I had the occasion to see Mother Teresa: In the Name of God’s Poor last night. Just in reading a review of it on IMDB made me realize the volumes I don’t know about her. Interestingly it was released the year she died 1997 (born 1910, Albania). Geraldine Chapman portrayed her in this version. 90 minutes is a little slim to cover someone who changed the world (or at least a large portion of it). Protestants always like to charge that “she didn’t get to the root causes of the poverty“. Well that’s kind of obvious isn’t it? The Indian government, Hinduism and Islam. Mystery solved! Those are the 3 ingredients of that recipe.

Sister Teresa was going along all nice and sheltered in her Order in 1946 India teaching geography in a girls school for India’s well-to-do. Riots have interrupted food deliveries and the Sister ventures outside the walls to obtain food for “200 hungry girls”. So starts a journey led by God where she sees a crying need going unaddressed. She has to fight the Archbishop, she has to fight the government, she has to get past the anger and resentment of the people themselves. But the bottom line is this 36 year old nun got something started.

She has 1 year to show what she can do. Working with no resources, she begins. And miracle of miracles she get’s it going and is allowed to start her own Order devoted to the poor. Ironically, 1947 is also the year the United Nations got going. She takes 5 loaves and 3 fishes and feeds millions. They take in billions and do nothing. See the difference? To this day its private charities working on the microloans, providing water, food, livestock to raise, clothing. And the United Nations does what?

Little by little the successes start to build, and by 1962 the world is really starting to take notice. During that time one of the most glaring examples of death by bureaucrat is when she tries to turn this vacant building into a hospital. A building literally doing nothing and they don’t want to give it to her! 30 years go by and she wins the Nobel Prize (she asks that the extravagant awards night banquet be cancelled and the money given to the poor).

The purpose of this post isn’t to be a biography on Mother Teresa. It isn’t to be a review of the movie. Its to try and get past something I don’t have a word for. I see it all the time in many areas of life. Its this “can’t do” attitude. Its this “it will never work” mindset. 1 woman did a lot to change the world. No PHD in Do-good-ery, no billion dollar budgets, just a willingness to give it a shot. The attitude of “we’ll try this, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else”. People, before something new is tried, always seem to expect exactitude. Why? Its new territory, it hasn’t been done before. Roll with it. Something is better than nothing.

That’s my point. Doing nothing will certainly fail, try something. As simple as that sounds, it is a major roadblock with people and bureaucrats everywhere. If its not done their way they take their ball and go home. They get in a snit about this or that. “You wouldn’t listen to me!” Or a myriad of other excuses not to get off your ass and do something! Being a man of action I never have understood human ‘anchors’. Those people who will fight extremely hard to do nothing. Its just a mindset I can’t understand.

I remember walking by the river down in Des Moines last year at the end of November. I came upon the tents of 2 homeless people. Its 28 degrees and getting ready to snow. A rather desperate situation. I go to the Hy-Vee 4 blocks away and get 2 – $25 gift certificates. I walk up to the tent where some noise has come from. I say, “Hello in there!” I hear a response. I say, “I got a couple of Hy-Vee cards for you and your neighbor.” He tells me she’s gone at the moment. I say, “Well, can you be sure she gets it?” He assures me he will and a hand comes out of the tent to take the 2 cards. A hand with a nasty sore that’s been there awhile.

“He’s going to keep both cards!” He might. “He’s going to use them to buy booze!” He might. But its a shot. There’s no perfect solutions to people living down by the Des Moines River or in the slums of Calcutta. Life don’t work that way. Teach them to fish after you’ve stopped the hunger. After you’ve stopped the bleeding. Then take ’em fishing. Get ’em a pole, a tacklebox, maybe a couple of lures. Can’t fish without a pole.

[Yeah, yeah I know. There’s a few million other aspects to her, to poverty, to the human existence, to sainthood, to Catholicism, to whatever it is you want to bitch about. But have you taken a small bag of groceries to a foodbank this month? There is a program in Ames called Food at First. They provide meals to the indigent. It seems that they have lost focus. It has come to be about recycling food, and not about feeding the poor. An interesting fact I learned about India a few years ago, where malnourishment is rampant, is the incredible amount of grain they lose in warehouses because they refuse to kill rats. Even a lot of liberal sources have admitted for more than 20 years, starvation is not for lack of food. Governments use food as a weapon, a means of control.]