Three weeks before resignation day! I must admit, it’s getting harder to write from the heart. I keep asking myself: “Do my readers want to hear about dream manifestation or healing prayer? Taking action? Overcoming fears or parallel universes? This is me. This is who I am and I just want to write my story. I had received great advice before I started this process: “If you want to reduce writer’s block, just speak and let your fingers take the dictation. Write for you and no one else. Your readers will make themselves known.”
I feel called to write about one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. She has been an inspiration to me and millions who look for greater and greater ways to serve. She had a moment that changed everything. The “moment” came on September 10, 1946 and the woman’s name is Mother Teresa.
Excerpts from Mother Teresa’s Secret Fire- The Encounter that Changed Her Life And How It can Transform Your Own by Joseph Langford, 2008, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing
Mother Teresa’s moment arrived while on a train to Darjeeling, India. She named this day, “Inspiration Day”.
“Somewhere along the way, Mother Teresa had an extraordinary experience of God. In her characteristic humility, she would refer to this life-changing experience as simply ‘a call within a call’, a call to leave Loreto and go into the slums [of Calcutta]. Only later would she reveal more of what transpired in her soul that September day, and of the extraordinary interior communications during the following year and a half, in which Jesus would commission her to ‘carry him’ and ‘be his light’ in the darkness of Calcutta’s slums.” Pg.21
“..An experience of such power and depth, of such intense ‘light and love’, as she would later describe it, that by the time her train pulled into the station at Darjeeling, she was no longer the same. Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become Mother Teresa.”- pg. 44
I remember learning of her death within a few days after my wife and I had arrived in Colorado, August 1997. I found it so divinely perfect that this humble nun passed away as quietly as she moved through life. Her death and burial was overshadowed by that of Princess Diana's. I have always admired the depth of her humility and hope to grow in its lessons. Mother Teresa did not allow this “Inspiration Day” moment to be spoken of until 1984. It was to be revealed within the context of a reason for her dedication to the poorest of the poor: to quench the divine thirst of God. Human Beings are not the only ones who long for a connection to the divine. The divine longs for a connection with us! A testament to the notion that we are all one disguised as many. Mother Teresa’s mission, which began on September 10, 1946 is best illustrated in her own her words:
“Poverty doesn’t only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity. We need to love and to be somebody for someone else. This is where we denied the poor a piece of bread, but by thinking that they have no worth and leaving them abandoned in the streets, we have denied them the human dignity that is rightfully theirs as children of God. The world today is hungry not only for bread but hungry for love, hungry to be wanted, to be loved.”- Mother Teresa, No Greater Love. p. 93.
The reason I exalt Mother Teresa is because not only did she listen to spirit and obeyed its calling, she did so without regard to the usual barriers human beings put along their path to service. All people, regardless of religion, social class and lifestyle deserve to be loved and cared for. It was a command from her creator. Through the words “I thirst”, the divine conveyed a need for her. The divine conveys the same need for us all.
I have no idea how best to serve. Discovering how best to serve is the bulk of my work. I make people laugh at work with my John Travolta moves, I try to stay positive at home and speak to my daughters about their limitless potential and to have no doubt- Santa will answer their letter. I try to write from my heart ignoring the inner critic who thinks all he is doing is inviting judgement, and help in any way I can. Yet it always feels drastically insufficient. Do I give enough money to charity? Do I volunteer enough of my time? It never feels like enough. My only hope is that I have found a new way to serve-through writing. Mother Teresa consistently did the impossible around the world. She overcame corrupt regimes, wars, political and religious obstacles by focusing on one thing: making the person in front of her feel better. If I can just focus on that and not on meeting Oprah, it will be a purpose driven life indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment