>
> Yes. At the risk of spoiling Ed's point, I dare to forward it.
(blasphemy?)
>
> Yours in political discourse,
> Chris
>
> Mother Teresa's Message: "Poverty is a Blessing"
>
> -------------------------
> Via Workers World News Service
> Reprinted from the September 25, 1997
> issue of Workers World newspaper
> -------------------------
>
> HER HOLY MESSAGE: POVERTY IS BEAUTIFUL/ BEHIND THE
> RULING-CLASS RUSH TO MAKE MOTHER TERESA A SAINT
>
> By Sara Flounders
>
> Why have the major corporate media spent countless hours
> urging that the example and the message of Mother Teresa be
> followed? Why are so many of the illustrious people who are
> paying homage to Mother Teresa notorious for their utter
> disregard for the poor of their own countries?
>
> Then there's this: The media had predicted a million poor
> mourners would line the street. Why did less than 5 percent
> of that number actually turn out?
>
> Aren't poor people grateful?
Well, there goes Mother Teresa. I feel a little more humbled and a little
less pious. Fie, fie on her!
To be honest, I really don't know what the best approach is toward changing
the world, helping the poor, or whatever we are trying to do. I totally
distrust grand theories, ideologies and mass actions. All they seem to have
led to is a lot of butchery. I have personally put myself into situations
in which I thought I was helping the poorest of the poor to get a better
grip on their circumstances. I spent a month in a Sao Paulo slum a couple
of years ago helping to build a community center and nearly a month in
Jamaica last year working with the elderly poor. I don't know if I did any
good. I know that I felt a bit hypocritical sharing the food and
accommodation of the poor because I had an air ticket out and they didn't.
At home, my diet is not at all like theirs. Was I playing into someone's
hands? Perhaps, but I really didn't think about it much.
Unlike me, Mother T stayed in the slums. Should she be reviled because she
did not demand health care, pensions, a minimum wage, schools, unions or an
end to vicious caste discrimination against "untouchables, but sought only
to look after the destitute poor? Ever so many people are demanding social
change in the third world, mostly with little success. Mother T found a
niche to fill, one that few people seemed to want. Should she be condemned
for that?
In Jamaica last November, I met a number of people a little like Mother T.
One was a nun who was trying to run a home for some 80 destitute elderly
people, many with disabilities, on about $12,000 (US) a year. She did not
have time to demand health care, pensions, etc., because she had to spend a
lot of her week going around to bakeries and other food producers in
Kingston begging for food. She probably knew that even if she had demanded
social change, she wouldn't have got it. That is not the way Jamaica
operates. What you get depends on what you are connected to and who you
know (see my website: http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/jamaica.htm).
I also met Salvation Army people who worked with the elderly poor. Their
personal circumstances were much better than the nun's, but their days were
long, hard and emotionally difficult. I would not want their jobs. Again,
they were not activists for social change, but the lives of the people they
worked with would have been impossible without them.
By now you get my point. I admire activist provided they are not pushing
some grand ideology that is going to save mankind. If they are doing that,
I distrust them profoundly. But I also admire people like Mother Teresa.
It so happens that she was put into the spotlight, but ever so many people
like her work quietly away with little or no recognition.
Ed Weick
