J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination."

Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008
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President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

There is something about politicians - particularly Democrats, I think - that makes them rise to their best when they're making concession speeches.

All the way back to Michael Dukakis, I remember thinking as I heard him concede, "Well if you'd been that person during the campaign, you might have won!" When Al Gore conceded to George Bush at the end of the 2000 debacle, he showed at last the deep passion that had been so obscured by his wooden delivery on the campaign trail. And Hillary Clinton finally broke through on Saturday; she showed at last some humility and authenticity, the absence of which had made so many of us unable to support her in her campaign against Obama. She lost the election, but it looks like she won her soul back. And with that, I think she restarted her career.

Tribune Media Services (For release 12/6/07)

In the Fantasy Middle East, the troop surge is helping plucky Iraq get its act together; and Iran, as serious a threat as ever and still lusting to start World War III, awaits liberation by the superpower known as "Johnny Democracy."

In the reality version, our legacy is bad water, cancer and social chaos. Iraq has, by one scientific extrapolation, surpassed the million mark in war dead and continues to rack up other numbers (4 million internal and external refugees, for instance, but not to worry, only 133 of them got into the U.S. this year) that . . . I dunno, maybe it's just me . . . seem antithetical to the idea of democracy. And of course, as the latest National Intelligence Estimate has just embarrassingly informed the world, Iran shut down its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

While Americans are celebrating the holidays in a land of plenty, we're reminded of those who live in places where food they need merely to survive is unavailable to them.

This letter is what you might think of as a "Prayer Alert." Tens of thousands of Somalians, victims seeking refuge from the cruel and bitter fighting there, now endure the unimaginable suffering of starvation. Their humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by the fact that, given the violence in the region, no aid organization can safely make it through with food for them. All the world can do is bear witness to the agony of these people. And pray.

For those of us who believe, as it is written in A COURSE IN MIRACLES, that "prayer is the medium of miracles," I ask you to join with me in praying for the suffering, starving refugees of Somalia. May there be a miracle somehow, that food might make its way to them. May the God who parted the waters of the Red Sea now part the waters for all who suffer.

Dear God,
Please help the people of Somalia
and elsewhere
who do not have food,
who watch their children starve,
who face the agony of unimaginable
and unnecessary suffering.
May miracles light the way
and cast this darkness
from the earth.
May our lives be lifted
that we might serve,
and somehow be of use,
dear God,
to You, and to them.
Amen

A little humor this time....

And Happy Thanksgiving!

Marianne

They're back! Church Bulletins! Thank God for the church ladies with typewriters. These sentences actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced at church services.

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The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
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The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on the Water." The sermon tonight:"Searching for Jesus."
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Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
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Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
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I recommend that you run, not walk, to see Charles Ferguson's documentary "NO END IN SIGHT."

A hugely important film....

Marianne

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A New Order of the Ages

There is a principle in A Course in Miracles stating that it is not up to us what we learn, but only whether we learn through joy or through pain. In a universe that is, quite literally, the ongoing evolutionary impulse to love -- the spiritual process through which Love extends itself throughout space and time -- the individual's only true assignment is to learn to actualize the love within.

I'm going to be doing the "Fire the Grid" meditation on July 17th, and hope you'll join in. "Prayer is the medium of miracles," according to A COURSE IN MIRACLES, and this giant global meditation can amount to an extraordinarily powerful prayer for the healing of the world.

www.firethegrid.com

I'll "see" you there...

