Marianne Williamson

Today Tuesday August 28, 2012 the AWOD is Marianne Williamson born on July 8, 1952, she is an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer who has published several books, including New York Times best-sellers “A Return to Love “ and “Everyday Grace “. “A Return to Love” is considered a must-read of The New Spirituality. A paragraph from that book, beginning "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure..." - often misattributed to Nelson Mandela's Inaugural address - is considered an anthem for a contemporary generation of seekers.

Marianne is a native of Houston, Texas. In 1989, she founded Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area. Today, Project Angel Food serves over 1,000 people daily.

In December 2006, a NEWSWEEK magazine poll named Marianne Williamson one of the fifty most influential baby boomers. According to Time magazine, "Yoga, the Cabala and Marianne Williamson have been taken up by those seeking a relationship with God that is not strictly tethered to Christianity."

A teacher in the Unity Church, Williamson's philosophy adopts a New Thought approach to spirituality. She tries to incorporate ideals originally established in Christianity and Judaism with a new-age light, using statements such as "You've committed no sins, just mistakes." She also promotes tenets of Zen Buddhism such as the belief that one must empty his or her mind through enlightenment to truly find God.

“I don’t think making love the new bottom line is naïve; I believe that thinking we can survive the next hundred years doing anything less is naïve.”—Marianne Williamson

"In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it." —Marianne Williamson