"What are your poems about?" the editor asked.

"They're about love!" gushed the poetess.

The editor settled back in his chair and said, "Well, read me a poem. The world could certainly use a lot more love!"

The poem she read was filled with moons and Junes and other sticky sentiments, and it was more than the editor could take.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but you just don't know what love is all about! It's not moonlight and roses. It's sitting up all night at a sick-bed, or working extra hours so the kids can have new shoes. The world doesn't need your brand of poetical love. It needs some good old-fashioned practical love."

That's why the world treasures Mother Teresa. Determined that dying people deserve to be treated with dignity, this little nun left the security of the convent with only a coin in her pocket, and went into the streets of Calcutta looking for dying people. She dragged their dying bodies into a temple that had been offered to her by the city--a deserted and dirty place, which she cleaned up and put to use. There she loved and cared for the dying people until they passed away. "Everybody at least deserves to have somebody love them while they are dying," she said.

Ron Newhouse