Williamson brings to her teaching and writing a unique blend of self-revelation and spiritual insight. She first achieved renown for her talks on A Course in Miracles, the New Age classic that teaches a step-by-step method for choosing love over fear. A Woman's Worth focused on empowerment of women and the female principle in a patriarchal culture, and Illuminata, perhaps her most ambitious and innovative work, is a remarkable compilation of original ñthoughts, prayers, and rites of passage.î

Utilizing her visibility and influence in the service of others, Williamson founded the Centers for Living, an organization dedicated to providing home help for people with life-threatening diseases and has helped raise funds for numerous worthy causes

Williamson lives in Santa Barbara, California with her young daughter Emma. Her newest book is "Emma and Mommy Talk to God", the first in a series of books which teach children the principles of faith.

DANIEL REDWOOD: Which aspects of American culture are most in need of healing, and which are most in need of preservation?

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON: I think the most significant political question now is not what's happening inside of government, but rather what's happening inside us. The Greek etymology of the word "politics" does not mean government but rather "of the citizens." Just as medicine has been revolutionized by the holistic model in which we recognize that the spirit and mind are as important in healing as is the body, and even as business in America has been affected by the realization that no amount of money or external restructuring can substitute for real creative thinking, so I think that politics is the next realm to be transformed by the knowledge that what we're experiencing within ourselves is as important to informing the society as is any material factor.

DR: How would you translate that idea into programs which can effectively serve the people?

MW: Concentrating on "programs that effectively serve the people" is analogous to giving medicine to the sick person in the allopathic western model of medicine. It's analogous to a pill or an operation„seeking to fix the body without taking into account the mental and emotional state of the patient.

DR: So it has to go deeper.

MW: Yes. Government action has its place, of course, but it still speaks to the level of effect rather than cause. In medicine, we are expanding our focus beyond combating disease to the importance of stimulating healing. "What program? What program?" is like saying, "What pill? What operation?" But in the social body as in the physical body it is the immune system which we need to boost. In that sense the individual citizen is like the immune cell, and it is as though our immune cells are compromised. Most of our social ills can be likened to opportunistic infections that have destructive power only because the immune system is compromised.

DR: What kinds of things do you see happening today that you find most inspiring?

MW: People are tapping into one of the fundamental American ideals, the notion of personal and cultural re-invention. I see people re-inventing themselves. It is a fundamental legacy in the American psyche that we believe things can change. This country was founded on the notion that things did not have to continue to be the way they had been for hundreds or thousands of years, that we could do better. I see people all around me waking today from a long sluggish period in which we were so focused on things outside ourselves that we forgot our spirituality. I think that there's a cultural awakening occurring in response to a great wave of darkness that would put us all to sleep.