Marianne

As the boy, an honor student, a hero, lay bleeding on the floor of the Chicago Transit Authority bus, he told paramedics, "Tell my parents I love them." The bus, the school day, the whole world stops, but only for an eye blink: a headline or two. I wish the freeze-frame of collective grief could last a little longer. It can't, of course. There's a war to cover, more deaths, presidential posturing, reality TV. But one of these days, one of these deaths, we need to pause long enough for a moratorium on business as usual -- long enough, let us say, to figure out what "Blair's Law" might actually mean. Blair Holt, age 16, was killed Thursday morning, May 10, on his way to Chicago's Percy Julian High School. The killer, also a teenager, arrested a few days later, "got on the bus and just started shooting and kept shooting until he got off the bus," another student said. His intended target, a kid with whom he'd been feuding, was on the bus too, but wasn't hit. Four students were injured and Blair, who pushed a girl out of the line of fire before catching a bullet, became the 20th Chicago schoolchild to die of gun violence this school year, and the 27th in total to be murdered.

All people of good will want a good society, and racial prejudice has no place in one. But the fundamental principle of American governance, guaranteed by the First Amendment, is that we rely upon freedom -- letting people say what they say and think what they think -- as the best way to get us there. You want to get rid of prejudice? Shine the light on it. Don't send it creeping back under its rock.

You want to talk about evil -- particularly as it relates to race in America? There's a lot of it out there. The rate of incarceration of black men in this country, and the proven injustices towards them in our criminal justice system; there's an evil we should talk about. The number of black children receiving inadequate health care and education in our country; there's an evil we should talk about.

But one racially prejudiced comment -- not declaring hate or calling for violence, and even if part of a larger pattern in a man's life and career -- is not the evil we should be jumping up and down about. If anything, we should show a lot more sophistication and sense of proportion in our analysis of what matters most.

I am a Jew; I've heard anti-Semitic comments all my life. I've had vicious lies said about me in public and written about me in the national media. Did such comments affect me and cause me pain? Absolutely. Did they scar me for life? That's entirely my decision.

The women of the Rutgers basketball team, simply by their existence, say it all. All of them are beautiful. All of them are high achievers. The very fact that they exist prove Imus' comments to be stupid and absurd. I was all for shaming him publicly; healthy shame can be a positive force. I didn't mind his being suspended from his job, and I wouldn't have minded if it had been for longer. But firing him because we have to start concerning ourselves with what's "admissable" on the airwaves? Does that mean I can no longer say "lying President" or "war-mongering Vice-President" or "corrupt administration?"

I watched my Congresswoman speak on television about how this isn't the end of the conversation. Oh, really? Does that mean we'll have a real conversation now about the obscene and disgusting language spewing out of the music industry, over TV and radio, every single hour of every day? She knows as well as I do that much of that obscenity stems from black artists. And that language and those images don't just degrade one particular group of women. They degrade all women, of any color.

This situation degrades all Americans.

Marianne Williamson

radio host, "Oprah and Friends" XM156

This Spring, the book and DVD "The Secret" made a blazing appearance onto the stage of American society. From New York to Los Angeles to Denver to Detroit, and apparently in pretty much most towns in between, people scrambled to learn what any metaphysical student knows as the simple law of Cause and Effect. Thought, or consciousness, is the level of Cause; our experience in the world is the level of Effect.

"The Secret" became quite controversial, as both its weaknesses (historical inaccuracies, concentration on individual/material rather than collective/spiritual good) as well as its strengths (the revelation of a simple but very powerful truth: that what you think is what you get) sent elite guardians of the status quo up the wall. Newsweek Magazine, for one, slammed the project as "ethically deplorable" and "scientifically preposterous." While the magazine article's facts weren't necessarily off the mark, its basic cynicism made me root for "The Secret" as though it was David fighting Goliath. For one thing, I had seen people's lives change for the better because they had watched it. I suppose because its contents are the staples of my profession, I was slightly surprised it contained any new information for anyone. But I figured hey, if it did, I'm just glad they watched it.

The life of the everyday Iraqi is the great untold story of the Iraq War. Click here for a fantastic video series, Hometown Baghdad. It will open your heart and open your mind. I hope you send it to everyone you know.

My best,

Marianne
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Problems? cut and paste this URL into your browser.
http://hometownbaghdad.com/2007/03/18/first-3-webisodes-of-hometown-baghdad/

Tribune Media Services

"Oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke! I'm having a stroke! And in the next instant, the thought flashed through my mind, this is so cool!"

