English Wordplay ~ Listen and Enjoy

MOTHER TERESA 1910-1997

What my human concept of prayer was, is not now 
what I conceive of as prayer.  What I could not conceive of 
then was that all souls are divine.

Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was an Albanian Catholic nun who adopted Indian citizenship

For over 45 years she ministered to the poor, first in India and then throughout the world.

She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

At the time of her death the order she founded, the Missionaries of Charity were operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counseling programs, orphanages, and schools.

The First Dialogue

PETER	Tell us about the choices that led to your vocation as a nun.
TERESA	I felt the best way I could take care of others was to be in a position that would not hold me in the world, no belongings, no family, so I would be able to dedicate my energy to those less fortunate.
PETER	Talk to us about prayer.
TERESA	When we pray we are tapping into our own souls, our higher God-selves, and the wisdom we have stored from previous experiences. Prayer is using our own abilities, with guidance from our spirit assistants, to use our freedom of choice to have our earthly experience.
PETER	Would you discount prayers to Mary or St. Jude.
TERESA	(LAUGHS) One who just sits and prays to be delivered is going nowhere.
PETER	Tell us about Jesus.
TERESA	He is a magnificent, loving energy, one who shows the way to allow your passion to take you from the physical back into the spiritual, while still maintaining the body form. He was the perfect teacher.
PETER	You said he had many lives. Do you know his name in any of them?
TERESA	He had many names. Abraham was one, Guatama Siddharta, the Buddha was another.
PETER	Tell us more about the Creator.
TERESA	All souls have divinity within, a little spark broken off the original energy source. with this divinity comes responsibility. That's why many people want the God source/Jesus/Mohammed to be outside them - so they don't have to take responsibility for their own lessons and enlightenment.
PETER	Tell us about Jihad.
TERESA	Mohammed intended Jihad as a holy war - not a war defending one religion against another, but a war within yourself to connect with your soul, and by so doing to connect with the entire universe.
PETER	Are Earth and her people reeling into chaos?
TERESA	The world is approaching a transition. A dichotomy is being created between those who are becoming their spiritual selves and those who are a left as a residue, mired in the third dimension, experiencing hatred, murder and destruction. Remember Jesus said: "Greater things can you do than I".

The Second Dialogue

Eight months after our initial dialogue in Mother Teresa: Come be my Light, we read her letters to her spiritual advisors, in which she describes how she doubted her faith in God and felt abandoned. We asked for another interview, which she enthusiastically agreed to.

PETER	You described your tuberculosis and your troubled mind, when in 1946 on a train to Darjeeling you heard a voice calling you to serve the world's poorest people. When did your turmoil start?
TERESA	It was a little bit there when I was a novice. I expected when I entered the convent to walk from darkness into light. My only impression of God was what I had been taught while growing up, of this person, this energy outside of us directing and caring for us.
PETER	You suffered doubt for about fifty years. You wrote of "the terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not existing". However was the fact that you kept calling on God a sign that you really believed in God's presence?
TERESA	Throughout all my work I could feel an energy when I was helping others. This gave me strength to do things beyond what a normal human being could do.
PETER	Many people are filled with longing, doubt and self-recrimination. What can you say to them?
TERESA	I say: "Go into your heart. Search for the unconditional love that is there. Latch onto that part that connects you to the whole, and then and only then, from within that love, evaluate where this particular human life you are engaged in is taking you."

Peter comments: Teresa's answer show a sea-change since she returned Home. The God, whom she chased "down the years and down the days", turned out not to be a person, let alone our judge, but the eternal Source, a myriad of whose detached fragments are the essence of all souls within the God-force.

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