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Lives And Deaths: Miraculous Thoughts About Princess Diana And Mother Teresa

by Rev. Tony Ponticello

Hello everybody and welcome to autumn. I've always thought that autumn, because of all the back to school energy, presents us with a window of opportunity to conceptualize our lives beginning anew: our study, our spiritual practice, our health .... I think many people connect with this energy in the autumn and thus strengthen it. If we so choose, we can tap into it. It's partof the collective unconscious. I've written about this before, so I won't be going into it extensively this month, but I do want to put it out there so we all can feel it. See if you can tune into it's frequency. Open yourself up to the energy that says now is a good time to study more, to dedicate yourself more, to come up with goals and plans for your spiritual program and for all other aspects of your personal growth. Now is a good time to challenge yourself to think deeper.

There have been two significant life passages in the news lately that caused me to think deeper. I am sure you all know that Princess Diana passed on Sunday, August 31st and then on Friday, September 5th, Mother Teresa laid her body down for the last time. These passings, deaths, reminded me of how we focus on these body events and, as the A Course In Miracles tells us, the way this world tells us these stories about bodies. "[The body] takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself." (T 543/585) This is what has been in front of our eyes and in our ears lately. When Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died we all got involved and the images and sounds filled our mental spaces to tell us these body stories.

When Princess Diana first passed there was such a huge swell of publicity. It even caught me off guard. It was much more than I expected, such a media blitz! I though to myself, "Gee, they might as well canonize her!" Then, a few days later Mother Teresa died and everybody thought of her as a "living saint." The juxtaposition of these two women and their synchronistic deaths and funerals blended their images and stories. Somehow the timing gave both of them qualities of the other. Of course, the media found some video footage of Princess Diana with Mother Teresa together and put it on television constantly for all to see. So, by association, it looks like Diana is getting "canonized" in a symbolic way. It's interesting to me how this happens. Obviously, these are two important women, as far as the news story goes, but let's not forget that they are also two very different women. Their deaths may have happened in close proximity and caused a "media blur" but Princess and Mother led very different lives.


An Exemplary Life

I want to spend a little time writing about the life of Mother Teresa. She had such an exemplary life, in terms of how we usually like to think of these things. There is not much I want to say about her because her life speaks it all. I'm going to chronicle some of the significant events of her life, her body's story.

She was born, of course, not Teresa but Agnes in 1910. She was born in Albania, not in India where she would spend most of her life. She was not "Indian" at all. She's reported to have said that she knew she had a calling to do missionary work at the early age of 12 (the same age Mary was when the angel Gabriel called her to be the mother of Jesus - coincidence?) The young Agnes never wavered from that calling once she received it. As soon as she was the age of maturity, 18, she left home. She joined the sisters of Loreto, a group of Irish nuns who had a mission in Calcutta, India. She was an Albanian, working with Irish women in Calcutta, India. That sounds like an interesting mix, doesn't it?

It took the young Agnes nine years before she took her final vows as the bride of Jesus. At this age of 27, she took the name Teresa. Sister Teresa participated with that convent and its mission for 11 more years. During this time she was aware she was receiving a new calling. At the age of 38, at that time older than Princess Diana will now ever be, she asked the Vatican for permission to leave that convent. Apparently Vatican permission was needed for this "change of venue." She received it. She became an Indian citizen and now aligned herself under the archbishop of Calcutta. Her new calling told her to work with the very poorest and downtrodden. She opened a school in the Calcutta slums. The year was 1948. Sister Teresa had been an obedient Loreto nun for two decades.

Two years later at the age of 40, she formed the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta with a small group of twelve nuns. In another two years, now 42 years old, the now Mother Teresa opened a home, a hospice, for the destitute, dying of Calcutta. Five years later she began to do special work with the sick, lepers of the same city. At the age of 49, the Missionaries of Charity, under the able leadership of Mother Teresa, opened it's first center outside Calcutta, a home for abandoned children and orphans in Drachi, India. Soon, there were centers and homes all over that country.

