For those who have little faith, or no faith, or too much, the tale of Mother Teresa is a useful counterpoint to the clichés of sainthood.

Mother Teresa has always been a made-to-order symbol. The diminutive nun, who died in 1997, picked the sick and dying off Calcutta streets for half a century. For the late Pope John Paul II, she was an exemplar of holy womanhood: all giving and selfless, she cared for people who were lost and abandoned.

Sainthood, or saint making, as Michael Higgins says in his book and CBC Radio Ideas series, Stalking the Holy, has always been a very political operation. Some candidates suit the church at the right time, some don't. For a church (and pope) that gave women no power, and idealized the Virgin Mary, Mother Teresa was downright otherworldly in her self-sacrifice. Ordinary people and, yes, celebrities like Princess Di made pilgrimages to India to bathe in the aura of her sanctity.

Now we discover that Mother Teresa was tormented by doubt. The revelation appears in a book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, excerpted in Time magazine, along with a stunning profile by religion writer David Van Biema.

In letters to her confessors, Mother Teresa cries out that God has deserted her. "The silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." This anguish goes on for a half a century. This was a woman who at one time had mystical visions and conversations with Jesus. To visit the public Mother Teresa you'd see a shining, formidable woman. But inside, what she experienced was bleak agony.

Dark nights

Doubt has always played a role in the spiritual journey. On the cross, Jesus cried out "Oh Lord why have you forsaken me?" echoing the Psalms of the Old Testament. Spiritual voyagers often go through a "dark night of the soul." The 16th century mystic, Saint John of the Cross, underwent this terrible ordeal for 45 years. But he came out of it. Holiness is hard, often brutal work and takes sublime patience and self-abnegation. But for us ordinary folk, it seems only fair that someone so blessedly good is not supposed to suffer without God finally coming, like some divine Lone Ranger, to the rescue.

But Mother Teresa never really came out of her dark night of the soul. That's what may be surprising for many — and deeply upsetting. If even Mother Teresa doesn't emerge from her spiritual black hole, with all her prayer and good works and saintliness — and with the whole church on her side — who could?

Tortured souls

Christopher Hitchens, the bestselling journalist and atheist, thinks the poor woman just woke up and didn't admit it to herself: if God left you, that's because there was no God to leave. To torture yourself over a truth revealed — and rejected: no god exists — is an insult to human intelligence.

That's harsh, and I will put this aside for now. More telling is another explanation that writer Van Biema offers, which is very common in religious circles. The argument goes something like this: when you feel the absence of God, that's actually a sign of His presence. The logic of spirituality is paradoxical: where emptiness lies is plentitude. One theologian tries to console Mother Teresa by telling her that a loving Jesus makes himself known by not attending to her suffering.

Mother Teresa says she was grateful for this consolation. She even wrote that she had come to "love the darkness." But as Van Biema points out, that didn't stop her torment.

The paradox of belief

This kind of advice might sound nonsensical: like trying to square a circle. It's not rational nor appealing to most people. It certainly is baffling. Your head and heart aches when you read these tortured sentiments. Atheists like Hitchens would feel it's just a lot of contemptible foolishness. But paradoxical thinking keeps popping up in religious literature.

One of the co-authors of Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, Brian Kolodiejchuk, points out that we associate spirituality with "feelings." But something more is at stake, beyond our personal emotions, something larger, more universal. More religious bunk, you say? Maybe.

As one religious sufferer once said to me, "Who says that God wants us to be happy?" Only a nice daddy God. Maybe true spirituality lies beyond our childish projections. And if so, what does that mean?

The problem is that religion — spirituality — is not fully rational. In the words of the late evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould, it is another "magisterium," another order that can't be adequately explained. Who created the Creator? Did He create himself? Infinity is impossible to get your head around. How can the universe exist forever, endlessly repeating itself?

Even Christopher Hitchens, with all his rhetorical brilliance, can't explain it.

Still, it seems cruel that Mother Teresa had to suffer so terribly for so long. After all, she had more goodness in her left fingernail than the rest of us do, put together. Life isn't fair. God isn't fair. If there's no God, even that doesn't seem fair to those who thirst for some transcendental meaning in their life.

It's too easy to use the good Mother's story to say doubt is a natural part of everyone's life, as one theologian does in the Time magazine piece. Heroic struggles like Mother Teresa's are different. She doesn't give up, or say it's God's will, or pack her emotions up and toss them away. She sticks with it. Most of us wouldn't. We'd turn on the TV or take a pill.

Maybe one day God will account for Himself before the tiny nun from Albania. That would be some cosmic scene: A fierce Mother Teresa might tell Him (Her?) to grab a sponge and bathe a leper.

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LETTERS:

I like the comment of Michael Obrecht. It is important not to equate religion and spirituality. Religion by implication seems to endorse the existance of a superior being, whilst spirituality encompasses the whole gamut of the mystery of life, all life, something other than oneself.

Religion itself is a human construct, as is the whole idea of there being a God. Spirituality embraces the mystery of something greater than the self. Sure the former can be included in the latter, but unfortunately, the latter includes too many rules too often fixed by man and then interpreted by man.

One can agree that religion is not rational, and it isn't from the get go. However, when one looks at the whole area of spirituality one sees a rational connection between all there is, something only those with a religious bent are still fighting. Afterall, to think that the all-mighty human being does far less good to the planet than does a lowly worm is rather unsettling.

If there is a "God", and there surely isn't, then is it any wonder why this mythical being has forsaken us?

Does anyone not see that it is exactly all this that Mother Teresa was upset about? Wouldn't dispair arise in anyone who has believed in the existence of a superior being but then came to see that either that superior being has forsaken us or that superior being didn't exist in the first place. Afterall, Mother Teresa was a human being!

—Ian McTavish | Salmon Arm, B.C.

Yes, but......consider an elderly diminutive nun whose possessions were nothing more that a cotton sari, blouse, a bucket and determination; she moved the world like no self- proclaimed political or religious leaders have dared.

What other miracles are you looking for? Honestly I doubt the doubters !!!

—Aala Shariati-Saravi | North Vancouver

Richard Handler writes in his good piece on Mother Theresa:

"The problem is that religion - spirituality - is not fully rational."

Lots going on in that sentence. First, the equating of religion and spirituality is wrong. Just ask Mary Hines! Second, there is an underlying assumption that everything must be rational. Rationality is a human construct. Only in the frame of rationality is the irrational a problem.

The idea of God as a person, as played with in the last paragraph, is childish, even though it may be held by billions and probably Mother Theresa. It is anthropomorphism at its worst. But it is difficult for us to see it, immersed as we are in a culture where God is constantly anthropomorphized. Just think Michelangelo!

—Michael Obrecht | Ottawa

I'm sure it was Humankind and the lack of humanity & compassion that caused Mother Theresa's despair.

How could one do the kind of charity--sorry--the word "Charity" doesn't encompass the power behind her work and legacy--how can anyone show such deep compassion and love with every part of her little being and enormous heart, and not feel exhausted, emptied and depressed.

I do personally feel one needs to go to their own "depths of despair", in a way, to REAllY feel real compassion and know what it is to love like Jesus loved.

Mother Teresa has been my mentor since I can remember...and I'm not surprised she had her times of doubt, but considering she thought Jesus/God was in all of us, it probably wasn't feeling abandoned so much by God as by Humankind.

—Theresa Sweeney | Beaconsfield, Quebec

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