Hope Endures: Colette Livermore

The searing memoir of an extraordinary woman who served as a nun for eleven years in Mother Teresa's order, Hope Endures is a compelling chronicle of idealistic determination, rigid discipline, and shattering disillusionment. In her life's journey from certainty to doubt, Colette Livermore enters the Missionaries of Charity order in 1973 with unwavering faith and total surrender of her will and intellect after seeing a documentary on the order's work in India. Only eighteen at the time, Livermore has been studying to enter medical school -- a lifelong goal -- but virtually overnight severs her many ties with family, friends, and the life she's known in beautiful, rural New South Wales in order to train as a sister to aid the poor. In the process, she also gives herself over to the order's unexpectedly severe, ascetic regime, which demands blind obedience and submission.

Given the religious name Sister Tobit, Livermore serves in some of the poorest places in the world -- the garbage dump slums of Manila, Papua New Guinea, and Calcutta -- bringing hope and care to people who are desperately ill, hungry, abandoned, and even dying, and comforting whomever she can. Although she draws inspiration and strength from her humanitarian work, Livermore and other nuns risk their own physical health, as they are sent to dangerous areas while being unschooled in the languages and cultures, untrained in medical care, and sometimes unprotected by vaccines. Livermore herself succumbs to bouts of drug-resistant cerebral malaria that almost kill her and to a new strain of hepatitis. Over time she also begins to notice that the order's rigid insistence on unquestioning obedience harms the young sisters mentally, emotionally, and spiritually -- and she experiences a terrible inner struggle to find the right path for herself. As she tries to respond to the suffering around her, she often falls into an incomprehensible conflict between her vow to obey and her vow to serve, between religious strictures and the practice of ...

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[hollywoodartchick]

MOther Theresa has never seemed like the legend she has been made into, and it is nice to get a glimpse from another angle.

[simisimi85]

I have worked with Collette...the author. Must ask her about her stories.

[Parcival01]

Yes, the "Be the One" is in MT's handwriting. When I worked with her, I had her send my parents an anniversary card. I saw it just weeks ago. It IS her handwriting, thus adding to the crediblity of the author.

[timparcival]

Thank heaven she was honest with herself, and with us!

[DeistReality]

I'm on chapter 3. Colette reminds me of Karen Armstrong another great Deist. These people were able to break free from that fog of faith that clouds the mind from the reality of Deism (God). I've added Colette to my Christ Mass list.

"Christ Mass"

The anointed mass of people who make a real difference in the world.

I look forward in speaking with you Colette as you've been targeted by Deist Reality.

Colette's book here will do much good in bringing people towards the reality of God (Deism).

[natvella74music]

Remarkable! I just finished reading this book, which i discovered at a bookshop at Melbourne Airport quite by chance, just as I was about to get on the plane. It certainly opened my eyes to the lives of people who choose this vocation, but importantly to question of blind faith and the contradictions of the church. The book touched me.

[kellidunham]

I also spent time with the Missionaries of Charity, years as a volunteer and a then I was aspirant. I am touched by the precision with which with the author describes some of the difficult MC practices.

I got kicked out of the MCs for having (their words) "too much self esteem." I iive a happy live as a stand up comic (and yes I do material about being a nun, you can see the videos on youtube) but like the author, I want to keep some of the MC values: treating each human as sacred.

[TVPJ]

I have just listened to an interview by Margaret Throsby on ABC FM with this Lady and both that interview and this video has caused me to buy the book - all power to her !

[StealthGoblin1]

Looks like a very interesting book. The self-flagellation sounds intense.