In her early fifties, Mother Teresa began to travel outside of India, leaving small groups of nuns in countries all over the world to carry out her work. At the age of 54, Pope Paul VI visited India and Mother. He was so impressed that he gave her his white ceremonial, Lincoln Continental to ride in as she traveled to and from her work. Of course, Mother Teresa never rode in it, not even once. She immediately auctioned it off and with the money she opened a new leper colony in West Bengal. That was 1964. Apparently the Vatican was impressed. The next year, 1965 the Vatican "annexed" the Missionaries of Charity, taking them away from Calcutta jurisdiction, declaring them a "pontifical congregation" which would report directly to Rome. This would allow the Missionaries of Charity greater possibilities for growth, and grow they did.

Her work continued to broaden in scope throughout the next decade. In 1971 she received the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize with a $25,000 stipend. She also received an award from the Joseph Kennedy Jr. Foundation for $15,000. Of course, all the money went to charity work and her Missionaries of Charity grew. Eight years later, in 1979 at the age of 69 Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize. With that prize came $303,000 of prize money. You know where it all went - to her charity work. In 1982 she visited my home city of San Francisco, she was 72 at this point, and she was impressed with my city. Impressed with the homelessness, and the poverty and so she immediately opened up a soup kitchen and a convent. At this point she had more than 200 missions all over the world. In 1985, at 75 years of age, she opened an AIDS hospice in New York City. In that same year she received The Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan. This is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian in this country. In 1986, the French released a very popular documentary about her life. Her ministry grew even more because of it In 1988, at the ripe age of 78, she opened an AIDS hospice here in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood midst much controversy because local people did not want it there. It opened none-the-less. What Mother wanted Mother usually got.

In 1990, she was then 80, she tried to resign as leader of the Missionaries of Charity. She received permission from the Pope to do so. A secret election was held amongst the head nuns to determine who the new leader would be. Everybody voted for Mother Teresa anyway even though, officially, she wasn't running. There was only one vote that wasn't for her, her own vote. She had voted for someone else. When she realized that nobody wanted her to resign even though she was 80 years old she surrendered to their will and stayed on as the leader. " if your brothers (in this case certainly 'sisters') ask you for something 'outrageous,' do it because it does not matter." (T 206/221) It was also in 1990, at the age of 80, that she took her first trip back to her home land of Albania. She hadn't been there since she left at 18, 62 years early. It wasn't a visit really; she went to start a mission there.

Over the next seven years Mother Teresa would have numerous health problems: falls and broken bones, surgery, congestive heart failure, malaria and pneumonia. She would always recover and continue her missionary work. Mother Teresa died at the age of 87, September 5th, 1997 at the headquarters of the religious order that she founded in Eastern India.

What could anyone say about a life like this. It's awesome! It truly speaks for itself and I will not attempt to add anything to it.

In comparison, we have the life of Princess Diana which, when compared to Mother Teresa, seems to beg the question, "What did this Princess really do?" Yet, in truth, she did a lot. People expected Mother Teresa to go into an AIDS ward and hold the hands of a gay man who was dying of AIDS 10 or 12 years ago. People do not expect a royal princess to do something like that. Yet Princess Diana did and by her compassion and willingness to embrace an AIDS patient, without gloves, back in those days when everyone was so fearful - that simple gesture accomplished a tremendous amount. Since she was a popular royal princess and had extensive media coverage what she did moved people in a way that Mother Teresa could not. It's hard for any of us to identify with Mother Teresa. I can't imagine that kind of life dedicated so totally to self-less service. Princess Diana (even though it's also hard for me to imagine what royalty and virtually limitless wealth is like) was still very much in the world and embraced the worldly values with which many of us still identify. When we see somebody like her embrace an AIDS patient it moves us all in different ways. Mother Teresa and Princess Diana were both very interesting, powerful and important women.


It's Time To Watch The Show

Some people ask, "Why focus on these world events at all? Aren't we only supposed to be focusing on our spiritual growth and practice, prayer and meditation, regardless of what goes on in the world?" Good questions. Shouldn't we simply be identifying with the Christ within, channelling the divine light through ourselves and thus being a simple, anonymous healing force in the world? Is it important to relate to world events or to plan our own work in the world?

I think it can be. It doesn't have to be, but there's certainly nothing wrong with it either. I do think that many of us are called upon to have a worldly focus at different times of our life. A recent interview of Marianne Williamson appeared in East West Bookshop (Sept. - Oct. 1997). Ms. Williamson was promoting her new book, The Healing of America (see our book list). Here is a relevant exchange.

