Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, et al.
Charley, Bill is absolutely right, I think, about the Dalai Lama & Mother Theresa. They are regarded as saints. I would put Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King in the same category.
Of course, none of them are true -- i.e., totally sinless -- saints. Schweitzer, despite his real services to Africans, was still a man of his times, and thus something of a racist; King's weakness for the opposite sex was well known; some think the Dalai Lama a reactionary; and Mother Theresa has quite a few detractors.
But the point is that humankind has a thirst, a need, for saints, and that in every generation there are some people who are singled out for sainthood. And you can tell a lot about a generation -- or a century -- from the kind of people that it elects to canonize.
And these are the people whom we hold up as models of behavior. In a certain sense, then, they are more influential than anyone else.
Up with the Saints!
Joan |
