Everyday Grace
Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness, and Making Miracles
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4.3 • 23 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From activist, spiritual leader, New York Times-bestselling author, and 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson comes a book about everyday peace, everyday hope, and everyday grace
In these pages, author Marianne Williamson acts as a guide back to the spiritual source, exploring the ways to nurture a thriving soul in a harsh world. The large and small difficulties of our days challenge us to open our hearts and minds. With an attitude of hope, a call to forgive, and a celebration of miracles, Williamson helps readers to find sacred footing on ordinary ground. For no matter what, there is always an opportunity to be happy. Everyone is entitled to the pleasures of everyday grace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although many people may perceive the achievement of mystical union with the divine as an arduous feat, requiring fasting, pilgrimage and mortification of the flesh, spirituality diva Williamson says "thirty minutes each morning" of "quality time with God" will do the trick. The author of Illuminata aims her book of nonsectarian religious consolation squarely at harried professionals who are frazzled by overscheduling and fret over the disasters they hear about on the news. The path to serenity lies in becoming a "modern mystic" who sees that "everything connects to everything" and that "every issue a spiritual one," from dry-cleaning mishaps to the Middle East peace process (which will be resolved when Israelis and Palestinians understand their essential oneness). Readers can even spiritually transcend their wait at the Department of Motor Vehicles, because "every person in line is someone we can bless." In Williamson's rapturous, liturgical prose, oceanic bliss is conveniently tapped into with prayer and by beaming positive mental energy to a universe karmically primed to beam it back. Although Williamson's insistence on the magical oneness of our desires and our external reality may strike some as wishful thinking, her message will continue to bring peace of mind to her many fans.
Customer Reviews
Grace in Ordinary Time
Everyday Grace by Marianne Williamson
In the introduction, Williamson urges the reader to go beyond being a seeker of the truth. She encourages us to embrace the mystic in ourselves, describing the mystic as a "spiritual practitioner, seeking not merely to understand the principles of spiritual awareness, but to embody them..." She states that she wrote Everyday Grace as a "traveling companion for the modern mystic" who is on the journey of personal transformation. Since "everything we encounter throughout the day is a spiritual opportunity" then we need tools along the way, which she describes as "spiritual principles." According to Williamson, "Our spiritual victory lies in rising above the mental forces of fear and limitation...thus attaining the power to heal and be healed." That appears to be the destiny when we embark on a journey as a mystic. We take love along with us, which "is a process as well as a goal."
As with the other books written by Williamson, the depth and analysis of spirituality seems to have no limits within her words. She is infinitely a mystic who goes miles beyond her own learning to impart her knowledge to others. Her books are remarkably easy to read considering the complex spiritual concepts she shares. Or perhaps the concepts are not as complicated as they appear, and Williamson makes these concepts easy to understand. The exception reads like a philosophical riddle: "You are not pretending that something is not really happening, but only that it is not Really happening... [because] only love is real."
Williamson is chagrined by the ambitions of humans on the material plane. She writes, "We don't need to push life so much as we need to experience it more elegantly, to be motivated more by inspiration than by ambition." Indeed, if inspiration means "the breath of God" then Williamson is urging us to breathe more deeply and move up on the ladder of faith. She urges readers to live more in the "realm of divine understanding" and be less attached to the worldly objectives of career, competition, and capitalism.
Throughout the book, Williamson offers definitions for words used often in spiritual journeys, such as "enlightenment" which she says is: "being in touch with where we are and being willing to learn what God would have us learn from it." According to Williamson, "anything negative that happens has only one purpose; to foster compassion in the human heart." When we understand that principle, we are well on our journey toward transformation from fear to love. Williamson would like to see "our generation turn love into a social force" that experiences active compassion for the suffering. She'd also like to have elected officials with more compassionate policies that extend their reach far into the global community. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in delving into the principles of a spiritual journey. I read and re-read Marianne Williamson as often as possible, always learning something else with each reading.
Review completed by Lynn C. Tolson, author of Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story