Easter is over for the year and I hope you had a good one. Maybe this holiday held important religious significance for you, or maybe it was just a long weekend - a break from work and a chance to hang out with family and friends. For me, Easter is a time to focus on the ones I love, take stock of what’s important, whilst also giving thanks for all that I am blessed with.

This year, Easter had me thinking a lot about faith and the important role I believe it plays in everyone’s life. First, let me clarify what I mean by everyone needs faith. I am NOT saying everyone needs God or religion. I would not describe myself as religious, though I do have a strong faith. I believe the two are not the same thing.

To be religious, one follows the teaching of a particular religion. As I have never been baptized (my parents believed I should choose for myself when I was old enough) and I don’t follow the teachings of any particular church, I couldn’t be described as religious, though I definitely believe in God.

In writing this post, I have searched for a label to describe myself, though I am not sure why I feel the need. Perhaps it’s a sense of responsibility to clarify my ‘position’ before writing about a potentially sensitive topic, or maybe I’ve just been conditioned by the basic human need to define myself and my ‘kind’. At a base level, isn’t this what a religion does? It unites and labels a group of people as following an agreed upon belief system. By adopting the label, you are publicly stating which group you belong to so everyone knows.

I’ve searched for my group, but I’m having trouble because none of the labels seem to fit. I’m not an Agnostic or an Atheist. I thought I might be a Heathen, but upon examination, I am definitely not, and Pagan doesn’t seem right either because it’s often associated with witchcraft and being at one with the trees - two things I know very little about . The best label I have come up with so far is I am a Christian/Buddhist because I believe in God (or a higher power or the universe or Source - take your pick) and I believe in reincarnation. So, if you think that describes you, then give me a shout because it would be nice if I found more of my ‘kind’.

When I was a child, I didn’t like that I had no religion. It wasn’t that I couldn’t join a church if I wanted to; my parents were supportive of whatever choice I made. But I envied the other kids who didn’t have to think about such matters, who had been given their religious community, even if that didn’t mean anything on a day to day basis.

It’s fair to say, the majority of Australians are not actively religious. Although the 2001 Census found that 68% of Australians identify as Christian, only 17% of them go to church regularly, and 25% of Australians say they have no religion at all.

With a background like this, it’s probably no wonder that I have questioned the relevance of religion in modern life. When I was a young adult, just the word - God - made me uncomfortable. I associated it with people who would knock on my door and try to convert me, or people who abused and judged others, or committed heinous acts in the name of their beliefs. Religion in this form terrifies me.

It is only in my thirties after travelling a good part of this world and seeing many things - good and bad - that I realise I have always had spiritual faith. The only difference is it has grown clearer and stronger with the passing years. I believe in something more than myself, and what my five senses tell me is true. I believe that if animals have a sixth sense, then human beings must do too. I have spent most of my adult life honing this intuition and following it has always served me well. It is this innate knowing that believes with every fibre of my being that there is a higher power (or God) and it’s on my side. Hell, it’s on everyone’s side!

Atheists may say there is no scientific proof that God exists: faith is a feeling and one which may stem from “childhood indoctrination”. Personally, I think I am proof to the contrary as my faith in God is despite my background. But to be honest, where your faith comes from is a moot point. What’s wrong with faith as a feeling?

Don’t we see the world through a prism of perception? Isn’t all ‘truth’ an individual or commonly agreed perception? What if I go outside on a windy day and say it’s “cold”, while you say it’s “fresh and lovely”, who’s right? Aren’t we both stating what is true for us? If I look at my husband and say he’s the most handsome man I have ever seen, is this false because 100 other people don’t agree with me? I put to you that faith is exactly the same. We don’t have to agree on a common label or a common belief. The only thing that matters is we settle on beliefs that are true for us and which serve us, comfort us.

My God does not need to be relevant to anyone but me. That is the beauty of faith. My God is in all of us and around us, and between us. In my world, God is whatever you want it to be, as long as it makes you feel good. Whatever you choose to believe in - angels, God, Martians, Allah or nothing at all - make sure you believe in it because it works for you. It works for you if it makes you feel good. Any beliefs which fill you with fear should be disbanded because frankly who needs to be afraid of what they can’t see!

There’s enough ugliness in the world and on television to keep you awake at night, I say choose beliefs and thoughts which sustain you when the chaos of the world is too much to bear. Life is often unpredictable, uncontrollable and anxiety ridden so everyone can benefit from having a little faith in their life. If not faith in God, then at least have faith in your fellow human beings.