"East West: You feel very strongly that American people must get more involved and active in political life. Yet many in the 'consciousness movement' have chosen to remove themselves from politics. Some 'spiritual' people feel that it's unimportant or even unnecessary to work on a political level. What do you say to that?

"Marianne: I think there is a time in many people's lives when they receive the very valid internal guidance to turn off the television and stop reading the newspapers. But I think it's very rare that we receive the genuine guidance to remain that way forever. There are times when it is appropriate to turn our eyes away from the world. However, from the perspective of A Course In Miracles, we seek our peace in meditation and prayer so we can go back into the world and carry that peace with us. I don't believe that we are to use the spiritual path as an excuse to avoid dealing with the problem of human suffering. In that sense the spiritual path just becomes another form of escapism."

I tend to agree with Marianne in this case. I've seen this true in my own life. There were many years of my life when I did not own a television. There were many years when I did not read newspapers and did not receive Time magazine as I do now. I believe I needed that period of "clearing." I know that I couldn't read papers without getting hooked, in a negative way, about the things that were going on in the world. However, as I grew spiritually I was able to stay centered regardless of the world's events. I now see it as my duty to look at these worldly things because I am one who is to bring healing light and love to them. As I approached world events more and more from this healing perspective I realized that I was also getting healed. In truth, what is the world except an outpicturing of our own minds? All these things that appear to be going on in the world are going on in our thoughts and beliefs. The world provides an interactive graphic representation of what's going on in our minds so that we can interact and learn from it. Being engaged in the world, but with a spiritual perspective, is a very practical form of psychoanalysis. The world become the ultimate Rorschach inkblot test. Of itself, it means nothing. Our thoughts put whatever meaning onto it we choose and by seeing the meanings we put there we learn valuable insights about our own psyches.

Look at the world. Look at your reactions to it. Channel those reactions from the highest level and see what healings you then experience.

Another useful way is to see the world as our movie. We're manifesting physical reality. It's the movie we've come to see. Why come to see it if we're not going to watch it? Not being creatively involved with the world is like going to the movies, paying your eight bucks, finding yourself in the seat and then deciding that you don't want to look at the screen. You try to read something or do something else, except there's not enough light and no support from any of the other people in the theatre because they are all watching the movie. Your experience becomes annoying! "Why isn't there more light in here so I can read? Why won't any of you help me with my project?" we yell in the movie house. Very few pay attention to us though. You see, I believe we are supposed to be watching the movie, that's why we came.

I believe that it is now my time to really pay attention to the screen. Now is when I can watch it and be a healing influence to the actual movie being projected. A recent Workbook lesson said, "Let me not see myself as limited." (W 408/418) I do not see myself as limited to my little dream of my body and the story of it's little life. I see myself as connected to the entirety of the world, all the bodies and all the lives that appear to be here somehow are related to mine and are part of my learning.

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Where Are The Photographers ?

I've learned a lot by watching the Princess Diana media extravaganza! As far as shows go - what a great one! It was truly remarkable. For one, I got to identify many of the usual ego dynamics like the strange duality Princess Diana and others have about the media. They seem to hate it and yet it's the media that makes it possible for them to do the things that they do. People talk about the great work the Princess did. Why was she able to do great work? Millions of people have held the hands of someone dying. Why wasn't their work just as important as Diana's. Well, in truth it was, but why did her work have a global influence? It was because of the very media that she condemned. The media watched, photographed and printed every single thing that she did! Those images got projected to billions of people all over the world so "yes" it had a profound effect. All the good work that she did happened because of her media coverage. To hate the very thing that is also bringing her the influence and power seems strange to me.

Obviously, any worldly thing has it's yin and yang elements, but to hate it? Couldn't the yin yang aspect of it just be accepted? There was a downside to that which gave her influence and power. Her work with the land mine survivors is important because of the media coverage her participation gave this cause that very few of us would have even known of otherwise. So is the media bad or good? It's a little of both probably. As always, it depends on how we choose to see it.

