Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love–and now become as the most hated one–the one–You have thrown away as unwanted–unloved. I call, I cling, I want–and there is no One to answer–no One on Whom I can cling–no, No One.–Alone … Where is my Faith–even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness–My God–how painful is this unknown pain–I have no Faith–I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart–& make me suffer untold agony.
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them–because of the blasphemy–If there be God –please forgive me–When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven–there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul.–I am told God loves me–and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
–[By Mother Teresa] ADDRESSED TO JESUS, AT THE SUGGESTION OF A CONFESSOR, UNDATED [Link]
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p>Upon her death in 1997 it was revealed that Mother Teresa had asked that her private letters and confessions to her confessors (apparently she went from one to the next like a person in search of the right therapist) be burned so that they would never see the light of day. The Church, probably recognizing Teresa’s importance as the holiest woman in the world, overruled her request. They were also aware that any surviving notes or correspondence might be a useful part of the background investigation needed for her potential Sainthood (which there now is). Those letters have finally been revealed to the public in a new book titled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. They are so startling in their rawness that many are now wondering if anyone really knew Mother Teresa. Time Magazine has a great dissection of the revelations in the book and indicates how Teresa might now become a saint to both the faithful and those who don’t believe in God.
On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one–the naked one–the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate…Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,–Listen and do not hear–the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me–that I let Him have [a] free hand…” [Link]
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p>Reading some of her confessions was deeply moving. It seems that the more success that Mother Teresa saw in her work in Calcutta, the darker and emptier her soul became, and the farther she drifted from the light of her God’s love. Far from being a “Saint of the Gutters,” she seems to use the perpetual darkness within her to drive her forward like some sort of “Queen of the Dammed.” Some theologians in the Time article use an analogy that describes her as a jilted lover who still carries a torch for a man (Christ) who she knows is never coming home to her.
How can you assume the lover’s ardor when he no longer grants you his voice, his touch, his very presence?… [Link]
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p>As you can imagine, these letters are a gold mine for theologians, atheists, psychologists, Nihilists, Existentialists, etc.
Psychologists have long recognized that people of a certain personality type are conflicted about their high achievement and find ways to punish themselves. Gottlieb notes that Teresa’s ambitions for her ministry were tremendous. Both he and Kolodiejchuk are fascinated by her statement, “I want to love Jesus as he has never been loved before.” Remarks the priest: “That’s a kind of daring thing to say.” Yet her letters are full of inner conflict about her accomplishments. Rather than simply giving all credit to God, Gottlieb observes, she agonizes incessantly that “any taking credit for her accomplishments–if only internally–is sinful” and hence, perhaps, requires a price to be paid. A mild secular analog, he says, might be an executive who commits a horrific social gaffe at the instant of a crucial promotion. For Teresa, “an occasion for a modicum of joy initiated a significant quantity of misery,” and her subsequent successes led her to perpetuate it. [Link]
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p>That last bit I highlighted has similarities to Hinduism, especially in the Gita where Krishna continually warns Arjun that even ill thoughts may result in bad karma. The central themes found in Teresa’s writings remind me a lot of some poetry by another “saint.” Especially her references to the dark night within her soul.
A night full of talking that hurts
my worst held-back secrets. Everything
has to do with loving and not loving.
This night will pass.
Then we have work to do.-Jelaluddin Rumi
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p>
It was when Mother Teresa finally accepted that the darkness would never leave her that she embraced it:
I can’t express in words–the gratitude I owe you for your kindness to me–for the first time in … years–I have come to love the darkness–for I believe now that it is part of a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness & pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a ‘spiritual side of your work’ as you wrote–Today really I felt a deep joy–that Jesus can’t go anymore through the agony–but that He wants to go through it in me.
–TO NEUNER, CIRCA 1961… [Link]
Of all of the quotes included in the Time article, the following one touched me the most. Although she did not realize it, what she was actually saying mirrored the central idea found in the Bodhicharyavatara, written by 8th century Indian scholar Shantideva:
“If I ever become a Saint–I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven–to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth,” she wrote in 1962. [Link]<
p>Theologically, this is a bit odd since most orthodox Christianity defines heaven as God’s eternal presence and doesn’t really provide for regular no-shows at the heavenly feast. [Link]
Compare this to the idea of a Bodhisattva:
Another common conception of the bodhisattva is one who delays his own entering into Nirvana in order to save all sentient beings out of his enormous compassion. He is on a mission to liberate all sentient beings, and only then will he rest in his own enlightenment. [Link]
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p>
It begs the question, was Teresa really a Mahayana Buddhist at heart? It shows you how human thought can ultimately converge on some universal themes.
