It’s going to take a miracle to restore functionality to the U.S. Congress. Can Marianne Williamson, author and teacher of A Course in Miracles, help initiate it?
Williamson has long been outspoken. She founded Project Angel Food to feed homebound Angelenos with AIDS, and co-founded The Peace Alliance. She produced the Sister Giant conferences to support women and nonviolence, has written 10 books, and was pastor of her own church for five years.
In a 2003 interview, she told WLT, “It’s time for our generation of spiritual seekers to put up or shut up. Some of us have been studying spiritual principles for decades. We have accumulated tremendous amounts of metaphysical data. In the final analysis however, what will matter is not what we knew, but what we did. Not what we preached, but what we practiced.”
Now her practice is propelling her to run for Congress. Noting that wisdom of the heart is the thing most lacking in politics, she envisions her campaign as “a collective act of love and a stand for possibility.”
Williamson hopes to represent Los Angeles District 33.
What I love about living in Los Angeles is the attitudes here—the way people are open to new things, new ideas, new people.
I decided to run for Congress because I feel strongly that this is not a time to be silent—about America, the world or the fate of the human race.
I would like my campaign to be a stand taken by the American people that we are not going to simply allow our democracy to be stolen from us and sold to the highest bidder. That we’re not going to sit idly by while the most sacred democratic franchise—a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”—turns into a government “of a few of the people, by a few of the people and for a few of the people” right in front of our eyes, without our saying, “Uh, no. Not now. Not ever.”
I think I have a good chance of prevailing over the incumbent because it’s time for a new conversation in America, and the political status quo will not be articulating it. The incumbent knows many things because he’s been in Congress for 38 years, but I know many things because I’ve not been.
Where politics and spirituality intersect is in that place where moral authority trumps money, governmental power, technology or any other worldly force. Abolition emerged from the Quakers; the women’s suffrage movement emerged form the Quakers; the civil rights movement emerged from the Southern Christian Leadership council. Such movements didn’t come from political parties; they came from what Gandhi called the “soul force” of the American people.
The way to bring love into politics is by making love the bottom line. By insisting that the love of our children, our democracy, our planet and our future take precedence over the efforts by a relatively few people to provide only for their own short-term economic gain.
My biggest concern for the people in the district I hope to represent is that my campaign help awaken all of us not only to the rights, but also the responsibilities of citizenship. That not only their interests, but also their consciousness be represented in Washington.
What excites me most about being in Congress is being part of the living history of the United States. Every generation of Americans is a steward of our democracy, and I would love the opportunity to contribute.
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