March 12, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service
by Mary Poplin
In 1996, Mary Poplin, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University, in California, worked for two months as a volunteer alongside Mother Teresa, with the religious order Missionaries of Charity, in Calcutta. The book chronicles her experiences there, and the lessons she learned from Mother Teresa about volunteerism, religion, and philanthropy.
In one chapter, “Give Until It Hurts,” Ms. Poplin recalls the sometimes impractical gifts that donors sent, such as clothes “completely unsuited for Calcutta.”
“Privileged people can be quite impractical in places where they do not know the land or the people. Money is usually the best gift,” she writes.
Ms. Poplin, who became a born-again Christian three years before her trip to Calcutta, says the experience furthered her education in Christianity and its application to day-to-day life. In the chapter “Do All Things Without Complaining or Disputing,” she recalls how three visiting volunteers from Europe, who tended to have a bad attitude about the work, stood out in stark contrast to Mother Teresa and the other nuns, who would say positive things or nothing at all.
Publisher: InterVarsity Press, 430 Plaza Drive, Westmont, Ill. 60559; (800) 843-9487; fax (630) 734-4350; email@ivpress.com; http://www.ivpress.com/; 222 pages; $15; ISBN 978-0-8308-3472-3.