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p>
But really, we shouldn’t know any of this:
Please destroy any letters or anything I have written.
–TO PICACHY, APRIL 1959… [Link]
Puli, That’s cool, then–just wanted to make sure the reason was scientific!
pl dont assume my reasons.
in my early teens i decided to channel that behavior into music practice and studying instead of drinkin.
muralimannered said:
Yes, but the really sad part about this was the people who protected these documents was the Catholic Church. They betrayed their promise to MT and published her accounts (who gets the money?). This is blasphemous–if anyone should rise above the call of sensationalism, it should be the church, no?
It’s pretty common to have this internal debate for even the most spiritual people. The excerpts do remind me of St. Augustine’s “Confessions” which when read in it’s entirety reveals how much a struggle it is for people on that path. Of course St. Augustine’s struggle was very different from Mother Theresa’s, yet the process itself, the same.
Does it detract from Mother Theresa’s legacy or minimize her in any way? Not at all.
isnt it nice that we dont waste huge sums of public funds on elaborate tombs and palaces today?
things we like = “true spirit of christianity”
things we dont like = “perversion of the true teachings”
we like mozart. therefore the melody was inspired by “spirits” no one has ever observed. if we dont like it, there were no “spirits” involved
Puli,
What total rubbish. ‘Scientifically based theories’ are, ultimately, based on some irreducible human perception/conception. Even if I just say ‘this is a blue chair’, I am acting on the faith that my perceptions do not lie. The newly discovered ‘hole in the universe’ has never been conceptualized before, but it will soon have a highly specialized name – and people like you will trot this name out to back up some ‘scientifically based’ theory, even though the name will still mean no more than ‘inexplicable hole in the universe’. The most complex theories are constantly evolving or getting chucked out the window because they are refuted by new evidence, and that new evidence is constantly found to be baffling until complemented by the discovery of still more evidence, which is itself baffling. The only difference between the quicksand of reason and the quicksand of faith is that faith, in our day and age, has less pretension (I’m not talking about televangelists, here). Ultimately, our eyes, ears, and microscopes are no more sources of certainty than an intuitive grasp of some divine essence is.
Though I am not religious, I resent the cheap dismissiveness that newly-minted, wet-behind-the-ears atheists trot out to bash religious types. It is so COMMON.
im a bit better than that. i preffer to do a bit of studying before i talk about such theories. am not arrogent enough to think i understand evrey scrap of science that comes out.
yes, but at least you can have your observations varified by someone else independantly, and measure te wave length of light that the chair reflects. not like your faith that doesnt really require any verification. you just need to believe.
now. im not claimaing that science explains everything. im just claiming that ddeciding you believe something doesnt explain anything.
i know. i wouldnt want to be COMMON. uggh. those filthy lowly common people.
That ‘independent’ verification is, presumably, always going to be conducted by another human being. In other words, we’re locked into a universe of human perception which, though internally consistent, may in itself be a vast illusion.
Hey, it’s as COMMON in the quadrangle as it is in the street.
dont get me wrong. im not claiming that there cant be a god. i just havent seen any evidence. one of my relatives claims to have seen them. religious people dismiss this relative as a crackpot. i dont see anything fnudamentally illogical about seeing a god. why would god be invisible, blind deaf and mute if they did indeed exist.
it at least accomplishes that much. same cant be said for most religious faith. peoples faith doesnt attempt to be consistant with anything. it doesnt need to be. you just need to believe
this sentence is beyond me. sorry. dont understand.
this is true. it might be, but there is no reason to believe anything else but our perception. our perception is the best tool we have for determining the nature of the world around us. our faith in spirits and demons isnt even based on perception. its based on nothing.
Puli,
If that is your criterion then mass faith ( Hinduism/Christianity etc ) abound in examples of places of worship where each believer finds independently a sense of peace/being close to God or whatever.
While you are not arrogant enough to state that you understand every bit of science that comes out, you are arrogant enought to use words like “arbitrary ” “nonsense” etc secure in the feeling that in this space its easier to declare yourself atheist than theist.
