This
weekend I stayed at an inn in North Wales, Pennsylvania where we celebrated a
baby shower for my cousin Katie—she and her husband Nick are expecting their
first child—a baby girl—in October. I
chose to drive to the inn the day before the shower, stay overnight at this
lovely inn, enjoy the accommodations, celebrate the baby shower, and then drive
home to Queens, NY.
After
a lovely evening meal at an outdoor table, accompanied by piano music
(including selections from LES MISERABLES) and a walk around the grounds I went
to my room and got settled. The TV didn’t have the INSP network (which I have
at home via Verizon Fios), so I couldn’t watch a rerun of THE WALTONS, nor did
it have a Catholic or other Christian channel or THE HALLMARK CHANNEL, and the
best program I could find was the movie “EAT, PRAY, LOVE” with Julia Roberts
(to whom I’d gladly love to donate 10 pounds).
I happened to tune it in when she was enjoying a Thanksgiving meal with
a family in Rome, I watched the segment of her time in India, and I turned it
off during the segment in Bali, partially because I was tired and needed to
sleep and partially because I suspected the film would take a turn that I would
not want to see. So this reflective critique is based on the segment of the
film I actually watched.
I
can understand that the Julia Roberts character (I don’t remember her name—was
it Liz?—I remember that a character named Richard in the India segment called
her “groceries” since she had a large plate of food in front of her) would
experience the joy of eating in Rome, since the reputation of Italian cuisine
is well known. But why would she have to leave Rome to go to India to learn to
pray? I suspect that this is part of the anti-Catholic and even anti-Christian
bias of many in the entertainment industry for which Eastern religions have
more appeal. Here this woman was visiting
the headquarters of the Catholic Church, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the place
where many martyrs died rather than renounce their faith, and she leaves there
to go to India?
I
must confess that to a certain extent her character might not learn the secret
of prayer in Rome, the bustling city and seat of government of the Church with
all its pomp, position, prestige, politics and bureaucracy—hopefully Pope
Francis will continue as he started and renew the Church by continuing to rid
it of some of its worldly external entrapments and to bring it closer to Gospel
simplicity. But why India? Why an ashram? She could have saved herself a lot of travel
time and travel cost and gone from Rome, the government head of the Church to
the HEART of the Church, which is ASSISI!
There she would have encountered the legacy of St. Francis and St.
Clare, who demonstrated the way of love and the way of prayer in the One Who IS
the WAY, JESUS CHRIST, and in living the Gospel, and it has been said that the
holiness that permeated their lives still permeates the atmosphere of Assisi,
where people are still seeking to walk in their footsteps. Perhaps there she could have found the answer
to reviving her struggling marriage in the words of the Peace Prayer attributed
to our beloved St. Francis: “where there
is injury, pardon…where there is despair, hope…to understand…to love…it is in
giving that we receive…”.
But
instead the scene shifts dramatically to her ride in a cab from the airport to
an ashram (or whatever) in India to spend time learning to meditate from a
guru. As she rides in her cab, poor
beggar children are pawing at her window and she does nothing. HELLO!
Here this woman is supposedly seeking God or seeking herself or seeking
nirvana and she totally disregards JESUS in her midst in His “distressing
disguise” of poor children! One of her
first assignments is to scrub the floor.
Believe me; I would not spend my money on airfare to India to scrub
floors!! I pay my CLEANING LADY to scrub
my floors! If she wanted to scrub
floors, would it not have made much more sense to find an elderly or infirmed
family member, friend or neighbor who needed her floor scrubbed! At least she would then have been performing
an act of charity and humble service for someone who needed her help right
where she lived! And if she really
wanted to learn to pray in India, it would have been much better for her to
have gone to a convent of the Missionaries of Charity—Blessed Mother Teresa of
Calcutta’s order—because there she could have learned the secret of praying in
silence –not to “nothing” but to LOVE INCARNATE, JESUS CHRIST in the Blessed
Sacrament, and to encounter Him not only in Eucharistic Adoration but in loving
Him by loving service to “the poorest of the poor”. There she could have
learned BOTH to PRAY and to LOVE. And if
she was interested in scrubbing floors, I am sure that they would have gladly
given her the opportunity! :~ Finding God DOES involve some self-emptying, as
those in Eastern religions claim, but what use is self-emptying UNLESS the end
result is SELF-GIVING and in being “FILLED with the fullness of God Himself!” (See
Ephesians 3:14-21).
Apparently
through her prayer exercises and a friendship with a somewhat critical seeker
named Richard this woman achieves a certain measure of peace. She has some flashbacks to her married life—she
still loves her husband but sadly concludes “nothing is forever”. She recognizes the Presence of God within,
but although it is good that she realizes that God is within and is not merely
Someone requiring performance, she fails to recognize that God only enters
where He is invited and welcomed and that God is NOT “us” but One Who lives in
us to transform us into the person He created us to become—a unique individual
but also a new, unique reflection of JESUS CHRIST.
In
her new found peace and happiness she pets an elephant and the scene abruptly
switches to Bali, where she meets another kind of teacher who seems to
emphasize “balance” and she supposedly learns how to love. Since I had read
that she supposedly has an affair in Bali I concluded that this segment was not
worth watching.
I
still don’t know if the “end result” of the film is that she has “moved on” and
will officially end what had been turning into a “loveless marriage”, which would
be a likely conclusion of the entertainment industry and too many people in
real life—or if she discovers that it is important to invest what she has
received from her lessons in eating, praying and loving in giving her marriage
a second chance. Since this movie is based on a well-known book which, I
believe, is a chronicle of one woman’s life experience, perhaps someday I’ll
glance at the final chapter in a local bookstore. It’s just sad that she did not encounter
JESUS CHRIST and help her husband to encounter Him. If they both had encountered JESUS CHRIST and
learned to see Him in each other and put Him in the center of a sacramental
marriage, then they could have endured as my parents have been doing for 63
years and counting!
Ultimately the book and film “EAT, PRAY, LOVE” shows me that the world is in desperate need of the Gospel and that we Catholics (as well as other Christians) need to pray and work harder and smarter in the task of evangelization.
is part of who and what we are, but we are about so much more! We need to give them JESUS--to show them JESUS--to help them to see JESUS as He really is--LOVE INCARNATE, MERCY INCARNATE, the GOD Who loves us so much that He came to dwell with us and share our lives, to die for our sins, to win victory over sin and death through His cross and resurrection, and the One without Whom our hearts will forever be restless until we find our rest in HIM!
©
Copyright 2013 by Arlene B. Muller (Arlene Clare Muller, SFO)
No comments:
Post a Comment