Mother Teresa's Doubts and Angst

I purchased yesterday a copy of the latest Times magazine with Mother Teresa on the cover. The cover story is the about the new autobiography just released entitled "Come Be My Light" written by confidants of Mother Teresa. As many now know, the book contains a series of letters in which Mother Teresa wrote of her feelings of spiritual emptiness, spiritual dryness and a heart and soul bereft of comfort.

I have to say as I read this story and the descriptions of her many dark years, I couldn't help but reject all of the spritual "dark night of the soul" explanations that the Church and others are putting forward. Likewise I couldn't agree with Christopher Hitchens' (author of newly released book "god is not Great") assessment that Teresa had early on realized that the entire Christian doctrine was false and that she carried on nonetheless; a supreme hypocrite. These explanations don't meet the test of Occam's razor in my view.

No, what I came away with was the distinct feeling that here was a woman who was in the throes of a deep and prolonged depression. Her notes, her letters sound exactly like the thoughts and descriptions of flat and deadened affect that are hallmarks of clinical depression. She tells of feeling as if OTHERS have the love of God for them, that everyone is loved but that she, somehow feels cut off from all love, joy, acceptance. That also, is a classic sensation of depression.

What is amazing is that she carried on with her work, despite these emotionally debilitating, dare I say, symptoms? I have great sympathy for Mother Teresa, for I too, have had a depression lasting from 1995-1997 which I myself, attributed to a "spiritual" crisis. For two years I believed that I too, had been cut off from the Presence of the Divine and all that entails in the form of joy, relatedness, peace, vigor, love of Life etc. I tried to pray my way back, meditate my way back, read spiritual self-help books, went on retreats and so on. It wasn't until my doctor said to me "I have watched you struggle for two years, more than any other patient I've had, won't you now, PLEASE try some anti-depressants, just to see if they might make a difference?" I had been fighting him for two years because I was sure, dead to rights, that it was a SPIRITUAL problem and I did not want drugs. I just needed to be a better devotee! I just needed to pray harder! At this point, however, I gave in, because I finally was exhausted and bereft of any other hope. Within three weeks time, I was, as they say back to my "old self". I regained my appetite, I was sleeping well, I felt connected to my friends and family, I was laughing again, I was optimistic again; I was fundamentally happy. I said to my doctor "So all along what I was suffering was an imbalance in brain chemistry??!" He said "It looks that way, doesn't it?"
I took the anti-depressants until 2001.

I can't help but wonder, what would have happened to Mother Teresa had she seen a psychologist or a psychiatrist? Most likely she would not have accepted a medical diagnosis, as her entire frame of reference WAS of the religious and spiritual world.

It was difficult for me to accept the idea of being on anti-depressants, as spiritually inclined woman. At one point, in the beginning months I consulted with a minister in the Ananda Church to which I belonged and told her that it felt strange to be on drugs and if it was "unspiritual" to rely on them rather than on the Divine alone. She looked at me and asked "Do they help you to be a better mother? A better wife? A person who can function and be present in the world?" I nodded yes and she said "Then I would look on those meds as the bloody Eucharist! A GIFT from God to you!"

I wonder what Teresa's life could have been like, had she perhaps also had a similar "gift from God". At least long enough to notice that she was connected, included, and in her heart, at peace.