Hope Endures

(Paperback)

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This searing, eye-opening memoir is by an extraordinary woman who served for eleven years as a nun in Mother Teresa's order working with the world's poor. Ultimately it is also the story of her journey into disillusionment with the order and her crisis of faith. Colette Livermore recounts the horrors she saw and tried to remedy in her work with the sisters of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in some of the poorest places in the East - in the sprawling, fetid garbage dump of Manila, and the crowded slums of urban India. The sheer numbers of desperate people she encounters and helps are huge and humbling, their circumstances devastating; yet these interactions with other souls are not unbearable to her - rather, she draws strength and courage from them. Untimately, though, she cannot bear the rigid, often psychologically abusive, administrative culture of the order - and its insistence on unquestioning obedience that harms the young sisters mentally, emotionally, and spiritually while limiting the good they can do. Livermore also has to resist pressure from Mother Teresa and other superiors who try many arguments to keep her from leaving. But leave she does, and goes on to become a General Practitioner and an atheist, while continuing her life's work helping the disadvantaged, building a new life of humanitarian service. An inspiring story of an incredible woman, Hope Endures is also a critique that asks readers to question blind faith and obedience and discover their own true path to practising goodness in life.

Reviews

"This penetrating book unveils the blindness that lurks in many spiritual organizations and traditions, and confronts an issue that still corrupts contemporary religious organizations -- naive belief used to justify ignorance, obedience, and neglect rather than to galvanize social change, improve lives, and foster spiritual connections. As her compelling story unfolds, Ms. Livermore slowly realizes that she and her fellow nuns are being taught to 'spiritualize' their own emotional abuse, and she can no longer submit to it. Like all good stories, this one involves a strong, public personality -- Mother Teresa -- and the clash between extremes of innocence and authority. Reading this clear-eyed book is a good first step toward dealing with the shadow side of spirituality and to opening a door to a brighter, more mature way of being in the world." -- Thomas Moore, author of "Care of the Soul"

Author Bio

Dr Colette Livermore joined Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity at the age of seventeen. After serving for eleven years, Colette went to medical school, obtained her medical degree from the University of Queensland, and worked with isolated, Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. She is currently a GP and lives in New South Wales.