----- Original Message -----
From: Edward R Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Christoph Reuss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2000 7:54 PM
Subject: Re: Mother Theresa (was Re: productivism vs. productivity)
> > > 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.
> > >
> >
> > *Here* is one focus of my questioning: In what ways are these
> > "anonymous" individuals like and in what ways are they unlike
> > Mother Theresa? Obviously this is a task for Sociology PhD
> > dissertations and other scholarly research.
>
> I have never met Mother Teresa, nor am I a PhD sociologist, so I'm at a
> disadvantage in trying to think about this. What turns people who work
> anonymously with the poor on would likely vary from person to person. She
> would have been about forty, was an attractive woman and a very spiritual
> one. She never proselytized, never tried to save your soul, and was
> extremely busy. As well as trying to run her home for the elderly, she
> taught at a seminary.
Sorry, I left out a sentence here. My reference in the above paragraph was
to the Jamaican nun.
> She stands in marked contrast to missionaries I worked with in Brazil.
> Their major purpose, if not their sole one, in building their community
> center was to bring people in so that their souls could be saved. You
could
> not come within ten feet of them without being preached at. While you
might
> quarrel with them (I did, much of the time), you couldn't really condemn
> their work. A community center of the kind they were building was badly
> needed and many good things were happening there (day care, rummage sales,
> English class, helping kids get an education, etc.).
>
> > My idea? I'll repeat "the secret of doing good
> > psychotherapy" which a therapist once told me:
> >
> > To do good therapy,
> > One needs to be well-paid and well-laid.
> >
> > When all of a person's own needs and aspirations are
> > "richly" fulfilled, then they can unambivalently
> > turn to helping others, for it will no longer be
> > a "zero-sum" game:
>
> It would seem to depend on the nature and size of those needs and
> aspirations. My nun did not seem to have many material needs. I can't
> comment on her spiritual needs. Whatever they were she kept them private.
> Not so my missionaries. They had a large and loudly proclaimed need for
> saving souls, millions of them if they could.
>
> Ed Weick
>
