Thursday May 27, 2010
Mother Teresa in Skopje
Mother Teresa was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje on August 26, 1910. Today I went to visit the Memorial House of Mother Teresa. The Memorial is build on the site of the old Sacred Heart of Jesus Jesuit Church where Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu was baptized the day after she was born. The memorial is a simple place inside with a few of her personal effects -- the bed from her childhood home, the sari she wore as a Missionary of Charity, her rosary beads, her hand written prayer book, many pictures of her with Popes and Presidents, a picture of her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and others of her working and praying with her fellow sisters in Kolkata (Calcutta). The handwritten draft of the Constitution and Rule of The Missionary Sisters of Charity that she wrote down in 1946 is there. On the roof of the memorial there is a small light filled chapel.
Seeing her original hand written thoughts, her vision of the life she felt called to live, was very moving. These movements, these great realities that take form in the world, begin in the imagination, in the heart, in the soul, on a piece of paper and then they find their way into form in the world. She was seeing her vision and putting it into words. Then it became the life of going out into the streets of Kolkata and caring for the sick and dying, one by one. Then it became a religious order of sisters and brothers around the world serving the "poorest of the the poor." This great life began in her imagination -this is where the voice of God is heard. The Inquisitors attacked Joan of Arc dismissing her vision with, "This is all in your imagination," to which she replied, "That is how God speaks to us." I believe it was Kurt Vonnegut who once said , "We are what we imagine ourselves to be, so be careful what you imagine your self to ber." It all begins in the imagination, First the dream image in the night and then the day world of struggling to live it out.
As I said in an earlier blog entry, this trip to Macedonia is a return to the roots of Magicians Without Borders. A return to where it began. A return to where it was first only a glimmer of a vision, a slowly forming dream that had not yet emerged from the dark. That would happen months later. I am amazed when I think that we have now performed for 400,000 refugee and orphan children these last nine years. What was an image in my heart has become a reality in the world. There is something amazing about that at the moment. Being amazed at the hand written constitution of Mother Teresa's was about this mystery and magic of the imagination -where do those images come from and why do some of them take form in the world and some of them, many of them, wither on the vine or die in the dark.
I need head off to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to finalize the details for some performances in Roma refugee settlements over the next few days. I will end with a couple of quotes from Mother Teresa, so simple they could be dismissed:
Do not wait for leaders, do it yourself, person to person.
Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love,
a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things
with great love.
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