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Episode 80. An Audience of One (from Hollywood to Holy Ground)

Hello human.

We all know who Elvis Presley is, but how about Dolores Hart? She starred with Elvis in her first film, also his first film, “Loving You,” released in 1957. Dolores gave Elvis his first on-screen kiss.

Hart starred with Connie Francis in “Where The Boys Are.” During her brief yet very busy career, she worked with actors Walter Matthau, Maureen Stapleton, Frances Farmer, Robert Wagner, and Karl Malden. She received a Tony nomination for her work in the Broadway play, “The Pleasure of His Company.” 

In 1962, she made a film, “Lisa,” which was the story of a Dutch holocaust survivor trying to make her way to Palestine, a role that had a profound impact on her life.

But she left Hollywood in 1963.

How It Happened

So, here’s how it happened:

Dolores Hart became close friends with Karl Malden during the shooting of Come Fly with Me (1963). As he wrote in his autobiography, When Do I Start? Dolores babysat their kids. She adored them, and they considered her a member of the family.  

At the completion of the picture, Dolores got engaged to Los Angeles architect Don Robinson. She had planned to have Malden’s daughters be her bridesmaids. But after a couple of fittings on their dresses, Dolores told the Malden’s’ she was calling off the wedding. She brought over her worldly possessions and told the girls to take what they wanted.

Malden said, she told them that she was moving away and that it was “an affair of the heart.” She not only left behind her fiancé, she left her acting career as well. On a 1963 New York promotional stop for Come Fly with Me, she took a one-way car ride to the abbey. The 24-year-old actress became a Roman Catholic nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. The Abbey of Regina Laudis is a cloistered order of about 40 Benedictines who live on the Abbey’s 400 acres. Mother Dolores is the Prioress.

The Spiritual Gifts God Gives You are Meant to Be Used for His Purpose

When Rev. Mother Dolores Hart walked away from her life as an actress in Hollywood, she saw only an audience of one. God. Her curtain opened to His presence and wanting to hear only His applause for the rest of her life.

And while she thought she was leaving acting behind, and had willingly made that choice, God knew different. He gave her spiritual gifts that He intended to use for His purpose. Not Broadway, not the golden screen.

At the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, she has helped cultivate a passionate theater community as an artistic director. In a 200-seat outdoor theater, The Gary-The Olivia Theater, built on the grounds, a play is presented each summer by the community, which has made Mother Dolores see that the arts can bring one closer to God.

“Theater can lead to spiritual transformation,” she said. “Every year when we stage a play, I see some type of transformation happen in certain actors,” she said. “That’s because the theater calls on actors to be grounded in their body and the truth of their feelings and who they really are. “

Her Choice, My Choice, Our Choice

You can read about Dolores Hart extensively. A fascinating life. A life worth pondering, worth putting a spiritual post-it on mentally, to return and reflect on.

I have the same choice. You have the same choice. Whether or not to make God our audience of one.

Same difference, my human.

Dolores Hart understood this at the most critical time in her life, when the temptation of fame, fortune and fair-weather times may have seemed that it would last forever… because that phone just kept ringing from her agent.

When needing God seemed peripheral, unnecessary.

The Power of an Audience of One

What Dolores Hart’s life makes me think about is the power of choosing an audience of one, when that means THE ONE.

It changes everything about motivation and heart’s intent.

And the joy that comes from obedience that is not dictated by performance or earthly results.

That is not dictated by people.

It is doing what God asks me to do to please Him. Because if He is pleased, others will be served through my life.

There are many scriptures about pleasing God rather than men. Very simple, beautifully direct.

Paul asking the question:

Galatians 1:10

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Paul providing clarity on who we should seek to please:

1 Thessalonians 2:4

4 On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.

John admonishing ill intent:

John 12:43

43 for they loved human praise more than praise from God.

And John questioning our beliefs when we seek the glory of each other rather than the glory from God?

John 5:44

44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

Paul telling us WHO the One is.  

Galatians 2:20

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

No surprise that King David figured this out long before the rest of us.

Psalm 16:2

2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;

    apart from you I have no good thing.”

An audience of one.

He Pleased Only His Heavenly Father

Jesus Christ’s audience of one was His Heavenly Father. He often left His disciples to be alone to pray. He spent time alone with Him and always answered to others with His Father’s answers. He looked to His Father for every step. He prayed; He cried out in anguish to Him. He embodied His Heavenly Father’s love to give to everyone.

Corporate fellowship, creating community with fellow believers, bringing others into the spiritual fold are really important. But ultimately, my relationship with God is personal, one on one. It requires time, solitude, worship. And a longing to please only Him, and to live within His presence.

When Dolores Hart made her choice, she chose such a path, maybe knowing she needed to choose God over fame, fortune, even family before she was too far into earthly gain? Are you thinking this is an extreme example? Deciding to live what some would call a cloistered life?

What about her choice applies to the human condition, to each of us?

Take a look at what Dolores does during her day as a Roman Catholic Nun: A nuns’ daily life includes chanting the Divine Offices seven times a day in Latin, and tending to their dairy farm, where they make cheese, look after a beef herd, pigs, sheep, lamma and a donkey.

They take care of the property’s extensive orchards, and try to be as self-sufficient as possible. It is a life in keeping with St. Benedict’s dictum that their lives should be a balanced combination of prayer and work.

Prayer and work. This does not mean we should all choose her Benedictine life. I will say there have been times I thought about how well I would do with that life. I love deep spiritual immersion in prayer. And tending to animals. I prefer being alone, with one other, or a small, close group.

But what it does mean, what the Benedictine life means for us is that we each need to get clear about the power of an audience of one: our Heavenly Father.

That we have a deeply immersed daily prayer life. We attend to those around us and embrace His creation as being in His presence.

A Binary Choice – God or What?

It does mean we all make one binary choice. God, or man. God, or things, God, or fame. God, or fortune. God, or followers. Am I trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God?

There is a timely moment in your life, human, when you decide to take that one-way all-in ride to your abbey, your purpose according to how your Creator intended you to live. And a thousand moments in every day that we confirm that choice, over and over again.

Such a life is sufficient through Christ. Ask Mother Dolores.

We tend His spiritual gardens.  Ask Mother Dolores.

His presence is a packed house, standing room only, the heart’s standing ovation of “being sold out for Jesus.”

Ask Mother Dolores. And hear His thundering applause when we love others as He first loved us.