Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me about Meaningful Work and Service
"Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are. . . . You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see." —Mother Teresa\ Lifelong educator Mary Poplin, after experiencing a newfound awakening to faith, sent a letter to Calcutta asking if she could visit Mother Teresa and volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity. She received a response saying, "You are welcome to share in our works of love for the poorest of the poor." So in the spring of 1996,...
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"Mary Poplin's chronicle of her volunteer work with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta provides an inside glimpse into Mother Teresa's life of service to the poor. Transformed by the experience, Poplin discovered how all of us can find our own places of meaningful work and service." Graham Christian - Library Journal For better or worse, Mother Teresa of Calcutta has become the contemporary world's model of piety and sanctity, arguably more visible and accessible even than the Pope. So it was all the more unsettling when Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta(ed. by Brian Kolodiejchuk) revealed that her life was one of miserable struggle against "the dark night of the soul." Dominican Fr. Murray (The New Wine of Dominican Spirituality) offers a brief but sincere effort, from a devout Catholic standpoint, to make sense of the disturbing revelations. He admits that her perseverance in devout love of God and her fellow creatures in spite of her sense of abandonment is a "mystery" but suggests that the answer may lie in her letter to a friend: "Darkness may cover your soul...but be happy it is like that-for that too is the living proof that He has accepted you."Poplin (education, Claremont Graduate Univ.), who spent two months in 1996 as a volunteer for Mother Teresa in Calcutta, combines a peek inside daily life at the Missionaries of Charity, an oblique account of Poplin's own movement from disbelief to piety, and a call for the integration of Christian perspectives in the modern academy. These important books, Murray's in particular, go far toward reclaiming Mother Teresa from the status of contemporary stereotype of religious commitment. For most collections.
Introduction: Telling the Truth About Mother Teresa\ 1. Getting There\ 2. A Day in the Life of a Missionary of Charity\ 3. A Pencil in God's Hand\ 4. Whatever You Did for the Least of These, You Did for Me\ 5. The Church as Flawed and Finite\ 6. Do All Things Without Complaining or Disputing\ 7. It All Belongs to God\ 8. There Is Always Enough\ 9. The Vow of Poverty and Service to the Poor\ 10. The Vow of Obedience\ 11. The Vow of Chastity\ 12. Small Things with Great Love\ 13. Prayer Is Our First Work\ 14. The Missionaries and Miracles\ 15. If We Say We Have No Sin, the Truth Is Not in Us\ 16. Here God's Grace More Abounds\ 17. Sometimes We Get Lost When We Look at Numbers\ 18. Don't Give In to Discouragement\ 19. Mother Teresa's Dark Night of the Spirit\ 20. The Humor of Mother Teresa\ 21. Spreading the Fragrance of Christ\ 22. It Matters Not, He Is Forgiven\ 23. Fighting Abortion with Adoption\ 24. Give Until It Hurts\ 25. Revolutionaries for Love\ 26. Mother Teresa and the Body of Christ\ 27. The Uniqueness of Christ\ 28. Leaving Calcutta\ 29. Finding Calcutta\ 30. My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts Epilogue: Fall More in Love with Jesus Every Day
\ Kelly Monroe Kullberg"A profound journey of the heart, head and hands in which Mary Poplin discovers her own 'Calcutta'—the classroom with its students in whom seeds of life must be sown for the life of the world to come."\ \ \ \ \ Christopher L. Heuertz"Mary Poplin's pilgrimage of discovering Christ among the most vulnerable of the world's poor is an accessible and inspiring invitation to us all. Her honesty, thoughtfulness and reflections are an important provocation for those who find their realities separated from our sisters and brothers who suffer today. Mary does an excellent job of building the bridges between the insulated and isolated lack of experience of poverty in academia and the oppression and injustice on the streets of one of the world's poorest cities. Her interactions and stories of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity are a true glimpse of grace and a sweet reminder that God is with and among those who suffer most. Honest, thoughtful and reflective, Finding Calcutta will challenge you to love more freely where you find yourself."