What of Princess Diana's death, yes they were apparently being chased by photographers and they believed they had to flee. However, I can't help but wonder, "Why?" This is a woman who had been photographed thousands of times. She was in a car with her boyfriend, so what? Why couldn't they have just let the people photograph them and ignore it? Of course I was not in her position. Photographers are not hounding me. Still, once again, " if your brothers ask you for something 'outrageous,' do it because it does not matter." (T 206/221) Outrageously, the paparazzi, wanted more photographs. Would Princess Diana still be alive today if she and her party could have recognized these outrageous requests as not mattering and let the paparazzi have their photographs?

Another things I observed illustrating how the ego works is that when it first happened the initial ego response said Diana was a victim and we, the grieving survivors, had to identify her victimizer. Who was to blame for her death? The initial response was, "It's the paparazzi." The photographers, they were to blame! Then we heard the interesting story that the driver was legally drunk! So we decided he was to blame. I later heard, in essence, it was Prince Charles' fault because if he had really loved her, right from the wedding instead of having an affair with that older married woman, (the "hussy" Camilla Parker Bowles) he wouldn't have thrown her into the arms of other men! "Poor Princess Diana, Prince Charles is really the one to blame!" The world looks desperately around to find the guilty ones! People then went on to blame the entire Royal family, especially the Queen. Surely some guilt belonged to her! Queen Elizabeth was watched intently after the death. Why didn't she speak sooner! Interesting to me was that Queen Elizabeth had not made an unplanned public television address in her 45 years as reigning monarch. Why didn't she speak sooner? She was not in the habit of doing that. That she did it at all was probably quite remarkable.

In Diana's brother's, (Charles Spencer's) moving eulogy, as good as it was, again we see the tendency to want to find the victimizer. He focused on the press and how terrible they were and said they were at the opposite end of the moral spectrum from Diana. "She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling. My own, and only, explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum." He lumped tens of thousands of people who work for the media as being degenerate scum with no morals. Are the press scum? Isn't it significant, again, that he was getting a platform to speak to three billion people because of the very press he was trashing! When do we start putting all of this together and questioning the logic and reason behind these obsessive tendencies to hunt for the guilty.


London Bridge Is Falling Down -Or-
The Man Who Would Be King


I also found it fascinating that people are so interested in the Monarchy at all. Why are we interested in these people? The guidance I received is that the monarchy itself is a strange, holdover anomaly from another time. It doesn't fit into twentieth century (soon to be twenty-first century) civilization. Yet, there it is! We all get fixated on it because it just seems so peculiar. I believe the world is learning that we are all equal. There are no special people. Nothing could be more special than the monarchy. We usually elevate actors and rockstars to this level of specialness. In the back of our thoughts we know they were, at least, born average men and women just like us. Now they have achieved something so the culture becomes fascinated. However, the monarchy is not an achievement! One is simply born into it. I heard it said "birth is worth" as far as the monarchy goes. By the very virtue of one's "royal" birth they become very special in the eyes of the world. I think we all intuitively know this specialness cannot be the truth. Maybe even the monarchy intuitively knows it. Yet again, there it is. It's annoying. We know it shouldn't be there but it won't go away! It's an itch that you almost have to scratch. We couldn't help but watch at least some of this drama. It's so weird that we want to find out about it and try to understand.

Even though I think it is a strange anomaly, it's important not to think of it as evil! Like anything else in the world, it has to be neutral. This is what the Course teaches us, absolute neutrality. It just depends on how we use it. Obviously, Princess Diana used it many times in a very good way and produced healing in the world with her "special" status. Maybe even Queen Elizabeth, in her 45 year reign, has used it in a good way and brought amazing stability to the United Kingdom. I can't make that call; I don't know. What I see is an interesting fascination with something we all seem to know is spiritually out of place. "The Holy Spirit knows no one is special:" (T 291/313) The monarchy is the epitome of worldly specialness which A Course In Miracles has taught me cannot be the truth. It was Princess Diana's normalcy and identity with the people that endeared her to the hearts of the world after all.

