Mother Teresa’s message from India to Washington

Danielle Burd was on the path to a good career in 1995, working at a bank in the Puget Sound region. But that was before her heart put her on another path. That was before Mother Teresa.

“I felt very blessed to be trained by the bank,” Burd told KIRO Radio’s Tom and Curley Show. “But I had always been a really sensitive, loving woman.”

Listen: Danielle Burd’s interview

“I looked around and realized my chosen industry wasn’t one that was known to lead with compassion and love,” she said. “And that aspect of my personality was seen as naiveté and weakness. I was struggling with launching into a career where I didn’t feel I could be myself.”

What if you could fit everything you need in a knapsack?

Her friends asked her, if she could go anywhere and do anything, what would that be? She knew right away. It just came.

“Five minutes before I wasn’t thinking about volunteering in India,” she said.

That was all she could think about from then on. She discovered a program through the Seattle University that would send her to volunteer at a charity in India with Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. And now, 19 years after her death, Pope Francis has declared Blessed Teresa of Kolkata a saint.

But Mother Teresa became a saint of sorts to Burd shortly before she passed in the ’90s. Burd took time off from her bank job — they said she could come back anytime. She then spent four months working with Mother Teresa and other nuns in Calcutta. Those four months put things into perspective.

“It’s hard to describe,” Burd said. “When you sit before Mother Teresa, you feel enveloped in love. You feel like the only person alive in that moment. When she looks at you, she sees Jesus before her, and everyone else fades away. And you feel more love than you can imagine.”

“It’s like she can see inside your soul,” she said. “You feel hugged, held and loved more so than you ever have in your life. It’s a beautiful moment.”

Watching Mother Teresa work with poor communities and helping all she passed, was inspiring to Burd. Especially since when Burd met her, Mother Teresa was in her 80s.

“She loved huge,” Burd said. “She cared for every person, every soul with no judgment. She never asked you your faith, she never asked for your political view. She just loved with all her heart.”

“I was humbled every day watching her and the sisters,” she said. “I was inspired, because her example inspired myself and every volunteer to do things we never thought possible, and love in ways we never thought we could … Walking through the streets of Calcutta, there was such kindness and love that exuded from everybody you met on the street. She created an environment that was truly special.”

Back to America, but not for long

That’s the Mother Teresa that Burd met. Others, who didn’t know her, have simply wrote her off as a fanatic — an extremist with a penchant for poverty.

“Isn’t that interesting when you think about our society today that somebody with the capacity to love, and the humility to be of service to each and every person they come in contact with is seen as a fanatic,” Burd said. “Sad, but also inspiring. It calls us all to look deeper inside.”

Burd returned to the United States after a few months of working in Mother Teresa’s congregation — at a building with concrete floors, where people knelt on burlap sacks to pray. Her bank job was waiting for her in Washington.

“After being in India for four months and living in a world where every day was about service and love, and seeing the power to change hearts and lives by just loving people — coming back into the United States with the materialism and, frankly, how unkind we are, made it difficult for me to connect with people and to relate,” she said. “I just didn’t know where I belonged.”

Burd spent the next year saving up her money and vacation time with the goal of returning to India, and Mother Teresa for answers. In that time, the famous nun had become ill and spent much of her days in the hospital. Burd was intent on seeing her. When she finally made it to Calcutta, Mother Teresa was doing better and had returned to her home, in a wheelchair. Burd went to visit with her.

One day while she was in the chapel, the one with the concrete floors and burlap sacks, Burd was kneeling and listening to a sermon from a Father. Mother Teresa was praying in her wheelchair. Some tourists had come in and sat in front of her with their cameras and started snapping shots. Burd went over to them, tapping them on the shoulder and asked them not to do that.

“Mother grabbed my arm and said, ‘Please don’t do that,'” Burd recalled. “She welcomed the tourists to sit next to her, asked the sisters to bring some wicker chairs, and they became her special guests. She told me after that ‘Those are God’s children, and if they feel drawn to me, there is a deep need for love.’ And again, I learned humility.”

A gift to take to America

But that wasn’t all that Burd learned. She wanted answers after coming all that way. Why was she struggling so much in the United States?

Mother Teresa told her:

Danielle, if you came home from here and said your faith was as a strong as when you left, I would tell you that you had no growth. Most people in the world never have an opportunity to unplug from their lives and to feel what it feels like to love the way you learned to love here. You can’t go back to America and judge America through the eyes of what you learned here. Just as if you had come to India and had judged India through American eyes, you would have missed the beauty that is here. What you are called to do is take the blessing of what you learned here and take it home. You are powerful beyond measure. Living in America you can make a decision tomorrow to change the world, but it’s one heart at a time, it’s one person at a time. Take the gift of what you have learned here and share it with your family, share it with your friends, share it with your neighbors and your community. One heart at a time, love with all your heart. Be that example of love and you can change the world.

“So that’s when I came home and I’ve tried to do that every day of my life since I returned,” Burd said.

She went back to her bank job. But this time, it was different.

“People here are even more desperate for love than in Calcutta,” Burd said. “Sometimes that need for love is not as obvious as a hungry person on the street. What I would share with you is that Mother Teresa spoke a lot about the need for love here … it’s hidden. It’s hidden in loneliness. It’s hidden in fear of really being seen. It’s hidden in fear of being vulnerable. It’s hidden in the need for material wealth. To fill up what we crave, it’s to be seen and be cherished and worthwhile and loved. We all have that need.”

She has tried to aim her life at filling that need for others, even as she worked up the corporate bank ladder over the years. And that attitude hasn’t always gone over well.

“I still get criticized,” Burd said. “I’m still a very loving person. And as an executive of a bank, formerly, most of my employees have had hugs from me. And I tell them that I love them. And I’ve learned to be unapologetic and be immune to criticism, the snickers and the laughs. When people first meet me they think, ‘Is she really for real?’”

“All I think is how blessed I feel to know I can love that deeply,” she said.

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