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- Paperback: 300 pages ; Dimensions (in
inches): 0.87 x 7.52 x 4.63
- Publisher: Riverhead Books; ISBN:
1573225207; Reprint edition (November 1995)
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Reviews
Illuminata: A Return to Prayer by Marianne Williamson
The best-selling author of
A Return to Love presents a compilation of contemporary prayers and
meditations for people of all faiths, covering such topics as business,
friendship, reconciliation, and anger.
The World One Heart at a Time, June 25, 2002
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Reviewer:
Zinta Aistars from Portage, MI United States
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She writes: "Ultimately, the choice to love
each other is the only choice for a survivable future... every
time we open our hearts, we create the space for a global
alternative. The opening of the heart is an awesome personal
politic, providing us with an internal strength greater than any
worldly power.
As we receive God's love and impart it to
others, we are given the power to repair the world... Personal
transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes
the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the
world is ultimately a personal one..."
It is as if Williamson understands, and I
suspect she does, how tired my own heart grows at times as it
travels its lifelong spiritual journey. Is striving to better
oneself really worth it? Is it a good thing to be a good person in
a dog-eat-dog society? Or is the harsh reality that the one who
plays in mud, who is willing to step on another's back, who plays
hard to get, who is a master of manipulation, who never blinks at
putting oneself first, is inevitably the one who wins the prize?
Perhaps. More times than I care to know. And still.... the
lifelong struggle to better oneself is, yes, worth it. If only for
that final moment when one faces one's own image in the mirror of
self-judgment.
"Illuminata" is a book of prayers. There are
prayers to begin the new day - and to end it. There are prayers
for strength, for health, for happiness, for the renewal of faith,
for forgiveness. There are prayers for friends, for family, for
lovers. There are prayers to heal nations.
There are prayers to overcome addictions,
betrayal, emptiness, obsession, loss, greed. There are prayers to
mark moments of routine, of tradition, of ritual, of ceremony. The
prayers are separated by Williamson's simple, but insightful
meditations.
Like many of us, I don't pray nearly as
often as I should. Many of my prayers are spoken not in words, but
in the way that I touch someone I love, in the manner with which I
greet my morning, in the silence I keep when my heart requires
healing. But sometimes we need the words to pray.
Although I have rarely used her exact words,
Williamson's prayers have taught me... that to speak to God is to
simultaneously speak to our deeper and higher selves. It is an
exchange that is necessary. It is a part of that lifelong journey
that we cannot, must not avoid. And, as Williamson writes, we do
indeed change the world... one heart at a time.
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