To argue that ” ddeciding you believe something doesnt explain anything.” is purposeless. It explains something to me – I don’t expect it to explain something to you. I would never dismiss your atheism – which is the product of your observation and your experience as nonsensical .You ,unfortunately, have no qualms about doing the same to belief /faith.
I am NOT a deeply religious person but I do get upset at intolerance of any kind. In the interests of not derailing the discussion from the original post, I follow Anna’s lead and bow out
at least science is an attempt to understand the world around us. religion doesnt even do that. it just gives up, and believes whatever you want without any evidence.
Maybe God doesn’t favour materiality. Who knows. No doubt there is a great leap of faith involved. I heard a radio address by Gandhi in which he said that he didn’t have any reasons to back up his innate sense that there is a pervasive divine power emanating from and through all reality. He just felt it and had faith in it. If you’re completely and utterly satisfied that the material world is all there is, then good for you. But the intuitions of so many great human beings can’t simply be dismissed with ‘yeah, but you have no proof’. It’s like saying to Van Gogh, ‘yeah, but don’t you think you should get a real job?’ There’s a stature and value to the person of great faith that can’t be dismissed with recycled arguments.
im not claiming that these people dont feel peace. its good that they do. im jsut claiming that that feeling can be explained without resorting to supernatural explaination.
(the sweet thing, is that i dont actually have blind faith in atheism. i dont even assume that god doesnt exist.)
well, sure. faith is not based on sense. it doesnt require sense. most people seem to agree with that. it is arbitrary cause you can believe whatever you want. im not saying arbitrary and nonsense are nessicarily bad things. i just try to avoid them.
im not inteloerant of faithful people. my parents are faithful. i strongly support peoples right to do whatever they want.
im not even claiming that faith in god is nessicarily wrong. there might be a god. im just saying that me believing in said deity whose charicteristics i assume doesnt make said deity exist. there might be a god. but, me saying “i believe that this god exists” doesnt magicly make it happen.
im out here…too much work today.
im off this thread. i never liked talking about this stuff anyways.
Do you think when the ODB changed his name from ODB to Big Baby Jesus, he was making a statement on the existence of god?
were you around back then? (if you dont mind me asking)
you get the active on the internet grandpa of the year award if you do….
were you around back then? (if you dont mind me asking)
Dude, radio addresses by Gandhi are extremely well archived.
You can find at multiple places very easily. AIR (All India Radio), Indian TV, British archives, youtube are some of the sources.
oh…..heard a recording. i was picturing some dude remembering the ‘good ol days’
Puli, I’m not sure that’s fair. I’m always surprised when people criticize religion as ascientific. Who said that the two need to conflict? For many religion is not just an explanation of phenomena, but also provides a personal ethical and moral code. I would never argue that Creationism (let’s call “ID” what it is) ought to be taught the same way as evolution, but I don’t see why the two can’t co-exist, or what that has to do really with MT. To be honest, something that has never really settled well with me is the level to which she is idolized and turned into a “larger than life” character given the religious ministration that also accompanied her service. More broadly I’m a little hesitant when it comes to development and social aid programs conducted abroad under the auspices of religious organizations because there is so much potential for abuse.
a can of worms not worth me opening. if you want to discuss that, we can do that off line somehow…
pindausa said…
I dont think so. Take this extreme example for purposes of easier illustration: If I was a caveman, even if I had all the civil liberties that you can imagine (and even more, if you’d like as there isnt even a law in that scenario :P) I doubt that a rational intelligent being would have the balls to be an “atheist” when he has no clue what the hell is going on around him… he hasn’t travelled too far, there is nothing to explain even the simple things around him… in such a situation, I would not readily dismiss being a little open to some miraculous superpowers as irrational.
you got the context totally wrong. I wasn’t talking about ‘coming out’ in the open with their atheism or anything… ‘atheism’ is not a fashion statement or even a way of life, at least the way I understand it.
Runa #95 said..
Of course I would dismiss them if thats what it deserves… tell me why you wouldn’t dismiss a faith in the flying sphagetti monster.. its exactly isomorphic to that.
And then DQ said…
Sure then. Stop reasoning when you dont believe in reason, which is pretty obvious. I wonder why you even need to semi- ‘reason out’ your faith like you did above.
