Reading Mother Teresa--Do bedew

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away 

have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:13 

“India is as scorching as is hell – but its souls are beautiful and precious because the Blood of Christ has bedewed them.” Mother Teresa

I’ve never before in my life seen the word bedewed. In some ways, the sound of the word itself is a hoot, easily mistaken for the patter of some late-50s crooner. The word makes all kinds of sense, of course, an arranged marriage between be and do, words already almost kissing cousins, never comingled quite as intimately as they are here: bedewed.

Mother Teresa wasn’t making it up either. I looked. Bedewed is perfectly legitimate and available for use, free of charge; but I don’t know I’ve ever, ever seen it or heard it before. Well, maybe. Hum the theme from the Pink Panther movies sometime, and you’ll hear it – “Be-dew, bedew, bedew-bedew-bedew, bedew, bedewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, bedew be dew.”

Something like that.

It’s just a goofy word, or is that just my imagination? – bedewed, the kind of word you could drop into the bin full of synonyms for drunk, as in, “Good Lord, I got myself totally bedewed Saturday.”

Mother Teresa is creating a double metaphor too, which is sometimes more than a little risky. It’s one thing to say that the heat-tortured poor of India are wet with, refreshed by, and even kept from death by dew, but that which really coats and cools them isn’t dew at all – it’s blood, Christ’s own. 

Now some who are unfamiliar with the blood atonement might call that "creepy," but Mother Teresa certainly didn’t make it up. The heat – which was substantial, I’m sure – is not India’s but hell’s, at least I think that’s the implication. The whole line is heavy-laden with metaphor because if there was blood on the streets of Calcutta, my guess is it was theirs, the people’s, not Christ’s. Unless you’re Catholic. Of course, that’s not meant literally. Or is it, sacramentally? By the greatest miracle of all, she says, Christ’s own blood, given for us and for them, keeps them – and us – bedewed.

I like it – bedewed, I mean. The word makes me smile because it’s goofy and twisted and not meant the way it’s said at all, and yet it is. In the middle of a sometimes scorched world, Christ’s love forever keeps bedewing us. That’s right, bedewing us! – as in, bedew, bedew, bedew.

You can sing that. I bet you can.

This morning, after some powerful storms, the fog is so thick that the end of the world seems a block away. We live and move and have our being in an odd flat gray room. Last night’s storms brewed up a tornado that swept through a small town not all that far away.

There, things are wet this morning, I’m sure. Amid all the debris, no one is sweltering and few of the homeless are dry. Rains came heavily before and after the twister. There’s no one dead, but when all those people walk out into Main Street and look at the destruction, and when those residents who are now homeless survey the damage, I hope, they too, are blessedly bedewed.

Bedew them, Lord – bedew, bedew, bedew.