The trailer for "Art Of Serenity: A Journey Of Faith" has been on YouTube since February, and may be a better introduction to the video than this post. It's late, I'm tired, and it's been a big week.
On the other hand, I watched the (almost) finished product this evening, and want to post my reactions to it while it's fairly fresh in my mind.
"Art Of Serenity: A Journey Of Faith" has taken about three years to make. Not that my son-in-law has been working at it full time during that interval.
I Know 2/3 of These People
Disclosure time: I know the producer, Aaron McWilliams. He married one of my daughters, who shows up in the video. The documentary's mostly about his first wife, how she handled dying of cancer, how he handled her illness and death, and what's happened since.The situation isn't as macabre as it sounds.
Aaron McWilliams spent a large part of his first year of marriage to my daughter finishing this documentary - not a typical way to start a marriage, but it's not a typical documentary, either.
Schmaltz, Hearts and Flowers, Sweet Remembrance: Not!
If you're looking for a documentary chock-full of greeting card sentiments, just oozing sweetness: keep looking. That's not "Art of Serenity."The video shows a young woman dealing with a terminal illness; a Catholic couple packing as much of the six decades they'd hoped to have into the short time they actually got; a widower grieving, moving on with his life, and remarrying.
Although "Art of Serenity" deals with the spiritual issues of dying, death, and the hope of Heaven - I hesitate to say that it's a 'spiritual' documentary. I tend to associate 'being spiritual' with hackneyed recitations of slogans that may have been quite meaningful in the 19th century - but lost something through generations of overuse.
I think "Art of Serenity" is a very human, very Catholic, look at how a person can choose to live and die. And well worth the hour it takes to view.
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