A story circulates about Mother Teresa, who, it is said, replied to the question “How do you stand it when you have to serve some truly despicable person?” with sigh, saying, “I look deeply into their eyes and say to myself, “My Jesus, what an interesting disguise you are wearing today.”
Many years ago, I saw a piece by artist Ginger Geyer called something like “Mother Teresa’s Paper Dolls,” which was inspired by this story. Geyer, who specializes in not-quite-trompe-oeil porcelain renditions of all kinds of everyday objects, had made a piece that consisted of something that looked like a cheap, flat paper box, the kind that might once have been used to give someone a carefully-folded shirt or scarf, but now was so beat up that it was only good for holding a child’s collection of paper dolls. The paper dolls inside, however, were not the sentimental religious cutouts that might be found by googling “Mother Teresa” and “paper dolls” today, nor were they the kind of fantasy fashions that populated the paper dolls of my own childhood in the 1950s. Rather, what I recall is that the fragile, wafer-thin, human-shaped objects inside that porcelain box which pretended to be ordinary, worn-out cardboard bore images of people with disfigured faces or missing limbs, naked or dressed in rags or wrapped in dirty blankets. These fake cut-outs were disguises for the missing, perfect, shining figure of Jesus.
That I still recall this piece all these years later is a testament to the power of Geyer’s quirky vision, as well as to the enduring truth of today’s Gospel reading.* We are all paper dolls, covering up the shining presence that lives in each one of us with masks that keep us from seeing Jesus in one another, or from being Jesus to someone else. Today, Jesus continues to invite me to see past whatever disguises he might be wearing, and to remember that I, too, might be Jesus in disguise, offering the water of life to someone who is dying of thirst.
–Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church
- Who do I see when I look into the eyes of a stranger?
- How have I welcomed Jesus-in-Disguise?
- How have I been Jesus-in-Disguise to others?