You want a guided tour of the human brain? My guess is that you probably can't do better than "My Stroke of Insight," Harvard-trained neuroanatomist Jill Taylor's extraordinary account of the cranial hemorrhage that shut down her left brain when she was 37 years old. But the book's value -- its preciousness -- lies less in the plain-language, enthusiastic science it offers us, than in the door it courageously opens to the mystery of the brain's right hemisphere and beyond . . . to the pulsing miracle of life and the vast universe that is our home.

On February 3 - 5, 2007, the Peace Alliance had a fantastic conference in Washington DC, campaigning for legislation to create a US Dept. of Peace. We had a sold out crowd, with over two hundred and fifty meetings at Congressional offices. Joaquin Phoenix attended; Steven Tyler of Aerosmith performed; Deepak Chopra spoke. It was very successful and exciting.

Over two hundred US colleges and universities give advanced degrees in Peacebuilding Studies-- skills ranging from conflict resolution and non-violent communication skills to international projects in cross-cultural and interreligious healing. While there has been an explosion of this kind of expertise in the United States over the last twenty years, with proven records and best-practices techniques at violence prevention and reduction, it has no institutional platform or institutional heft within the functioning of the US government. Relatively small projects do exist within certain departments, and of course there are privately funded efforts all over the country. But with no unified platform, there is no structure to co-ordinate or synergize this wealth of talent, lifting it to anywhere near the maximal level of efficacy it could have at saving people's lives here and abroad.

We're already making inroads in DC, and there is a grassroots movement -- a new kind of peace movement, actually -- forming the basis for a social if not political constituency for the proactive cultivation of peace. Please check out www.thepeacealliance.org for ways that you can join in and make a difference. Violence is a fire that is threatening to engulf us. And we need not stand by. There is water all around....

All my best,

Marianne

On February 5th, 2007, legislation to establish a U.S. Department of Peace was re-introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives. The PeaceAlliance hosted a Conference in Washington DC from February 3-5, and the final event on Monday evening was attended by more than a thousand people from around our country and our globe.

The following article written by Robert C. Koehler was published by Tribune Media Services this morning, and describes his experiences at the Conference. If you participated in the weekend Conference, and Capitol Hill lobbying of members of Congress on Monday, know that there was no more important way to spend the day. If you were not able to join us this weekend, I hope you will join this historic citizen lobbying effort to create a U.S. Department of Peace by calling or writing your members of Congress. Please visit www.thepeacealliance.org for more details.

All my best,

Marianne

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A World That Works For Everybody

By Robert C. Koehler

Tribune Media Services

Peace is a chant, a vibration, a leap of the human spirit into the 21st century and beyond. It's also HR 808 - radical common sense crafted into a bill and introduced this week into the new Congress by Dennis Kucinich.

Let me describe for you, as best I can in this brief space, the heave of emotion this piece of legislation and the campaign to support it have set off in me the past few days. For this I thank and blame the Peace Alliance, which held a conference in D.C. over the weekend in support of the bill - well, it was half conference, fact-dense and nitty-gritty, brimming with info on bullying and suicide and war; and half revival, alive with music and global religion, full of God and Buddha and the spirit of the Founding Fathers and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Jane Addams and Susan B. Anthony and many others.

Richard Carlson, author of "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff," died on December 13th. I want to take this moment to not only acknowledge his profound contributions, but also to attest to his personal kindness. I have never met anyone who more fully embodied the principles of compassion and generosity. He enthusiastically supported the work of peace, including the work of The Peace Alliance. I considered him a true gentleman and supportive friend, and I feel inspired to be a better person for having known him.

I pray for his wife and children at this very sad time, that the peace of God will flood their hearts. Millions of people all around the world have better lives because Richard lived. May he receive now all the joy he gave....

Marianne