Can I ask why you resent it? What does’new/old’ or ‘COMMON/UNCOMMON’ have anything to do with being rational other than on your fragile ego? (I say this because you keep alluding to things like ‘people like you’, ‘newly minted’, ‘fresh behind the ears’, ‘so common’, etc. in your ‘arguments’… instead of discussing the matter at hand… which I think is somewhat of a troll behavior btw) Also, I’m curious why you claim you aren’t religious inspite of all that you claim??
“we like mozart. therefore the melody was inspired by “spirits” no one has ever observed. if we dont like it, there were no “spirits” involved”
Chuckles. Spirits–you mean like whiskey? Or Caspar the friendly ghost? I think I used the word spiritual–it has a different connotation. Actually I don’t know if Mozart would qualify, but Bach certainly would. I think Ravi Shankar would but I have been told that his music is to authentic Indian music as Lawrence Welk is to the classics. Believe me, it is not because “I like it”; rock music kills plants. I’ve tried the experiment. There are forms of music the enhance the faculties and promote good brain functioning. Even the most hard core materialist can appreciate that. http://www.health-o-rama.org/superlearning/report2.htm
109 DQ
What total rubbish. ‘Scientifically based theories’ are, ultimately, based on some irreducible human perception/conception. Even if I just say ‘this is a blue chair’, I am acting on the faith that my perceptions do not lie.
–> Rubbishing others’ claims with rubbish of your own doesnt make the underlying issue go away. When ‘scientifically based theories’ get something correct, they are testable. If your perceptions lie and in the middle of the test for a blue chair, you blurt out ‘red chair’, they allow you to get away with it ? Last I checked, faith places a premium on such ‘divine’ interventions and sometimes, get you recognition from foundations(Like the one of Mr.Templeton).
The only difference between the quicksand of reason and the quicksand of faith is that faith, in our day and age, has less pretension (I’m not talking about televangelists, here). Ultimately, our eyes, ears, and microscopes are no more sources of certainty than an intuitive grasp of some divine essence is.
–> That our eyes, ears and microscopes formulate something testable doesnt make it different from ‘I feel it, so it has got to be true even if it cannot be tested’ things ?
And you are uniquley qualified exactly how to decide if it deserves ridicule or not?
Don’t muddy the waters by bringing in FSM when I was obviously responding to Puli’s ridicule of all religion including established and ancient ones like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and others.
Krishnan,
The tests themselves belong to the same universe as the things tested ie human beings perceived the categories of ‘red’ and ‘blue’, named them, and learned to associate other markers with them. If you read what I wrote above, I said we are locked within what is largely an internally consistent universe of perception. Just because certain things are testable doesn’t mean the tests reveal any objective truths. If there is a God, how are we to know whether he perceives the same chair to be blue? Just because we have little human tests that say it is?
Secondly, your point about the ‘red chair revelation’ testifies to nothing but your own rubbishy prejudices. Few great religious figures have such trivial inspirations. But to address the argument behind the prejudice – you clearly missed my point. No one is saying that human perceptions are hugely inconsistent or don’t generally obey certain laws. But do these laws reflect objective truth? Who knows. Since we can’t ever step outside our perceptions, we can’t say for sure. At least many of the faithful have the honesty to admit this. Gandhi simply said ‘I can’t give you reasons; these are my intuitions.’
Random,
Just as you can use a paint and canvas to undermine traditional art, reason can be used to show the limitations of reason. It’s been done ever since Descartes.
Puli,
I’m dusty but I ain’t that dusty.
qualified, just by being equipped with a brain that thinks reasonably, I guess…
Sorry, my intent wasn’t to muddy waters and I knew you were responding to pindausa. But you got me wrong. My point was, why should FSM deserve any less respect just because its not ancient? Is antiuity a canon of faith or sth?
I’m now out of this.
I’ll just ignore this because I don’t think there is anything profound in what you are saying here. If you disagree and want that statement to be taken seriously, please elaborate and be more specific. But I am still curious about the questions that I asked you in #135 about things you said earlier… (ie if you have answers)
I don’t mean to distract you guys from your captivating back-and-forth on faith vs. science, but getting back to Mother T…
Is it possible that she clung dearly to the familiarity and comfort of organized religion, and at the same time, fervently questioned the existence of god? She was clearly a product of the church and much of her language reflects that. She also kept all her thoughts to her letters to mentors/confessors. However, she describes a deep anxiety in being unable to feel or perceive a divine being. I gave the Time article a quick scan and came away with this impression. I could be wrong.
