Dr Matt’s Newsletter April 2nd – “What would Mother Teresa do? Part 2”
Supporting healthy social interactions and diversity of health choices
This week I am sharing a bit more from the story of Mother Teresa. Last week I told the story of her spiritual experience where she was shown her purpose: to start a ministry for the poorest of the poor. This week she learns to be a “hospice nurse”, and faces ““tortures of loneliness” as she leaves her community of sisters to go alone into the slums of Calcutta.
Also, a reminder that the Parkway Classic run is April 23rd. We have a good crew of runners doing the 5K, including two families with small children who plan to use jogger strollers. What could be healthier than joining for a run on the GW Parkway? Please email me if you are running either the 5K or the 10 mile run, so we can organize a pre-race picture and post-race fruit banquet near my office. The run starts at the Mount Vernon mansion, passes six bald eagle nests, and ends in Old Town Alexandria near my office.
Here is a link to the race info.
Last but not least, part 2 of “Politics not as Usual” with recent interviews of RFK Jr and Joseph Ladapo.
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Yours truly, one moment at a time.
Matt Irwin
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Today’s newsletter sections include:
Humor and music of the Week – Racism is not funny, unless we can laugh a bit at ourselves as shown in the Broadway musical, “Avenue Q”. It is an opportunity to “Lighten up” about our shared human racist tendencies instead of amplifying suffering by trying to “cancel” them: the harder we try this the more we “cancel” ourselves...
Inspirational story from Mother Teresa’s biography, “To Love and Be Loved” by Jim Towey – Part 2.
“More Politics Not As Usual”: Some of my readers pointed out that last week I promised a video interview with RFK Jr where he talks about his plans to run for president, but I did not include it. This week I am adding in the latest interview with Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general for Florida, appointed by Ron Desantis who is another candidate for president. Perhaps you may see some similarities???
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Music and humor of the week – Avenue Q – Everybody’s a Little Bit Racist.
This very fun number below is also very insightful, and reminds me very clearly of Jesus’s words from Luke 6:39:
“Take the log out of our own eyes before we try to take the splint out of our neighbors' eyes”.
I cited this quote from the Bible on January 4th, the “Crazy” newsletter that covered a few predictions of doom that turned out to be false: This advice from Jesus to take the “log” out of our own eye is one of the wisest things we can remind ourselves of when we get fed up with the craziness. I am also a “little bit racist”, but at least I am in good company.
This musical is thought provoking and is mainly about a group of people all struggling to find their “purpose”. It is also a lot of fun! However, I do have a warning: think twice about seeing it with your parents or grandparents because it is rated PG-13++ with “muppet sex” on stage – a scene which his quite hilarious if you take it the right way 😊.
Do you think Mother Teresa had racist thoughts and tendencies? Was she “a little bit racist” like the rest of us humans? In my opinion, of course she was! No matter what color, gender, ethnicity, or nationality, no matter how wise, caring and compassionate, I am confident that racism is part of taking human form. However, as suggested by messages from near-death experiencers covered in prior newsletters, our spirits are officially “neutral” regarding race, gender, and ethnicity. These are aspects of ourselves that are dropped when our spirit is finally released, and with mindful inner work we can hold onto them a bit less tightly, even while we are still alive. But holding “less tightly” is not the same as eliminating them…
Fighting against these human tendencies in an angry way, including in ourselves, makes things even worse, and makes us suffer more. It is like trying to swim upstream in a fast moving river – it exhausts us and we work extremely hard to move just a few inches. So what can a poor little human such as myself do? My preferred approach is “Innerwork” such as being mindfully present and simply acknowledging my own racist, judgmental, and defensive thoughts when they arise, without judging them as “evil” but also not letting them determine my behavior. In a sense a form of “nonviolent resistance” that we can engage in, no matter what background we identify with. This will help us much more than pointing out the “splint in our neighbor’s eyes”. Let’s float downstream and swim for enjoyment rather than trying desperately to fight the current.
Making racism an “object of anxiety” and joining together in crowd-psychology fashion against it just makes a mass movement out of individual suffering. Trying to eliminate the “object of anxiety” often goes out of control as Mattias Desmet described in my newsletter on November 30th. He explains in detail, using both recent and historical examples, how harmful it is when millions of humans join together to try to eliminate “objects of anxiety”.
Although Desmet’s focus is mainly on events like totalitarian fascist and totalitarian communist ideology, where “bad genes” and “upper classes” were the objects of anxiety to be eliminated, his work also applies to climate change ideology, “super-microbe” ideology and “racism elimination” ideology. These days the preferred method of “elimination” is to “cancel”, censor, and/or label people as spreaders of “denialism” or “misinformation”. Sadly, for those engaged in these attempts at eliminating anxiety, they fail miserably, and end up even more anxious. Eventually the fingers end up pointing right back at the people who so busily pointed them at their neighbors.
One of the best antidotes to all this “craziness” may be a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh at ourselves a bit, as shown musically in Avenue Q.
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Inspirational story from Mother Teresa’s biography, “To Love and Be Loved” by Jim Towey.
Last week we learned how a much younger “Sister Teresa” survived the bloodshed and famine in Calcutta, and then on the train to Darjeeling had a mystical experience: she heard a spiritual voice that told her to dedicate her life to serving the “poorest of the poor”, and caring for the ailments of those in desperate need.
After working for 2 years to get permission to follow this vision, she went for training for three months from a group of nuns who specialized in treating the very poor people of India. “She received three months of intensive training and became proficient in treating infected wounds, leprous sores, dysentery, and other conditions common among street dwellers.” (page 43).
Does this sound like hospice work to you? If you knew hospice care as I do you would see that this is exactly what a hospice nurse’s work is like. That said, many hospice patients do not need very much help, because after coming home and getting quality care many people stabilize and even improve, at least temporarily. However, they are at high risk of deteriorating again, and as I often tell our patient’s families, “Your Mom/Dad/Sister/Brother is not getting any younger, and what happened last month could happen again any day.” A hospice team’s job is to help get through these acute events when they occur, if possible, and when they are not survivable to help people cope and maintain comfort and dignity as much as possible.
Back to Mother Teresa’s story, in December of 1948, she was finally ready to embark. She donned simple but very clean clothes, as she had seen in her vision. Her clothing seemed to be the most shocking to her colleagues. One of the women who later joined her order of sisters said “It was shocking to see her in this simple sari… Everyone was speechless.” (page 44).
Instead of telling them that Jesus had told her what to wear, she told people that if she wore a more traditional silk sari the poor street dwellers would spend their time begging from her instead of accepting her help! This is also a main reason she and her fellow sisters all swear a vow of poverty, even to this day. Even washing machines are considered signs of wealth among the people they serve, so they wash their clothes every day by hand. However, they readily accept gifts like bandages, medicines, food, and simple lodging for them and the people who need their help. In addition to offering to care for the sick, she offered to teach the children of the neighborhood. Soon “the five children who came the first day quickly became forty” (page 45).
One might think that because she had such a strong sense of purpose it would have been easy for her, but this is far from the truth. Did she suffer, at times? Of course she did! She wrote that she suffered ‘tortures of loneliness’ in the first few weeks on her own (page 46). However, she also had joys and comfort, especially as sisters came to join her, as well as brothers who also came to assist them.
Next week: Mother Teresa is not alone any more when the sisters she worked with and taught in the catholic girl’s school start to come and join her. Many stayed, but many did not. After all, we all find our “purpose” in different ways, something that is a main message from the musical, “Avenue Q”.
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