In a New Light: Spirituality and the Media Arts (Works of Saint Augustine)Ron Austin has been a writer / producer in Hollywood for over forty years. He has worked on such TV shows as Charlie's Angels, Matlock and Mission Impossible. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. First as a child actor with Charlie Chaplin, then as a screenwriter and producer, now as a professor at USC's film school, Ron Austin is a pure product of Hollywood. And yet, he wrote this book which, he says, "has been an act of Faith".
"The new generation of media artists, says Ron Austin, must be prepared to "gamble on transcendence", to explore a spiritual foundation for creative work".
Let's face it, this is a book about a personal conversion. This summer in San Diego, when I asked Ron Austin what his religion was all these years, he answered very simply: "Hollywood was my religion".
Today, Ron Austin believes that "an authentic spirituality entails ethics - essentially, how we treat other people". His spiritual quest has allowed him to discover "inspirational figures" such as Chiara Lubich, the Italian founder of the international Catholic movement of the Focolare, and other charismatic and inspired individuals.
In this book, Ron Austin explores such themes as evil, hope, imagination and redemption in the light of a deep faith.
While reading this book, movie lovers will learn a great deal about the History of Cinema: Jean Renoir, Vittorio de Sica, Federico Fellini, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. But we also learn a lot more about Spiritual Frontiers, transcendence, modern culture, and Faith.
Inspired by Chiara Lubich and her "spirituality of communion and unity", Ron Austin is writing about his personal experience and belief, his "Christian faith" which, he says, "is relevant to everything I do and write". Most of his Hollywood friends and teachers - people of honesty and integrity - considered themselves "atheists". While Ron Austin today is claiming loud and clear that whenever he is "embracing the mystery of the Other", he sense Christ's presence in his life. Yet, he knows that this is an experience not limited to people of Abrahamic faith - Christians, Muslims or Jews - but also offered to all people of good will.
In that sense, his book is a "journey into Faith" which all of us can experience with Ron Austin as we read this inspiring book.
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