Reading Mother Teresa--Holy Fools

VanderWagen, second from left, teaching

The Lord is my strength and my shield; 

my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. 

My heart leaps for joy, 

and with my song I praise him. Psalm 28:7 

When he left Grand Rapids, Michigan, on a mission, he promised the powers-that-be, the reigning potentates of the denomination he served, that he would not only faithfully carry out the office of missionary, he’d also continue to study so that he could – as he certainly should, they said – eventually become a preacher.

That was a promise he broke. It would be interesting to know if he ever intended to continue his bookwork. What happened when he came to New Mexico to bring the Word of Christ to the Navajo and Zuni Indians became too all-consuming, and he never again opened a schoolbook, which irritated – no, angered, even infuriated – the mission board back East.

He was, after all, an unlikely missionary anyway. He knew Dutch, of course, his native tongue – and Frisian, a whole different language from his native Holland. And English, sort of. And the day he came to Ft. Defiance, Arizona, he must have realized that doing mission work among the nNative people required learning their languages too.

He wasn’t dumb. One of the first things he did was buy the fastest horse he could, in part because he understood that a fast horse would be a wonder to the natives – a white man preacher on the fastest horse in the territory was really not to be believed.

He never studied a day of anthropology, knew nothing about the Navajo’s horror-filled “Long Walk,” had no clue about the Zunis hiding up on the mesa from the Spanish Conquistadors when they searched, in vain, for the Seven Cities of Gold. He knew absolutely nothing about those he was about to serve.

But today there’s a spot on the highway between Gallup and the Zuni pueblo named VanderWagen, New Mexico. He and his wife, Effa, left a lasting mark on the whole region, even though as a young missionary he knew next to nothing about the world he was entering.

On August 17, 1948, Mother Teresa must have slipped out of the nun’s habit she’d worn for decades, must have primped her hair slightly, and put on a sari with a blue border and taken to the streets of the city. She had this at least – she knew the world she was entering; after all, she’d served the Lord in Calcutta for more than a decade. She knew where she was and what her task consisted of.

But still, think of it this way: a deeply committed Albanian nun, more European than Indian, a woman sworn to follow Jesus, a woman with the voice of Christ still ringing in her ear, steps out of the habit and out of the convent that had been her only world since childhood, shuts the door behind her, dressed like an Indian, sworn to poverty, and begins a brand new life.

In the many mansions of God’s own house, there are thousands of “holy fools,” I’m sure, millions of true believers who weren’t interested in listening to what was possible, but instead simply got up off their couches and stepped into commitments that may well have cost them their lives.

It is amazing what abiding faith can inspire.

Here’s the whole truth: holy fools are not necessarily smart; but when they’re authentic – when they’re not wolves in sheep’s clothing, my word! – they certainly are holy.