"I'll just go with the sunbeam."
Saints can be problematic. Difficult. Wrong and distracting. They can lead away, even as they are heroic and inspiring and self sacrificing.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him/her.
This is how I feel about today's saint, since I can't avoid her. St. Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa. Who served the poorest of the poor, campaigned for money for them, got her hands dirty in the most graphic way, touching the untouchables.
And yet.
She was not sure in her own faith. She was not brave enough, or maybe imaginative enough, to buck her church authority and agitate for acceptance of real women's health care reforms, real societal changes.
Instead of getting these poor people systemic birth control and safe abortions, women's financial emancipation, education, job training. Real legal improvements that would last and continue through generations. Instead, she put on band-aids. Real ones, but, it all supported cultural inequalities and injustices.
Give a man a fish. She gave out a lot of fish, to her credit. To commit so deeply, and not feel it? Rather like a really bad marriage.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for an hour. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
-T. Pratchett.
Sometimes the worst we can do is make someone comfortable in hell, just enough so they won't do anything to get out. When what we really needed to do was give them a ladder and prod them more. Maybe that is what she needed, since she was certainly capable of immense courage and fortitude.
Sometimes, we need to ignore saints, and do it ourselves. Or take their direction, and go the opposite way with as much energy.
6 comments:
Indeed! Just because someone is a saint (however you define it) doesn't mean that what they do is right. You still have to make your own decision about that.
I know why Mother Theresa is criticised now , but no one wants to die alone . Sometimes little things are important , too .
Well said, Zhoen, but if she had defied the Roman Catholic Church there is no way she would ever be sanctified. So where does that leave us? You need a lot of money and all the right backers. I'm not going in for it myself. I also feel that it often should be the families and colleagues of saints who are considered for beatification.
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Gentle,
Just be careful who you admire, all I mean here.
S&S,
Little things are everything. For the comforts she gave the dying alone, she deserves admiration.
RR,
It's tricky, ain't it?
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