One can be a mother, a nurturer, a creator, a mentor, without children. I was just thinking about this since Mother's Day is upon us & I have been interviewing candidates for our training program, one of whom credited his single mother as his example of selflessness, compassion for all living things, resilience, and devotion. My mother exemplified those strengths, too. We (as did she) all have faults. I have lost count of the times I have kicked myself for my actions, my lack of action, my words, and more. But we all have so much potential for good, each of us with individual strengths, and I believe that when we know them and set them free, they usually outweigh the sum of our weaknesses. That is the paradox and beauty of being human.

One of my long time heroes (I have accumulated quite a few) has been Mother Theresa. Everyone knows her selflessness, her compassion, her devotion to the poorest of the poor, her love and faith in the human spirit. During her life, although she lived in austerity as a nun in Calcutta, she was treated like a world leader by many with far greater worldly power than this lady of petite build. She was the face of kindness, the closest many would imagine a lady could be to God during life.

Last year, I read a lot of disappointed and surprised commentary surrounding the publication of her private diaries. In her own words, Theresa described a life of despair and desolation, of self-doubt and disbelief, of searching for her meaning. Many questioned her faith, and some went so far as to mock her as a hypocrite. I can't. She is closer to my heart than ever to me.

Now, I have to give some perspective here, and it applies ONLY to me, because I am no one's spiritual authority but mine. I don’t know everything, everybody's brain is wired differently, and spirituality is different to everybody. A few years ago, I finally gave up trying to fit into Catholicism and to believe that there is only one path to wherever I am supposed to be going. I no longer have to believe there is anyplace to "go" other than here, nor that anything can be any more beautiful and precious than this ephemeral moment, right now. I still hear from friends and family that doubt is wrong. Some turn to strict rituals or pray for a "hedge of protection" from the "temporal world", in order to shore up their belief and banish doubt. With love and respect for them, it just never worked for me. I thought that if a believer is truly faithful, he or she has no reason to fear doubt. I never was afraid to doubt God. To me, he was my loving father, and I could question him and still know that I could come home. So I kept asking why. And why. And why. And each time over years, I got closer to my belief that there is no reason why, and as far as I could discern, the only one listening to my prayers was me. My life only had whatever meaning I imbued it with. For me, it became profoundly freeing and empowering. It was and is joyful, because I found the freedom and courage to be myself instead of something I was not. To pursue the common truths in many spiritual paths. The meaning of life, I have decided, is to live it fully, to give of myself to the greater good, and to leave the world with more positive effects of my passing than negative ones. That’s it. Covers a lot of ground.

Back to Theresa. She felt had lost God. But she had also become a living icon of faith, which was quite beyond her understanding given what she felt in her most secret thoughts, and I can’t imagine the torturous burden she lived under. She had had the faith to permit herself doubt, and once she had reached the end of “why?”, she was tormented that she saw no way back. Yet in spite of her desolation, this small woman of no means and great doubt just kept going. She kept giving when she could have just left and let the world say what it would. She stayed on the path she had chosen even when she did not feel the presence of the God in whose name she did it, even when the need she saw around her was far beyond her ability to fill, even when it all seemed a cross too heavy to bear. I think it was because in spite of her loss of faith, she knew on a deeper level that what she believed about God was less important than her service. She loved those she served more than herself, enough to push through her own despair to reach them. She accepted that her suffering was less important than theirs. Her title of “Mother” was most fitting, because she was the essence of “mother” to everyone around her, and to those she never knew whose lives she enriched by her example. The paradox of Theresa’s “hypocrisy” endears her the more to me, because it shows us her human heart, it makes her as “real” any one of us, and it brings home what real power just one imperfect person can wield in the world. Theresa, to me, had the deepest faith of all. In the greater good. In humanity. In One Love. She did not have to wonder what Jesus would do. She did it.

Happy Mother’s Day, dearest and most blessed Theresa, mother to so many.

Happy Mother’s Day, and much Love, to mothers of all kinds.