People in this country seemed quite critical of Queen Elizabeth's speech. The English appeared to react to it differently however here, where we are not used to the typically British "stiff upper lip" manner, we were amazed that she could be so "cold." Yet, I saw it differently. I saw a woman, a mother, who was protecting the honor of her son, Prince Charles. Princess Diana brought the honor of Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth's son, down to the dirt. He was exposed as a womanizer, a terrible adulterer who never really loved her. A man sexually obsessed with an older married women (again, that wanton Camilla, the woman everybody loves to hate ... huh maybe she's to blame). Their affair got plastered all over the media. We all know "where" Prince Charles wanted to spend eternity (between the legs of his beloved Camilla) because of his recorded telephone conversation. Diana was responsible for all of that getting dragged out and we now expect the guy's mother to say wonderful accolades about the woman who brought this embarrassing disgrace to the royal family ... not! The Queen did a pretty good job of reading what someone most likely wrote for her to say. I saw that as an impressive act of forgiveness that now exists on the public record. The ealing can begin. Once again I choose to see the Holy Spirit at work. The Queen did the right thing, the forgiving thing. She choose healing. I was impressed. She was also doing her best to protect the house of Windsor. Her son, Prince Charles, is the man who could very well be the next King of the British Empire. What did people really expect of her? Did they want the Queen to side with Diana and say something derogatory about the man who would be King?

Our savage tendency to project guilt was as obvious as could be. Did we see it, or were we so caught up in the show and swept away with emotion that we bought into these good and bad interpretations? Did anyone see Diana as a woman totally responsibly for her own life and death? The Course tells us that we choose our own death after all. "No one can die unless he chooses death." (T 388/416) It was clear to me that a woman so thoroughly into her beauty and appearance had accomplished the ultimate beauty "coup." She will forever be remembered young and beautiful. There will never be an image in the mind of an old Princess Diana. No wrinkled skin will ever be seen under those bright eyes. She has been immortalized with an image of youth, vitality and sexual vigor. Hurrah for Princess Di! As Billy Joel once sang "Only the good die young." Interesting. We will never think of mother Teresa as anything other than old and wrinkled. Maybe Princess Diana's synchronistic passing gave Mother Teresa's death an bit of youthful vigor and beauty. As I said earlier, the media "blur" of the two gave both the qualities of the other. Diana gets sainthood; Mother Teresa gets the energy of youth and beauty. "All things work together for good." (T 59/65)

What a show, and I didn't even have to pay eight bucks.


All Hail The Feminine Woman

I received another teaching as I was watching Diana's funeral. The admiration, praise and respect, the high value that everybody was placing on Diana and then a few days later on Mother Teresa too caused me to stop and take notice. These are two women that are truly being honored for the life they lived. I don't ever remember any man being honored to this extent. Sure they have been saluted. Certainly President Kennedy's passing was given a lavish amount of honor and tragic fascination. (We're still trying to figure out the victimizer in that drama.) However with these two women it seems qualitatively different. Never have I seen that amount of pomp and circumstance and also that amount of true feeling, interest, love and devotion on the part of so many people. I think this speaks well for women. Maybe we all could take in this demonstration and learn. We suffer under a paradigm that states the world does not think highly enough of women and feminine virtue. Marianne Williamson wrote a whole book on the subject (A Women's Worth, yes we also sell that). Maybe this has been true in the past. Here, though, is an "other experience" which points to a changing and healing world. Obviously the world thought very highly of these two women. They were not women who competed in a man's world and became "masculine" women so they could achieve traditional "masculine" styled success. (See Demi Moore in G.I. Jane.) Diana was a very feminine woman, a glamorous woman, an open women who exposed her private fears and pains in a display of great vulnerability. She embodied most of the traditional feminine qualities, and no one has ever been thought of so highly by so many. Popular conversation says we degrade the feminine. Certainly not in this case. We honored her, identified with her, loved her and praised her. This showed me that the world thinks quite highly of womanhood. I hope others get this message. Mother Teresa's life again embraced traditional feminine virtues although very different ones. It is very feminine to devote yourself selflessly to the service of humankind. Be it your husband, your family, or in Mother Teresa's case, the poor, unfortunate and downtrodden of the whole world. She was their servant. This is very feminine, very womanly. We elevate these qualities to sainthood. Always have! Who can truly say that the feminine is not honored by our society? Anyone awake during the past month surely got a different lesson.

Womanhood is not in danger. We all recognize it's value. We celebrate it! What an interesting movie we have come here to watch. I want to applaud the director. Who directed this masterpiece? Oh, I forgot. It's me! That's what A Course In Miracles teaches, but not just me alone. This is our movie. We've scripted and directed this marvelous play and it does have something personal to show and teach us. I'm telling you what it's showing and teaching me. It will show and teach you something different. You just have to open up to it. However, we aren't open to it if we don't watch it.


