Books, Secrets, Respites, Suffering, and Grace

Well, it's January 24th, and I just finished reading my second book this month. I think it's safe to say I'm off and running. The book I literally just finished I wrote about in a previous blog.Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg

I give it four stars. A couple of months ago,I met the author when he came to speak at the library where I was teaching an ESL class. His book is about a family secret his mother kept. After his mother died, the author found out that his mother had a sister that none of the children in the family knew about. The book's topic falls into the area my dissertation will explore--that of using writing as a healing mechanism. Here's a link to an excerpt from Annie's Ghost.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/anniesghost.htm

For anyone who has been part of family who has kept secrets (haven't we all?) this book is worth the read. Also, anyone who has a family member with mental illness and/or mental retardation will find the book insightful.

On a lighter note, my one and only favorite TV show premiered this past week. 24

Oh 24! How do I love thee? You are the only show I watch. In 2007 I discovered you. You rescued me from PhD coursework hell once a week. I trust you will also get me through the dissertation process. Your season premiere did not let me down. I feel energized. Save me from my dissertating misery. Give me a reason to go on each week. :)



On a more serious note, the whole Haiti crisis has me contemplating life. There's so much suffering in this world. So many people in well developed countries overlook the role suffering truly plays in life. When we have material things easily at our reach, and grow up in a culture that expects everything instantaneously, we forget, or choose not to notice, that the majority of people live in third world countries where poverty is a daily struggle.

I consider myself fortunate in that I have traveled to parts of this suffering world. I have seen horrible poverty upclose in places such as Mexico, Colombia, and Bosnia.

In Mexico I drove past cardboard shacks on my way to an idylic beach resort. I remember seeing little children playing outside these shacks. I wondered what happens to these shacks when it rains?

In Colombia I saw street children who were most likely addicted to glue standing on corners ready to reach into car windows to steal gold chains off of clean and shiny necks. And in a small Colombian shady airport I saw heroin addicts and prostitutes roaming the airport and in the airport bathroom there was a ghostly looking person lying on the floor. To this day, I'm still not sure if that person was dead or alive. What was really frightening was there was no one for me to go to for help. No one wnated to be involved. All I could do was pray for that person and get back to the plane. I have seen addicts on the streets in the US but something was much darker about these Colombian addicts. I also grew up in a home with a father who was an alcoholic and brothers who were addicted to drugs. I think the difference is that in this country you feel a little more hope where in poverty class driven societies that hope seems less available. Many third world countries are based on two classes--the wealthy and the poor. There's no middle class. So the poor and the addicted seem to stand less of a chance. There is not a lot of access to recvoery programs.

In Bosnia, I gave out food refugees. I'll never forget the faces of those people and the way they praised God as we came into their world for a short time. One thing I have noticed is that the biggest smiles I have received have come from the "smallest" people I have met. Small in the eyes of those who don't understand.

Mother Teresa used to say the worst poverty she saw was in the west which is surpsising since the Western world is wealthy. Here is an excerpt from an interview Mother Teresa gave:

"You, in the West, have millions of people who suffer such terrible loneliness and emptiness. They feel unloved and unwanted. These people are not hungry in the physical sense, but they are in another way. They know they need something more than money, yet they don't know what it is.

“What they are missing, really, is a living relationship with God.”

Mother Teresa cited the case of a woman who died alone in her home in Australia. Her body lay for weeks before being found. The cats were actually eating her flesh when the body was discovered. “To me, any country which allows a thing like that to happen is the poorest. And people who allow that are committing pure murder. “Our poor people would never allow it.”

And the teeming millions of the poor of the Third World have a lesson to teach us in the affluent West, Mother Teresa declared.

“They can teach us contentment,” she said, her leathery face gently smiling. “That is something you don't have much of in the West.

“I'll give you an example of what happened to me recently. I went out with my sisters in Calcutta to seek out the sick and dying.

“We picked up about 40 people that day. One woman, covered in a dirty cloth, was very ill and I could see it. So I just held her thin hand and tried to comfort her. She smiled weakly at me and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then she died. “She was more concerned to give to me than to receive from me. I put myself in her place and I thought what I would have done. I am sure I would have said, ‘I am dying, I am hungry, call a doctor, call a Father, call somebody.’ “But what she did was so beautiful. I have never seen a smile like that. It was just perfect. It was just a heavenly gift. That woman was more concerned with me than I was with her.”

Mother Teresa, who had a wonderful way of making you feel you were the most important person in the world when you were talking to her, told me of another incident.

“I gave another poor woman living on the streets a bowl of rice,” she said. “The woman was obviously starving and she looked in wonder as I handed it to her. “She told me, ‘It is so long since I have eaten.’

“About one hour later, she died. But she did not say, ‘Why hasn't God given me food to eat,’ and ‘why has my life been so bad?’

“The torture of hunger and pain just finished her, but she didn't blame anybody for it. This is the greatness of our poor people.”

Mother Teresa added: “We owe a great debt of gratitude to those who are suffering so beautifully. They teach us so much.” http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2009/s09100027.htm

Lately I have been thinking about a friend of mine who died a few years ago. Out of respect for privacy I will not mention her name. She was a model and married into a family that made billions from Austrian crystal. As long as I knew my friend she was miserable. She was anorexic, addicted to prescription drugs, and an alcoholic. All the billions, the clothes, the cosmetic surgeries, two lovely little girls,and parents and a family who loved her could not make her happy. She drove her porsche SUV off of a mountain top and three weeks later her husband put a bullet through his head. No amount of fame or money can heal the two daughters left behind whose relatives on the father's side are fighting over inheritance rights. What chance do those two little girls have? Every time my friend came to town she wanted me to go out with her. Over her way too many Kalhua's she would say, "You have nothing. How come you're happy?" Hmmm.

I'll never forget the date she died--Dec. 21st. I was away at school at IUP. I had distanced myself a bit from her because she had become too difficult to deal with and was always high. I found myself thinking about her. I told myself that when the semester ended I would email her. That day I said some prayers for her. On Christmas day I was getting ready to email her when I found an email from her sister to me. It told of the details of my friend's death and that she died on Dec. 21st,the day it entered my mind to contact her and the day I felt the need to pray for her. I hope those prayers somehow comforted her when she was dying. She had a big heart and was just a girl who got in way over head living the fast life of a model.




Ignore typos. It's way past my bedtime and I'm tired.

Peace,
MAM :)