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Loading... The healing of America (edition 1997)| 245 | 2 | 100,359 | 
(3.58) | 3 | Discover healing that reaches beyond the self from #1 New York Times bestselling author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. In this landmark work, Marianne Williamson reminds us that there is a point in everyone's spiritual journey where the search for self-awareness can turn into self-preoccupation. All of us are better off when contemplation of holy principles is at the center of our lives. But it is in applying those principles in our lives that we forge the true marriage between heaven and earth. In the compassionate but clear-eyed prose that has won her so many avid readers, Williamson shows us that the principles which apply to our personal healing also apply to the healing of the larger world. Calling on Americans to turn the compassion in our hearts into a powerful force for social good, Williamson shows us how to transform spiritual activism into a social activism that will in turn transform America into a nation seriously invested in the hope of every child and in the potential of every adult.… (more) |
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We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving peace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
-- PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
PROCLAIMING A DAY OF NATIONAL FASTING,
MARCH 30, 1863  I was fifteen years old when Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot. I was watching television in my family's den while waiting for my father to come home from work, when a news bulletin reported that King had been killed.
Shortly afterward, my father walked in the back door. I ran up to him crying, "Daddy, Daddy, Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed!"
I saw a look on my father's face that I had never seen before. His eyes seemed to focus on something impossibly far away, and with an intensely pained expression on his face, he spat out the words, "Those bastards."
Confused, I thought, "What is he saying? How does he know? What does he mean, 'those' bastards?"
In that instant, I lost my innocence. That day changed history and it certainly changed me. I have never forgotten my father's eyes. I took another road than my father took, but I am looking for the same perfect world. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English
None ▾Book descriptions Discover healing that reaches beyond the self from #1 New York Times bestselling author and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. In this landmark work, Marianne Williamson reminds us that there is a point in everyone's spiritual journey where the search for self-awareness can turn into self-preoccupation. All of us are better off when contemplation of holy principles is at the center of our lives. But it is in applying those principles in our lives that we forge the true marriage between heaven and earth. In the compassionate but clear-eyed prose that has won her so many avid readers, Williamson shows us that the principles which apply to our personal healing also apply to the healing of the larger world. Calling on Americans to turn the compassion in our hearts into a powerful force for social good, Williamson shows us how to transform spiritual activism into a social activism that will in turn transform America into a nation seriously invested in the hope of every child and in the potential of every adult. ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description |
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Firstly, after reading this… Marianne should have been president. I sincerely believe that she could unite the people in a way that Biden tried and failed to do, because she’d actually be sincere about it. Of course, they’d never let her win the primaries because she was proposing actual real change as policy (for example reparations for black people… she discusses this in this book that came out 20 years before her presidential run, that’s a lot more consistency than most “real” politicians). But this book definitely accomplishes a progressive agenda using language (spirituality and patriotism) that more conservative people would potentially understand, and eventually come around to accepting more leftist views. It’s a smart tactic, but I detect a sincerity there; I know everyone made fun of Williamson for being a weewoo hippie weirdo but I appreciated the spiritual aspects of this book the most of all.
So there’s a lot to like about her as a person— why didn’t I like this book? Williamson makes a lot of bold claims that I’d say are more in line with my political views, like conceptualizing America as modern-day serfdom. She’s aware of the contradictions of America but doesn’t ascribe reason to them at all; her patriotism effectively misdiagnoses the symptoms. There’s a real, political reason to not want to disavow America, but it’s intellectually ingenuous to characterize slavery and genocide as negative blips in our history, or to glorify the Revolutionary War at all. It’s refreshing that the book is optimistic, though, in a world of politics based on pessimism. Ironically, this book was printed right before 9/11, which makes Williamson’s optimism bittersweet. Her assessments have only become more true, and her prediction of spiritual rebirth hasn’t happened yet because we’re more polarized than ever. I didn’t find this book unrealistic or fanciful, but I hope we can find it in ourselves to follow this type of guidance someday soon. (