In Search of a Christian

Chapter 3 of Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution is mostly about his time spent with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India. I don't feel like I can really even post about it... It's kinda like it would be 'kissing & telling' or something. I don't know. I think it's just something you need to read for yourself.

It is pretty "coincidental" that earlier this morning I posted something "momma t" had said, and I had no idea I was going to be reading about her later. Hmm.

I will give you a few quotes from the chapter:
- p. 71 "...it looked like some time back we had stopped living Christianity and just started studying it." Ouch!

- p. 71 (from Soren Kierkegaard) "The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly." Double ouch!!

- p. 78 (one Mother Teresa quote) "We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it."

- p. 89 In the last paragraph Shane says, "I learned from the lepers that leprosy is a disease of numbness. The contagion numbs the skin, and the nerves can no longer feel as the body wastes away. In fact, the way it was detected was by rubbing a feather across the skin, and if the person could not feel it, they were diagnosed with the illness. To treat it, we would dig out or dissect the scarred tissue until the person could feel again. As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?"

Yeah. While I was reading this chapter I kept thinking, "I need to go to India, or Haiti, or somewhere where there is much suffering." But after reading the last paragraph I realized... I am already in the midst of much suffering. There just might be more lepers here in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. Can we learn to feel again? I hope so.

Peace. Revolution.