Selfish Mother Teresa !

Let's us remember now, in these days after their deaths that nothing has been lost by their passing. The world has not lost Princess Diana or Mother Teresa. These lives that seem to come and go haven't gone anywhere. "There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning." (T 459/493) We think we have to "mourn the loss" of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana as if there is lack now in the universe because of these events. Yet the meaning we attach to these inherently neutral events is just our personal drama. We can put different meanings on them if we want to.

We think of Mother Teresa as having the true self-less life. She was only interested in the welfare of others. I don't think we can make that call. Remember that the Course tells us even self-lessness is a "self interest" activity. "The teacher of God is generous out of self interest." (M 13/14) I believe Mother Teresa isn't special either and, like all of us, has her own type of selfishness. She was selfish in that she was true to her own particular sense of self and what was important to her, what brought her a sense of self meaning, happiness, passion and connection. This is a woman who, from the age of twelve, knew exactly what she wanted to do and was quite stubborn about it. No one ever swayed her! She did what she wanted to do, strictly! She was true to her self; she was selfish! Maybe her parents and family did not want her to go to Calcutta, India with a group of Irish nuns. That didn't matter to Agnes eventually to be Teresa, she did what she wanted to do. Maybe the Pope really wanted her to ride in that car. She could have taken one ride in it, couldn't she? No, selfishly she declared that she would do with the car what she wanted to do with the car which was to sell it.

Princess Diana wore $10,000 evening gowns yet was she attached to them? Apparently not; she only wore them once. She had as many as she wanted and many of her dresses were auctioned off with the proceeds going to her favorite charity causes. Mother Teresa wore a $1 sari. Was she really attached to that? Oh, I think she was! Mother Teresa was probably much more egotistically attached to her $1 sari than Diana was to any of her $10,000 gowns. That $1 sari meant something very, very special to Mother Teresa. It communicated something important about who she was and the life she led. It was totally wrapped up with her conceptualization of self. We will never picture her without one. Those white and blue saris symbolize her and other members of her order. However, A Course In Miracles leads us to let go of all concepts and symbols of the self. "Seek not your Self in symbols. There can be no concept that can stand for what you are." (T 613/659) This doesn't mean that Mother Teresa didn't fulfill her special function in a wonderful way, let's just not be too quick to declare her as a person without an ego. Mother Teresa would never have been seen in anything other than that sari. She would never, ever, ever wear a $10,000 evening gown. However, Princess Diana could just as easily wear either. Diana's concept of herself allowed that fluidity. Who was more ego-less and saintly? My point is that we can't know. We need to realize how much we don't know about either of these remarkable women. Let them continue to be a mystery and we will continue to learn from them. That's the most powerful thing we can do to honor the memory and legacy of these two dynamic feminine presences who made their choices and lived their lives.

Who has died? In truth, neither. Two bodies now are not here, but those were just symbolic heroines of a dream, a movie. We have to understand that there were actors, souls, spirits, playing these two roles that are as alive now as they ever were They are now free to play new roles. Who has lost? No one. We've gained and they gained. Let us always remember the eternal nature of life.

Let us also see the value that the world places on doing good works and true humanitarian gestures, be they the broad strokes of a Mother Teresa or the simple ones of heartfelt interest and attention that Princess Diana showed the AIDS patient or the land mine survivor. Humanitarianism is what is being revered here. The world honors the good work. Isn't that a wonderful learning for us to receive? The uniquely feminine energy that was embodied by these two children of God, who appeared briefly in this world in the bodies of women, has much to teach us. We are in an age where all are honored, male and female, if they share their good contribution to the peace and healing of the planet. These two did. Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, "Thanks for sharing."


©copyright 1997, Rev. Tony Ponticello.
All rights reserved.

This article has 5,951 words.

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Rev. Tony Ponticello
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This article appeared in the September 1997 (Vol. 11, No. 7) issue of Miracles Monthly. Miracles Monthly is published by the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco, CA. The CMC is supported solely by people just like you who give donations and purchase books and products through us.

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Last update: March 9, 2006 by Rev. Tony Ponticello. (syntax checked 3/06)