment, I'm sure.  I did get paid for my work, if a low, somewhat lower than living, wage.  And I had no job security.  I also participated in social and political activism, against nuclear weapons and war, among other things.  For me, individual ministry meshed with social witness, as it still does to this day.

I am still neither surprised nor disappointed about her sainthood and to this day I regard Mother Teresa as one of my most significant mentors.

Last night I heard on the radio an interview with another of my mentors, Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities.  He was inspiring as always as he reminded us that the broken, unwanted and afflicted remind us very uncomfortably that we also are going to suffer through the trials of age and dying.  He emphasized the importance of becoming to one another true community and of how the evidently well and strong have much to learn from the weak and disabled.

I am thinking today of how far we still are from being a world that God might find worth preserving.  We are still governed and influenced by greedy, narcissistic, self-serving sociopaths.  We are still largely indifferent to our destructive and negative impact on the world, the environment and one another.  Despite all the scientific evidence to the causes of global warming and climate change and how we are already reaching the point of no return, the vast majority of human idiots insist on their entitlement to cars that pollute and eating red meat, which are among the greatest vectors of climate change.  Guns are still fired, bombs are still dropped, and refugees swarm into countries of safe-haven where they are not wanted.

I could go on.

There are still good, righteous and holy people in our midst.  Most of them are unknown.  They are the ones who keep the rest of us alive.  They are the ones who keep the world from collapsing  Without their love,  their prayers, their small and great acts of kindness I dread to think of where we would be.  We need these ones to put love in action and also to inspire and challenge us to do the same.  We need courage.  We need to learn to love truth.  We need to learn to love. 

I want to be one of those people, whose prayers and love keep the earth in orbit, the sky from falling and our humanity from destroying the earth, our mother, and ourselves.