I really don’t know if all those who praise Mother Teresa know the full extent of her spiritual beliefs? I think she was an extraordinary woman who followed her beliefs more than about any soul on this earth. I have not read extensively about her life, but the bits and pieces I have seen tell me that she had serious doubts as much as the rest of us.

She at least said that she really doesn’t know if God exists or not, but she is doing what’s “right” without that certainty. I kinda think this aligns very well with Quaker belief that everyone has a spark of God within them. This basic belief is mirrored in many others as well.

Woody Guthrie might have said it best when he said the words to the right. We have one soul that is shared by all of us, and that soul is the essence of God. What a wonderful way to look at it. That very thought reinforces the idea of universal salvation as put forward by my favorite Christian author Philip Gulley in his book “If God Is Love”.

In my mind, organized religions today are simply man’s versions of the god that they most want to be. The essence of God is all around us. All we have to do is shed ourselves of what our current version of religion tells us and look around with our hearts open.

It is up to all of us to keep that light burning in ourselves and everyone else. Every light that is extinguished takes a little more of God out of this world. That is what scares me the most about all this “white Evangelical” movement that is tragically occurring in too many forms of Christianity today.

Getting back to Mother Teresa and the words above, we desperately need to get over the idea that God is going to do everything for us, so all we have to do is to patiently sit back and wait.

Don’t pray to God to feed the hungry. Instead, pray that God will guide you to do what you are supposed to do. I love that idea…