I Believe In Miracles
By David Brown
I had everything I wanted nice cars, a nice house. I had it all, but those things did not bring peace or happiness.
Matt Lattanzi smiles gently and speaks optimistically of faith, miracles and the importance of living for the moment. Faith in God, he says, has restored his beautiful wife Olivia Newton-John to health after a tormenting encounter with breast cancer. That same faith has enabled him, Olivia and daughter Chloe to turn their backs on the materialistic world of showbusiness for a simple life on their farm in northern NSW.
Placing his hands over his heart, Lattanzi says faith has opened the door to an inner peace he can't explain with words. This new-found faith will be tested when the family returns in September to the U.S., where Olivia will face court over the collapse of her Koala Blue empire. Even in the face of possible financial ruin, Lattanzi speaks of a joy that the world can't snatch away. I believe in miracles,
he says. And, really, the only way they happen is if you do believe in them. I have a faith that tells me no matter what happens, we will be fine. Of course, the unresolved business of Koala Blue is a stress factor. There are people who have been hurt enough to sue us. That is not good, but we can't fight what has happened. This may sound strange, but if you can't fight something you put love out to it. In our meditation, we put love out to those people who are suing us and we keep it out there.
Whatever is meant to be is meant to be. Whatever comes of it is meant to be, and we do not hold anything against anyone for this. All we have to say to those people is, We embrace you.
I truly believe that if you do this, no matter how great the foe, it seems to melt away.
Lattanzi, 34, who recently completed a stint in Nine's Paradise Beach and will return next year for guest spots, tells TV WEEK his spiritual love conquers all
discipline is healing the grief and trauma of the past couple of years, in which Chloe lost her best friend, Colette, to cancer, Olivia'8 father, Brin, died and Olivia had breast cancer.
Those experiences made the family reassess values. What we value most is our family unit, and that is why we are in Australia,
Lattanzi says. Australia has been an awakening for us. Here, we can have time together, enjoy each other's company and live in the moment. Things like showing Chloe how to make a fire, or showing her how to fish ... this is what counts. Olivia and I are able to enjoy talking about things that happened in the past, what may happen in the future and, most of all, what we are doing in the present time. The moment is a very hard place to be and most people don't know how to be there.
Lattanzi says that, for all the stresses that threatened to break down his family, perseverance and a belief in God kept them standing firm.
The answers are all here,
he says pointing to his heart. A peace comes from here and perseverance is the key. We don't give up. The fact is, God is working, but we have grown away from that belief to embrace a technological world. We ignore the spiritual world. But I think people are realising there is no real peace in the technological world and are turning back to a faith in God.
At the time of Olivia's cancer, she was eating well, never drank, never smoked. She had everything she ever needed, but there was one major problem she was stressed from a need to work to support a lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. That pressure made her make decisions she otherwise wouldn't have made about material things and touring. She didn't really want to tour, and here she was, getting ready to tour. She didn't know how to deal with stress.
Olivia knew how to deal with everything on a physical level, but on a spiritual and psychological level she didn't know how to deal with things. Not many people are taught how to deal with things on that level. In our society, we say, Okay, take a pill. But when these traumas come and are threatening to take you out of the picture altogether, you start gathering resources and looking to higher ground. So we started on the path for truth. I can tell you, the material world is a merry-go-round, and if you dedicate your life to it, you can never get off. We are so conned. You have to have the house, you have to have the latest this and that. The American Dream, the Australian Dream, is a nightmare. I can speak through experience because I had it all. I had everything I wanted, and it did not bring me peace and happiness. I was working. Anything I wanted I could have a nice car, a nice house. I built my own house.
And even though the house was built from love and with great environmental concerns, it still did not bring me happiness. It didn't fulfil me because I was looking for outside things to bring me peace inside. You cannot get that peace from external things.
Our existence goes beyond our 80 or so years on Earth, and those material things count for nothing in eternity. So now we know where we are heading, we are looking to the future.
That future includes Lattanzi and Olivia enduring the Koala Blue court ordeal as well as selling their two homes in America. We have been told we must sell our homes and live a much reduced lifestyle,
Lattanzi says. My spirit tells me to travel and work in our travels, and work for the planet, and that is what we will be doing.
In my travels I would like to bring little bits of peace to wherever I go. I admire people like the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Olivia and I both have jobs. We are having meetings with Beyond 2000 and will be doing documentaries about the planet. As well as working together, I will be doing my own shows, and Olivia will be doing hers. In October I will be in Mexico, filming a documentary. Our work is going to take us around the planet, but Australia will be a base.
Lattanzi is hopeful the documentaries will contribute to good quality television. I think I'm a teacher,
he says. You learn from what you teach and, hopefully, from our travels, we can tape entertaining material that people will find inspiring.
Is Lattanzi worried that constant travelling will disrupt Chloe, 7? No, she loves it,
he says. She is a child of the planet. She is happy. She's an incredibly light being. Chloe has a big mission on the planet. She has a strong conviction about God, and we didn't instil this. She watches Olivia and me meditate but she's close to God, the prime creator, of her free will. Chloe loves Jesus and has a real affinity for Him. We read her The Children's Bible, and she responds to that so well. She also loves the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. She absorbs all these readings and just wanders off happily, and I'm left wondering what is happening before me. We are raising a little crusader.
Lattanzi says he and Olivia are unlikely to have another child. He says: There are certainly no plans in the immediate future, so that probably means no plans for others. Chloe is one of my greatest gifts. Both Olivia and I have a lot of things, but I don't think it is on the cards for us to have any more children.
There is a part of me that says, Yes, yes, yes! but I don't think that is the right voice.
Olivia Walks In On Paradise
.IT had to happen. Paradise Beach producers finally convinced Olivia Newton- John to make a cameo appearance in her husband Matt's show. Olivia and daughter Chloe helped Matt two weeks ago when he filmed his final scenes with the Nine Network soap. (He says he'll return for guest appearances when he and the family come back from America at the end of the year.)
According to Nine, Olivia agreed to the role much to the delight of the cast and crew. Producers are keeping details of the episode under wraps until it goes to air later this year. TV WEEK can reveal that Olivia and Chloe filmed their scenes at Coolangatta airport on Friday, July 30 [1993]. In the storyline, Cooper (Lattanzi's character) is leaving Paradise Beach for an overseas photographic assignment.
At the airport, a young girl Chloe runs to him and introduces herself. She says that, like Cooper, she and her mum are also leaving Paradise Beach on the same flight. The camera slowly reveals her mum to be none other than Olivia. All the Paradise Beach producers will say is: Having already recorded a previous episode of Paradise Beach, Chloe appeared an 'old hand' to the crew as she breezed through her scenes.