Mother Teresa
I am not a religious person, or I think I'm not. that is, mostly I think I'm not, and once in a while I notice how many of my poems have titles that derive from religious times or events or conditions. who gave them those titles? why, I did! hm. but let's go with my normal myth: I'm not a religious person. and some of my heroes are religious persons. weird. who? Buddha. Gandhi. Mother Teresa. she wasn't born Mother Teresa, of course. like the rest of us, she wasn't born anything. her parents named her Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu and she grew up in Macedonia, a country in the Balkans. she became Sister Mary Teresa in Ireland when she was eighteen. she dedicated her life to charity, and meant that in the best way. she served people. but she was ferocious about it too. somehow she wound up in the Vatican, according to lore I learned, and was so critical of the then-Pope that he imprisoned her for several years, then freed her and banished her to India. wow! it was her life calling. her order of nuns established a school in the slums of Calcutta, a home for the dying destitute, a leper colony, an orphanage, a nursing home, a family clinic, and a string of mobile health clinics. as I understand it, she lived to be 87, and was busy to the end caring for other people. of course she collected probably apocryphal stories around her. allegedly a woman flew from America to work with her, met her, and Mother Teresa said, "Well? There's a rag, there's a bucket of soapy water, there's a couple of dozen tables that need to be scrubbed. What are you waiting for?" yeah, that kind of serving! I don't remember the stories of her compassion, but they were the ones which first made me wary of Mother Teresa. I'm a sucker for compassion. fortunately it's not a part of religions as I know them, so I remain safe. but thank you, Mother Teresa, for being the kind of human being we can all be proud of and grateful for.
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