Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale
Mother Teresa has been an irksome enigma to me and others. She was someone I wanted to extoll, but she had this reputation of rubbing elbows with scurrilous billionaires, and such. I'm sure she wanted to walk among both rich and poor, because all are equal here on Earth, if not in heaven. Like, I did not want to judge her as one might carelessly want to judge Mary Magdalen, supposedly a prostitute, or Jesus, a bicycle repair man.
That is why I, while keeping an open mind, kept her under study, when I could. And there were things which I learnt which indeed counted against her. I do believe that people may be capable of 'psychic' abilities, sometimes associated with empathy. But as far as her deserving Sainthood, I thought that she did not meet my standards, though her dazzle would probably make her eligible to the Catholic Church, at some point.
Along comes my favourite Pope ever, and he most certainly makes her a saint, based on two or more "miracles" which fall into the domain of conventional paranormal anomalies. Too bad there are SO MANY other people engaged in psychic powers, who will never attain sainthood because they never became famous, OR were never Catholics. I am not sure if any NON-CATHOLICS were ever made saints, but this will happen, controversially, one day, as it has been proclaimed that NON-CATHOLICS were capable of having their souls saved. I don't know about getting my soul saved, but I do know that my soul has gotten soiled, and I would be happy if it could just go through the wash. It has already been through the wringer.
Let me say that I approve of the Pope's beatification, for symbolic reasons. I don't agree with the whole idea of special sainthood, bolstering a religious institution and lazy personal responsibility. But, since the Church is going to do this anyway, I am GLAD that a person was chosen who's life appeared to be strongly devoted to the indigent and marginalised.
Well, I have recently heard that Mother Teresa somehow knew that, e.g., there was a flare-up in Bosnia, despite her never listening to the news, etc. Her little bird told her that she must go there, without special arrangements. She believed that a cease-fire would be called, allowing her and her cadre into the country, for their humanitarian work. This is what happened.
How did she know that, if so? Well, I know that one can never trust reports around legends - they balloon and snowball like gossip; they can be manufactured by opportunistic interests, etc. But, if this DID happen, it could have happened through shady avenues. For example, one of her nefarious billionaire patrons might have clued her in, and made the cease-fire arrangements. This is the sort of thing a George Soros would have done, with a more devious agenda, than a puppet nun. But I do not know, either way. I do know that such a thing IS possible, psychically.
That is why I do suspend judgment on this, and allow for the opportunity that the goodness and "sainthood" of Mother Teresa may be true and well-deserved. Or - it may not. After all, that is the way of Nature, to give over to each of us individuals the responsibility to collapse ambiguity, according to our own devinations. This is part of the universal process of emerging order from chaos.
Similarly, the TV networks always love to play political campaigns so that they end up being a tight, 50/50 horse-race, which garners them more money - but more on that phenomenon later...
OK - I said all this merely as a lead up to a wee jot of a note on Florence Nightingale. I will be posting an LJ entry soon about movies I have seen lately. One of them was a movie called, "Florence Nightingale," which I thought was made in this millennium - but it was a 1985 TV movie. Very powerful. Made me cry more than any other movie, as it touched on things which I strongly believe. If you like Mother Teresa, you will love this movie. Florence Nightingale has long been a hero of mine.
"Florence Nightingale" - 1985 - search (see trailers) -
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=florence+nightingale+1985+movie&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001 - (sorry if this does not work if you do not have Firefox(?))
That is why I, while keeping an open mind, kept her under study, when I could. And there were things which I learnt which indeed counted against her. I do believe that people may be capable of 'psychic' abilities, sometimes associated with empathy. But as far as her deserving Sainthood, I thought that she did not meet my standards, though her dazzle would probably make her eligible to the Catholic Church, at some point.
Along comes my favourite Pope ever, and he most certainly makes her a saint, based on two or more "miracles" which fall into the domain of conventional paranormal anomalies. Too bad there are SO MANY other people engaged in psychic powers, who will never attain sainthood because they never became famous, OR were never Catholics. I am not sure if any NON-CATHOLICS were ever made saints, but this will happen, controversially, one day, as it has been proclaimed that NON-CATHOLICS were capable of having their souls saved. I don't know about getting my soul saved, but I do know that my soul has gotten soiled, and I would be happy if it could just go through the wash. It has already been through the wringer.
Let me say that I approve of the Pope's beatification, for symbolic reasons. I don't agree with the whole idea of special sainthood, bolstering a religious institution and lazy personal responsibility. But, since the Church is going to do this anyway, I am GLAD that a person was chosen who's life appeared to be strongly devoted to the indigent and marginalised.
Well, I have recently heard that Mother Teresa somehow knew that, e.g., there was a flare-up in Bosnia, despite her never listening to the news, etc. Her little bird told her that she must go there, without special arrangements. She believed that a cease-fire would be called, allowing her and her cadre into the country, for their humanitarian work. This is what happened.
How did she know that, if so? Well, I know that one can never trust reports around legends - they balloon and snowball like gossip; they can be manufactured by opportunistic interests, etc. But, if this DID happen, it could have happened through shady avenues. For example, one of her nefarious billionaire patrons might have clued her in, and made the cease-fire arrangements. This is the sort of thing a George Soros would have done, with a more devious agenda, than a puppet nun. But I do not know, either way. I do know that such a thing IS possible, psychically.
That is why I do suspend judgment on this, and allow for the opportunity that the goodness and "sainthood" of Mother Teresa may be true and well-deserved. Or - it may not. After all, that is the way of Nature, to give over to each of us individuals the responsibility to collapse ambiguity, according to our own devinations. This is part of the universal process of emerging order from chaos.
Similarly, the TV networks always love to play political campaigns so that they end up being a tight, 50/50 horse-race, which garners them more money - but more on that phenomenon later...
OK - I said all this merely as a lead up to a wee jot of a note on Florence Nightingale. I will be posting an LJ entry soon about movies I have seen lately. One of them was a movie called, "Florence Nightingale," which I thought was made in this millennium - but it was a 1985 TV movie. Very powerful. Made me cry more than any other movie, as it touched on things which I strongly believe. If you like Mother Teresa, you will love this movie. Florence Nightingale has long been a hero of mine.
"Florence Nightingale" - 1985 - search (see trailers) -
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=florence+nightingale+1985+movie&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001 - (sorry if this does not work if you do not have Firefox(?))