Eat, pray, love

I was surreptitiously watching the film of Eat, Pray, Love this week on Netflix.  I'm often suspicious of bestsellers, and wasn't too impressed when I watched the film first time around a few months ago.  However, Javier Bardem is the male lead.  Ladies, need I say more?

Anyway, watching it for the second time, really just for some mindless entertainment, I found myself fascinated by the insight into the spirituality of someone who begins to talk to God for the very first time.  So fascinated, in fact, that I have downloaded the book (the advantage of the Kindle app being that no one knows what you're reading. Except I've just told you all.  Whoops).  Liz Gilbert describes sitting on her bathroom floor at 3am, sobbing because she is so unhappy in her marriage.  She has a good job, a nice house (two, actually) and everyone expects her to settle down and have babies.  She describes how every month that she realises she is not pregnant is a reprieve. She cannot bear to stay in her marriage, and cannot bear to leave so, in desperation, she prays, begging God to tell her what to do.  And then she stops crying very suddenly, and experiences absolute stillness.  And in the stillness God says to her, Go back to bed, Liz.

Now this might sound like a bit of an anticlimax, but she interprets this message as an instruction to get some rest and look after herself so that she can cope with the storm that's coming.  It is so interesting to see how someone who doesn't go to church (or the mosque, or the synagogue) might go about seeking God, and what he might say to them, and how they might understand it.  So don't judge me, folks, this book is research.

More blog posts on this to come!