Faith is hope and the promise of brighter days to come. Sometimes faith is all we have. Maybe if we all agreed to have faith in each other, we wouldn’t need to separate ourselves with religious labels. Maybe we wouldn’t be invalidating and killing each other in the name of God or nothing at all.
Photo by Mr.Kris

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EAT PRAY LOVE is a book I find very hard to review. The whole point of reviewing a book is to be able to judge it from a distance. I cannot do this with EAT PRAY LOVE. I am obsessed with the magic that is this book and the enormous talent that is Elizabeth Gilbert. I want to meet this woman. Okay, I’ll be honest, I want to BE this woman.

EAT PRAY LOVE is the memoir of award winning writer, Elizabeth Gilbert’s one year sabbatical from a life that seems to be collapsing around her. She’s coming out of a nasty divorce, her husband wants to take her for everything she’s worth, her new lover is infatuated one day, distant the next, and she’s on a cocktail of pills for her chronic depression and anxiety.

Like many of us at times like this, Elizabeth wants to get away, but unlike the majority of us, she actually does it, embarking on a trip to ITALY, INDIA and BALI She does what so many of us dream of doing - escaping the mundane of our daily troubles, breaking out of our comfort zone and reshaping our lives in a fundamental way.

And so begins the journey that is EAT PRAY LOVE. She finds pleasure in food and language in Italy, spirituality through meditation and prayer in an Indian ashram, and ends up falling in love with herself, life and her future husband in Bali. However, the most important journey of all is the one that is within, and this is where Elizabeth Gilbert has laid herself bare. She writes with an honesty that is at times uncomfortable, publicly revealing her fears, neuroses and regular bouts of self pity so we can share her often pot-holed, roundabout road to self-acceptance.

The book starts with her sobbing on the bathroom floor night after night as she slowly comes to the realization that her marriage and her life does not reflect what she wants for her future. She is married, financially comfortable, trying to have a baby, basically she knows she SHOULD feel blessed, but she doesn’t. She is tortured by the sense that her life has gone terribly off-track somewhere. She loves her husband and doesn’t want to leave him, but then she also doesn’t want to be with him. So she stays trapped in her misery, unable to move forward in any direction .

I think any woman who has had a committed relationship break down can relate to her struggles here. Relationships end for many reasons, which are often too complicated to articulate, and I respected the fact that Elizabeth Gilbert refused to get into the whys and wherefores of her divorce. The details of her relationship with her ex-husband are not our business, and more importantly not what this book is about.

EAT PRAY LOVE is not about how to survive divorce, or how to find love, or how to travel the world paid for by a publisher (though I wish she gave us tips on that because I’d be very interested). EAT PRAY LOVE is not even a travelogue.

This book is a memoir of self-discovery and a spiritual quest. A story of how one controlling, high strung woman crosses the world in search of inner peace and happiness. What she finds is the love, acceptance and serenity she’d been looking for were never missing. They were always inside of her, and have been found in the silence of meditation, the warmth of a smile, a gratitude for life, an open heart and an acceptance and honoring of self.

The fact that this book is so much about Elizabeth Gilbert - how she feels, what she is scared of, obsessed with, raging against - is the most common criticism of the book on Amazon. People complain that she is narcissistic and shallow, and the book doesn’t give enough of a feel for the countries she is in. But, I think these reviewers are missing the point of the book. The bi-line of EAT PRAY LOVE says One Woman’s Search for Everything. Hello - if that doesn’t say memoir, then I don’t know what does.

So many women in this day and age, I believe, can relate to this book. It is not just a book for divorcees, or those on a spiritual quest. This book is for anyone who has questioned where their life is going, what it’s all about and how can they be happy with themselves.

At the beginning of the book, Elizabeth Gilbert cannot be alone. She cannot let life be. She must control, achieve, and obsess over her lovers and her failures. She describes herself in relationships as a cross between “a golden retriever and a barnacle”, and says she could “make friends with the dead”, anything so she is not left alone with her own thoughts.

How many of us are like this today? In a world where we can effectively do something all the time, many people fill their lives with one meaningless activity after another., Busy busy busy. That’s the name of the game. And if a part of us starts to suspect that this isn’t all life was meant to be, well we shut that voice up by going shopping.

I could go on and on about this book, but I think ultimately you need to read it for yourself. So read EAT PRAY LOVE. It’s a life changing kind of book. It’s written with humor and empathy and great insight. I love this book. I wish I had written this book.

Photo by momma a

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