Concerning Mother Teresa, the Church is spinning all this as a sign of her sanctity. After all she persisted in her work, despite the fact that she was, apparently for decades, tormented by doubt: the "dark night of the soul" you know. As they say, thank Goddess, I am an atheist.
-- "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
>From: ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org>
>
>Carl,
>
>that is horrible news. What a shitty world we live in, on top of the
>indifference of nature. The other day, I was reading a series of
>articles on BBC regarding the partition of India and Pakistan. One
>was the story of some Muslim survivors, narrated by the lady of the
>family. She talks about how the Hindu mobs were rampaging through the
>neighbourhood murdering Muslims, and how she prayed for her life and
>that of her family. She felt that her faith in god had paid off, as
>she was sure it would. What a fucking joke, I thought, without
>intending to insult her in particular. There's no non-delusional way
>to positively spin these things, is there?
Nope. I was surprised about that recent news about Mother Teresa. I must say, I'd always thought there was something fishy about her, and I was inclined to lend a sympathetic ear years ago to Christopher Hitchens (now eternally reviled in my mind) when he was making those accusations about her being a sham, incompetent, etc.. However, I was quite touched to learn that she was so shaken by the sight of the poor and the dying when she arrived in Calcutta that she spent the rest of her life privately doubting God's existence and/or kindness -- e.g., a quote from one of her letters: "I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of the darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?"
Spooky! Like the conventional English tourist Mrs. Moore being freaked out by her sensation of the nihility of the universe on hearing the echoes of the Marabar Caves (which I gather are really called the Barabar Caves) in E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India." BTW, one quote from that book has always stuck in my as one of the most downbeat assessments of the human condition. It goes: "Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend." The life of the party was old E.M.F.!
Oh well, I think it was Samuel Johnson who said: "On the one hand you have philosophy; on the other, cheerfulness" :)
Carl
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