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Title: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light - The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta
ISBN: 0385520379
Author:
Mother Teresa
Publicate Date: 2007-09-04
Publish: 2007-09-04
List Price: $22.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $9.45
Amazon Merchant Price: $15.61
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Beautiful
The writings of Mother Teresa are nothing less than awe inspiring and emotional. The directness and open observations which she speaks so openly about may just inspire you to great things or improve your own awareness.
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2: an amazing walk with faith
If you ever wanted to have an idea what it was to walk the steps with Mother Theresa and find out just a fraction of what she suffered to keep her promise to God/Jesus, this is a window into her amazing journey. It is must read for all Christians and non Christians. If the world had just a pinky finger size of courage, faith and selflessness as Mother Theresa, I imagine the world could be a better place for all. Very inspiring!
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3: Worthless for Any Purpose
This book is terrible at all levels and not useful for any purpose. It's a horribly dull read, without any true narrative, and is so heavily edited as to be useless even for historical purposes. This book is little more than a selective collection, tied together by heavy editorial remark, of professional correspondence between Mother Teresa and her supervisors. I was led to believe by the hype preceding this book that it would 1) reveal Mother There's personal struggles with the existence of God, and 2) be a raw glimpse of Mother Teresa's personal writings... this book is dissatisfying on both counts, and fails miserably all around. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS MISERABLE LITTLE BOOK.
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4: A Sad Story of a Wasted Life
I have been absolutely flummoxed by reading this book.
Until I read it, I thought that Mother Teresa was a noble person who had devoted her life to helping the poor as a result of concern for their lives. What comes out instead is that she was an old-fashioned missionary who was out to get "souls for Jesus" and that the so-called charity was simply a way to worm her way into the lives of the really poor. She waxes eloquently about how the poor children are stained by "sin", which can only mean the medieval idea that they are damned by original sin until they accept Christ. In effect, she didn't see the poor as individual human beings with their own autonomy and spiritual worth, but rather as "soul scalps" to be collected for Jesus. I couldn't help be think that she was setting out to be some sort of weird Catholic vampire who haunted the slums of Calcutta to feed on the poor.
Another thing that was creepy was the extreme masochism of the woman. One of the phrases that sticks in my head is that her nuns should be "victims of love" for Christ. The voice of "Christ" that she related in her letters struck me as being an abusive man. The way he leaned on her and tried to "guilt" her into giving up everything for her vocation was eerily like the sort of thing abusers do to their victims. I couldn't help but think that a poor woman was being obsessed with her maternal instincts and projecting them onto Jesus. I was not impressed with her spiritual advisers, either. The only thing that they seemed concerned about was whether or not her visions and voices supported Catholic orthodoxy---not whether or not they were in fact wholesome for her psyche.
I've spent most of my life studying religious experience and am myself live the life of a religious hermit, so I take these sorts of life experiences very seriously. I am saddened by the way so many religious authorities are saying that this book shows some sort of exemplary life. (The idea that her despair was simply a long "dark night of the soul" is simply absurd. The dark night is meant to be a period of desolation followed by consolation---not some sort of life work. Most mystical traditions would instead suggest that her barren interior life was the fruit of the bizarre theology she had built her life around.)
It is a good book to read, but as a cautionary tale, not as a role model to follow.
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5: Mother Teresa
This book gives a great insight into the thoughts and struggles Mother Teresa had in hearing the call from God and trying to carry it out. Her generosity is incredible.
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