Tonight my thoughts have turned to two beautiful but different women

[KlatooBNikto]

who I have had the good fortune to meet in my travels abroad.

First, Mother Teresa. What can one say about this extraordinary human being except to run out of superlatives in describing her commanding presence. I met her during a flight from Calcutta to Bombay on an Indian Airlines flight.During the nearly three hour flight, I sat across the aisle from Mother Teresa and held a long conversation.She said to me that as a person from the U.S. I have a moral obligation to think of the "poorest of the poor" not in terms of giving money for charity but to truly show that we in the West care about each person's individual worth.When we don't, it reveals more about our own spiritual poverty than the poverty of the people we are supposed to be helping.When she passed away in India, I thought how fortunate that country is to have had two spiritual giants like Gandhi and Mother Teresa walking among them.

The next person I want to talk about is Catherine Deneuve.To think of this extraordinary actress as just another beautiful and sexy face that illuminates our movie screens is to miss the inner radiance of this lady of intelligence and compassion.In movies ranging from Repulsion, in which she played the part of a psychopathic killer to Belle Du Jour wher she played the role of a bourgeois housewife who works as a prostitute to relieve her boredom in the afternoons to myriad roles that explored the whole gamut of human existence with an intelligence that seesm to escape the kewpie dolls of our times, she has firmly joined women like Liv Ullman, Ingrid Bergman,Simone Signoret as the outstanding actresses of our time.

When I thought about these two women,I realized that it is not the external beauty of Catherine that matters in the end because,like Mother Teresa,her eyes betray the inner workings of a mind that is truly compassionate and understanding of the sufferings of human beings.Her work with great directors like Luis Bunuel and Francois Truffaut must rank among the best that movies have to offer.

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1. Great post...thanks! n/t

[Mnemosyne]

2. Counting my blessings.

If we can try to carry that compassion with us each day, then we have enhanced the human condition ever so slightly. It all helps.

Mother Teresa said, "We can do no big things, only small things with great love."

Thank you for this post. It touched me tonight.

[cry baby]

3. Your post made me cry because I realize through your words that

we are desperately missing someone like these women, especially Mother Teresa. I have been searching the news from the world to find someone to point out that our collective souls are at stake, that the United States, in reality, is not doing what it can to better the world. If democracy is the best and most peaceful way to live as * suggests, why then is America so hated around the world and why are we starting pre-emptive wars? * is not a peace-loving person. I don't think Mother Teresa will be seeing him in Heaven.