Sermon Library
“Eat Pray Love – part 2”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
November 29, 2009
Service Theme: Advent I – 2009
Advent I – 2009 November 29, 2009
Eat Pray Love – part 2
By Gregg Anderson
Conversion
Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love states that she went to search for the balance between worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion. She went to Italy to eat and learn the language. She went to an Ashram in India to find God. And then she went to Bali to put it all together and ended up finding love as well. As many of you know, the book begins with her desperate plea to God for help while crying on the bathroom floor at 3 in the morning for the 47th consecutive night. She senses a unique presence and stillness and stops crying. This is her conversion and begins her quest and search to find balance and peace. Suffering from despair and depression, Elizabeth is motivated as she quotes “to look for God like a person with his or her head on fire looks for water.”
Divine Bliss
In the Ashram Elizabeth is told that the search for God and divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life. There are moments in people’s lives that they may feel such divine bliss, but as Elizabeth writes, “For most of us this state passes as fast as it comes. It’s almost like you are shown your inner perfection as a tease and then you tumble back to ‘reality’ very quickly, collapsing into a heap upon all your old worries and desires once again.” “Over the centuries, people have tried to hold on to that state of blissful perfection through all sorts of external means – through drugs and sex and power and adrenaline and the accumulation of pretty things - but it doesn’t keep. We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, begging for pennies from every passerby, unaware this his fortune was right under him the whole time. Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart – the supreme energy of the divine – will take you there.” (p. 197)
There are a few moments in which Elizabeth experiences a certain form of divine bliss through her prayers and meditations in the austerity of the ashram. She affirms at one point that she was “suddenly transported through the portal of the universe and taken to the center of God’s palm.” (p. 198) Elizabeth is very real and honest in her portrayal of her pursuit of God and this is the primary reason that I am talking about her journey. She also happens to be quite theologically astute for someone who has not specifically studied theology. I believe we are discovering more and more people creating their own spiritual journey so to speak especially compared to the history of religion in general.
Regarding another spiritual and even mystical experience, Elizabeth writes, “I left my body, I left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was inside the void, but I also was the void and I was looking at the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom. The void was God, which means that I was inside God.”
In Search Of God
Elizabeth is, indeed, in search of God and an experiential closeness to God. She is also in search of herself and her soul. This book has sold millions of copies because there are so many people who are also in search of God, self and soul today. What is particularly interesting to me about this book is that it represents a very large portion of our population today. The mere fact that it speaks about pleasure, prayer and love clearly clarifies that such pursuits are part of the innate fabric of being human.
The challenge for any religious body or organization is how do we all begin to address the modern need for spiritual enlightenment? In many ways I have spent my life trying to figure this out in a very progressive, intelligent and enlightened community of Aspen. Elizabeth Gilbert is a representative of a whole new spectrum of spiritual seekers. She relates to a number of people in Aspen who, as I have discovered, have already read her book and have identified with her book. It also seems that many of these people also attend this Chapel. I just happen to be the last person to have read this book.
Seeking Spiritual Direction Anywhere
I appreciate her book, not everything, but for the most part I like her theology and spirituality. I am also becoming more aware that more people today find spiritual leadership from non-traditional authority. Today people care about those who can articulate where they are in their spiritual journey. They no longer primarily find it in their traditional church, synagogue or place of worship. They are looking for it elsewhere. And this book, Eat Pray Love is a mere reflection of the reality that more people are seeking answers outside the church and synagogue and from people who speak more openly and honestly about their faith, their pursuit and their God. Elizabeth is listening and learning from a guru, a shaman, an elderly medicine man, and a woman healer.
If there is some truth to this then people of the church need to be cognizant of this, ask a lot of questions and be open to change and spiritual evolution. Elizabeth does comprehend that religious rituals are born or develop out of original and mystical experimentation, but even the most original new ideas will eventually harden into dogma and therefore stop working for many people. Somehow, we need to allow true or real mystical and spiritual experiences be what they are and not always attempt to encapsulate them in an enigmatic doctrine or dogma.
Ritual and Flexibility
“Be very careful,” warns Elizabeth, “not to get too obsessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for its own sake. Especially in this divided world, where the Taliban and the Christian Coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word God and who has the proper rituals to reach that God, it may be useful to remember that it is . . . only the constant desire of an individual seeker to experience the eternal compassion of the divine. Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline.”
“Another objective of religion, of course, is to try to make sense of our chaotic world and explain the inexplicabilities we see playing out here on earth every day: the innocent suffer, the wicked are rewarded – what are we to make of all this? What I’m seeing in some of my friends, though, as they are aging, is a longing to have something to believe in. But this longing chafes against any number of obstacles, including their intellect and common sense. Despite all their intellect, though, these people still live in a world that careens about in a series of wild and devastating and completely nonsensical lurches. Great and horrible experiences of either suffering or joy occur in the lives of all to make us long for a spiritual context in which to express either lament or gratitude, or to seek understanding. The problem is – what to worship, whom to pray to?”
Cherry-Picking Religion
We are people who seek our spirit, our spirituality and our God. Gilbert’s book, Eat Pray Love, is a good expression of this eternal and universal truth. Gilbert is warned about “cherry-picking a religion.” She responds, “This is a sentiment I completely respect except for the fact that I totally disagree. I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s the history of mankind’s search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.”
Personally, I do not think that the light has changed or the creator has left us and gone off to seek another universe. Whatever name and image people have of God, I strongly suspect that this God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the omniscient and almighty. But, I do suspect that people’s perception of this God has changed and evolved and varies from place to place, people to people.
One Spiritual Thread
Elizabeth adds, “The Hopi Indians thought that the world’s religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn’t become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us.”
”In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: ‘Do not think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of providence are infinite.’” “But doesn’t that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed, infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn’t our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don’t we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? “(p. 208)
Final Recognition and Reassurance
Elizabeth Gilbert comes closer to herself and to God through her desire and devotion. She has turned her sadness and depression into joy and contentment. She has substituted her medication for meditation. She has turned her anger into love. She ends up finding a husband in Bali. She has done this, as she would admit through an invisible yet real and eternal love from God and her own ability to apply herself to her spirituality and faith. In other words – it still works. Elizabeth also helps her woman-healer who is caring for her child and two orphans secure a house. I like her line about praying to help Wayan, the woman healer, to obtain a house. She said, “Never have I seen a miracle happen so fast. All this time, I was begging God to please help Wayan. And God was begging Liz [me] to please help Wayan, too.” We are all co-creators with God. Let us continue this journey each in our own way and let us all help one another along the way as well.
In Elizabeth’s addendum in her book she gives thanks to many, many people who have helped her on her journey to Italy, India and Indonesia. She says that she does not know how to repay everyone. She concludes, “In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”
This is Thanksgiving weekend. I hope you all had a chance to eat, pray and love during this time of thanksgiving. Eating, praying and loving is part of the essence of all of our lives. Let us continue to find this balance and always be thankful – thankful to friends and loved ones, thankful to spiritual leaders in our lives, and ultimately thank you to God. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
http://www.aspenchapel.org