I am walking away from this room beaming with inspiration and at the same time, a heavy heart. Why, it all started with Twitter. I was looking at Jim Paredes' tweets, it brought me to his tumbler, then to an over a month old post about Dolores Hart's attendance to the Oscars last year. She looked familiar I thought. When I read on, I learned that she started in Elvis Presley's first Technicolor film, Loving You. So I remembered, I bought a DVD copy of the film for my parents (it was a clearance sale). I watched it, didn't really leave an impression, nothing remarkable, I thought. Anyway, the interesting part was, after making a few films, Hart left Hollywood and became a nun. I found it interesting because she seemed to have a promising career, she was VERY beautiful (and still is), and she was engaged too. Yet she chose a secluded life exposed to hard labor and renounced comfort and luxury. Boy, that calling must have been crystal clear and very powerful too!
Anyway, I am always drawn to inspiring stories like this, I wish to meet her and more inspiring people whose lives are fueled by something greater than power and money, something we will definitely take in the afterlife.
So here is the documentary film, God is the Bigger Elvis, about this amazing woman. It was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the 84th Academy Awards, where Dolores attended the ceremony, her first Oscar attendance since 1959.
The heavy part of the documentary has something to do with her former fiance' - Don Robinson. Although he dated other women after the engagement broke off, he never got married. He admitted that he never got over Dolores, that he still love her at the time of the interview like he loved her more than four decades ago. He died in November 29, 2011. Throughout his life, he visited her during Christmas and Easter in the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis (Bethlehem, CT) and they remained close friends. He said that "every love doesn't have to wind up at the altar".
When I get to witness something so pure and profound, I could not help but shed tears of indescribable feeling. Perhaps it was because the theme of unrequited love is just too close to home. I've known it too many times that it's impossible not to get pricked.
When I contemplate on Don's side of the story, the song Eternally plays on my mind. So I shall end this post with this song and a promise, that one of these days, I will lightt a candle for him and pray for the repose of his soul.