Really, Random, I’m surprised that as a lover of reason you want to pry into my personal belief system and the source of my ‘resentment’. How is any of that going to help you, except as fodder for the contempt you wish to show people who defend religious faith?
As to your absurd incomprehension of my statement above, I’ll spell it out for you (as your reason is clearly only skin-deep). Take a man who has lived in a prison cell all his life, a cell with one window. He has no interaction with anyone but another inmate in the cell beside him. (ok he has to eat, he gets a tray from a deaf-mute) Both inmates see from their windows that the earth appears to end at the top of a slope, above which the sky rises. The two inmates call the end of the hill ‘Earth’s End’. Then the first inmate asks himself one day ‘what if we were able to get out, and walk to that point, and found that it wasn’t an end – but the beginning of yet another slope?’. The other inmate says ‘tosh, heretic’. But the first one insists, pointing out ‘after all, we’ve never left this cell and can only see so far’. The cell is man’s reason. The inmate has used his reason to point out the limits of reason.
For the record, I’m impatient with knee-jerk religion-bashing atheists because they are the unthinking conformists of our era. Just as in medieval days, the mob would cry ‘heretic’ at someone unorthodox, so now people scream ‘religious nutbar’ at someone who refuses to provide ‘scientific reasons’. As for the industry of ‘scientific reasoning’, which has now descended to the level of tabulating exactly what type of jawline makes a man more likely to procreate, it’s so much fluff in our age: much of it is the equivalent of saying God invented the bridge of the nose in order to put glasses on. This point of view assumes the very point it wishes to prove – that there is a specific ‘reason’ for everything.
As for the industry of ‘scientific reasoning’, which has now descended to the level of tabulating exactly what type of jawline makes a man more likely to procreate, it’s so much fluff in our age: much of it is the equivalent of saying God invented the bridge of the nose in order to put glasses on. This point of view assumes the very point it wishes to prove – that there is a specific ‘reason’ for everything.
Hear hear! Equally suspect are the “scientific” (usually some variant of evol bio or evol psych “explanations”) for the reasons behind religious belief. I contend that the folks given to “explaining” religion and other human phenomenon are the myth makers of the age, much as Freud was in the twentieth century.
I missed this one. Excellent points, DQ! This Especially
resonates with me.
Yes, affectionado (#1), I will.
What on earth does this have to do with your mention of Rene Descartes, the French mathematician or even jesus, for that matter. And your analogy is not a good one, to say the least. At best you are regurgitating some kind of a metaphysical argument on the uncertainity about the nature of reality and stuff. It hardly makes a case to explain why dismissing a belief in some jesus christ who has control over human beings, is absurd. (Well, as an aside, there is an interesting argument providing the first ever non absurd argument for the existance of a controlling power over the reality as we see it, in this paper called the Simulation argument of Nick Bostrom for those of you with mental resources to follow it. Its a very cogent and rational argument although it is infamous in some intellectual circles for various random reasons.)
Actually, I think we are not there yet, because atheists are still a minority except probably in the academic and intellectual circles.. The masses are still mostly religious but it sure will change over the next few hundreds of years, assuming some doomsday catastrophe doesnt cause extinction. And conforming is not a bad thing in itself, btw. You assessment of what is worhty seems to value ‘being unique’ just for the heck of it. (I think I can see one of the reasons why you said you are not religious either, but nvm :P)
Pinda, I don’t want to argue about it. Just saying that I don’t think it’s fair/accurate to malign all religion or all religious people as somehow unscientific or illogical. Enough of that, though, and back on topic.
Could someone with a background on the subject please break down how sainthood works, for me? My only reference point is the explanation in The Saint, which I somehow doubt is accurate. I’m just curious 🙂
The masses are still mostly religious but it sure will change over the next few hundreds of years, assuming some doomsday catastrophe doesnt cause extinction.
As the British philosopher John Gray quips : the true people of faith, the fundamentalists, are the atheists :-). Perfection, nay, utopia, will yet come — God(lessness) on Earth!
Please, let’s just move past the atheism discussions. For the love of … oops.