Interview with Marianne Williamson, founder and host of Sister Giant
Marianne Williamson photo by Elizabeth Granli, collage image by Meryl Ann Butler for OpEdNews
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My guest today is Marianne Williamson, internationally acclaimed spiritual lecturer and best-selling author of 12 books.
Joan Brunwasser: Welcome to OpEdNews, Marianne. You are also the founder and host of Sister Giant, a conference in Washington, D.C., that just concluded. Many of our readers are not familiar with Sister Giant. Can you tell us a bit about it, please?
Marianne Williamson: Sister Giant is a series of weekend conferences that began as a call to women to become more active in transforming the world. My question was, and is, around the relative quietude and complacency -- perhaps this is changing now -- of Western women in the face of so many global challenges. We based the first conference on three films: The Burning Times, a film by the Canadian Film Board on the burning of the witches during the Middle Ages; Iron-Jawed Angels, the HBO special about the Women's Suffragette movement; and Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about women in the Liberian Civil War. I wanted to explore how we got quiet, where we have not been quiet, and examples of women best showing up now. Scholars were there to help us understand all three of those situations and apply their meaning to our own lives. It was wonderful.
That first conference was followed by two and now three more, evolving into a focus on more current political events. Bernie Sanders was our keynote speaker in 2015 and again this year.
Like millions of other people, after Trump was elected I just wanted to do something, and I thought perhaps doing another Sister Giant would contribute to the energy of this moment. We hosted a fantastic assortment of speakers -- people that I read and listen to and learn from, on topics I think are among those most important right now. I partnered with Derrick Harkins, Vice-President at Union Theological Seminary and former Director of Religious Outreach at the DNC, and it was a great weekend. Thousands of people were feeling quite lit up at the end of it.
JB: I heard that! OpEdNews was well represented at Sister Giant - Editor-in-Chief Rob Kall, Managing Editor Meryl Ann Butler, Senior Editor Marta Steele, and OpEdNews contributor Mike Rivage-Seul - and the reports were glowing. [Readers: there are at least ten articles about Sister Giant* published so far on OpEdNews; Check them out!] The timing seemed very fortuitous, coming on the heels of the Women's March on Washington and all the satellite marches. Like the Women's March, did you get a bigger turnout than you expected? And if so, what do you attribute that to?
OEN Sen. Ed., Marta Steele; Managing Ed Meryl Ann Butler, and Ed-in-Chief Rob Kall attended the Sister Giant Conference
(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA
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