\ \ \ James A. Herrick"Mary Poplin's spiritually nurturing account of her experiences with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta is a loving portrait of a true work of God. In these pages readers encounter Mother Teresa's deep spiritual wisdom as a call to reflection, repentance and a renewed concern for 'the poorest of the poor' as bearers of Christ's image. There is spiritual refreshment here for believer and doubter alike."\ \ \ \ \ James W. Sire"Mary Poplin found her first Calcutta in India as she volunteered in Mother Teresa's ministry to the poorest of the poor. She found her second Calcutta in her own university as she returned to recognize that the poorest of the poor are not always those with no material wealth but those with no knowledge of God and nowhere to find it. The story of her transformed spiritual life segues beautifully into the story of her transformed academic life. An exciting book of great wisdom."\ \ \ \ \ Phyllis Tickle"In this poignant, elegant, humble memoir, Poplin gives us far more than Mother Teresa or even another Mother Teresa story. She gives us instead the Jesus and the Christianity that operated through Mother Teresa. Poplin's experience of finding Calcutta irrevocably changed her soul. It will change yours as well."\ \ \ \ \ C. John Sommerville"If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be a worldly California academic curious enough to volunteer in Mother Teresa's Calcutta Mission, prepare to be surprised. After struggling to translate her experience there for a secular audience, Dr. Poplin has ended by translating her readers into Mother Teresa's own unfamiliar, spiritual dimension. Watch out—you will not be able to keep from meditating."\ \ \ \ \ Albert Haase"Having been the spiritual director of the Missionaries of Charity in Asia for many years, I read Mary Poplin's book with keen interest and fond memories of these remarkable women. Finding Calcutta is a love story between God and two women, Mother Teresa and the author. In describing her encounter and the lessons learned with 'God's pencil,' Mary Poplin has penned 'something beautiful for God.' This book not only captures the spirituality of Mother Teresa and her sisters but also reminds us of an important principle in spiritual formation that God taught its author: our own Calcutta is most often right smack where we are."\ \ \ \ \ Father"Mary Poplin seeks to integrate her experience with Mother Teresa into her work and life and to come together with others who hunger and thirst. This book can be a platform to gather those of us so disposed so that the flame is not lost and will continue to produce abundant fruit, fruits of eternal life."\ \ \ \ \ Dallas Willard"Mary Poplin takes us on a pilgrimage toward clarity about who we are and what our life amounts to. The pilgrimage is simultaneously through Calcutta and through the heart of the 'sophisticated' dynamics of university life in America. As it proceeds we gain a better understanding of the social forces that govern the university in the name of intellect—but falsely so. It will be of special help to those engaged in academic life, at whatever level. They will find here a guide who has been grasped by God and enabled to see that life and the surrounding cultural world for what they really are, and what under God they could be."\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalFor better or worse, Mother Teresa of Calcutta has become the contemporary world's model of piety and sanctity, arguably more visible and accessible even than the Pope. So it was all the more unsettling when Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta(ed. by Brian Kolodiejchuk) revealed that her life was one of miserable struggle against "the dark night of the soul." Dominican Fr. Murray (The New Wine of Dominican Spirituality) offers a brief but sincere effort, from a devout Catholic standpoint, to make sense of the disturbing revelations. He admits that her perseverance in devout love of God and her fellow creatures in spite of her sense of abandonment is a "mystery" but suggests that the answer may lie in her letter to a friend: "Darkness may cover your soul...but be happy it is like that-for that too is the living proof that He has accepted you."\ Poplin (education, Claremont Graduate Univ.), who spent two months in 1996 as a volunteer for Mother Teresa in Calcutta, combines a peek inside daily life at the Missionaries of Charity, an oblique account of Poplin's own movement from disbelief to piety, and a call for the integration of Christian perspectives in the modern academy. These important books, Murray's in particular, go far toward reclaiming Mother Teresa from the status of contemporary stereotype of religious commitment. For most collections.\ \ —Graham Christian\ \
