Monday, August 30, 2010

Eat, Pray, and Love

My old friend Ann Merkley came to St. George to help her daughter after the birth of her baby.  I was able to spend some quality time with her including going to a Julie Robert"s movie called Eat, Pray, and Love.  It is adapted from a book by the same title.  I had not read the book, but had seen an interview with the author telling of her personal experience chronicled in her tell all book.  The book has started a world-wide phenomena of "Eat, Pray, and Love" woman's groups supporting one another in the quest to find inner peace.  I am sure that the book has a lot more detail and explanation, but even though I did enjoy the movie,  it left me questioning.  The movie started off with the main character knowing she had to divorce her faithful  husband of eight years (who loved her deeply) after praying due to feeling unfulfilled, then feeling a need to discover inner peace ran off to  first, Italy, next India, then to find a Bali Guru (without any teeth).  As I lay in bed that night, I thought of my inner peace.  Sometimes I too feel empty in the peace department and need to be filled back up again.   I do not have to divorce Walt and go to the other side of the world to find wisdom.  If I am lacking peace, I can pray, read the scriptures,  and there it usually is.  If I need to find a special place, I can grab my temple bag and spend a few hours in the most scared sanctuary in the world, the temple.  Instead of divorcing my husband and running to find inner peace, I come home from the temple renewed, committed to being a better person, and that improves my marriage and my family.  After a few hours at the temple, things that seemed so lacking in others to make me happy are now trivial.  After the temple I am made fully aware that when I am pointing my finger at someone else to provide me with happiness, I notice there are three fingers pointing back at me!   I was sharing all these thoughts with Ann while we were waiting for church to start and she said, "Yeah, and we don't have to scrub the floors of the temple when we get there."  This was one of the things that was required of Julia in one of her "sanctuaries".  Ann and I had a good laugh over that.  All I can say is thank you Father for the Gospel in my life.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.

3 comments:

Ann and the Reidster said...

Disclaimer: I wasn't implying that we shouldn't help clean our chapels or temples. But the scene of Julia scrubbing the temple floors in India made our efforts of cleaning our chapels and temples look pretty nice...

Danielle said...

Hmmm I had no idea that was the premise of the movie. I knew she traveled to those places, but divorced a faithful loving husband??? Hmmmmm interesting. YOu make some very perfect points. Peace comes from God...and devotion to God. Sounds like the point of that movie was peace comes from devotion to SELF. Who knwos. I haven't seen it or read the book!

AMY AND MIKEY said...

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I THOUGHT THE SAME THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This movie bothered me so much for all those reasons!!!!!!!! You put it so perfectly. I think it is a perfect set up from satan. When I came home, I said to Mike- "If someone isn't feeling fufilled, which is SO EASY to feel, especially if you have children (I've heard), then after seeing thsi movie, any person who isn't a member of the church will think "I need to go find myself" and will contemplate divorce and waste all their money adn time in other countries. Satan is so clever, giving up something good, for something that APPEARS to be better "peace". So annoying.