Mother's Doubts

I was happy to see Mother Teresa waiting for me in the mailbox a few weeks ago. There she was, on the cover of Time Magazine, not looking all that spunky though. The headline, "The secret life of Mother Teresa" surprised me. The article itself floored me. She, apparently, had a major crisis of faith. An enduring crisis that began with her work in Calcutta with the Missionaries of Charity and never really left her, except for a brief period of a few weeks when, for some reason, she was carried off into rapture. This means over 50 years of questioning the existence of God. In a series of personal letters, soon to be published in a book entitled "Come Be My Light", she refers to God as "the absent one".

Why does this story pull me in so? I am not a religious person. I have met Mother Teresa though. I, like so many people across the world, have helped in some small way, to further her efforts to serve the 'poorest of the poor'. In Vietnam, I bought bicycles for the sisters to ride to and from the Orphanage and Church everyday because the walk was too long. I procured plastic sheeting (table cloths of sorts) that was needed to put under the mattress-less beds that the poor, retarded, forgotten children in the orphanage used (they could not control their bladders and the table cloths could be quickly and easily cleaned). This experience, together with meeting Mother, links me forever to her cause. She really had an effect on me. I love her. Her failing faith does not threaten me like it may threaten some religious people- what she has done with her life is not diminished by her confessions of 'darkness'.

The day after this came out, I heard a piece on NPR by an Indian now working in San Francisco who recounted meeting Mother in Calcutta during his youth. He described her in all the typical ways: her simple sari with the blue fringe, her busy and devoted demeanor and her 'impossibly old' face (it's true that her wrinkles are so pronounced- they certainly were when I met her in 1993/1994), but the take home message about her 'faith' was that regardless of her internal doubts, she was able to inspire so many; her gift was the gift of faith to millions of people who believed in God because of her work. She was 'a living saint'.