The journey into darkness has been long and cruel

Marianne Williamson (born 8 July 1952 in Houston, Texas, U.S.) is a spiritual activist, author, lecturer and founder of the The Peace Alliance, a grass roots campaign supporting legislation currently before Congress to establish a United States Department of Peace.

She has been characterized as "an ex-cabaret-singing Jew from Texas", and is sometimes associated with an urban myth concerning Nelson Mandela's 1994 inauguration speech as president of South Africa. Williamson served as head pastor of Renaissance Unity Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship before she resigned as a result of a controversial attempt to dissolve the church's formal ties to the Association of Unity Churches.The press has referred to her as a modern-day shaman a Mother Teresa for the ‘90s and Hollywood’s answer to God, and failed to credit her for working with dying AIDS and cancer patients and the homeless on L.A.'s streets. Williamson founded the Centers for Living, an organization dedicated to providing home-delivered care for people with life-threatening diseases, and has participated in fund raising activities for charitable causes.

Her debut work A Return to Love begins ""The journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it. What happened to my generation is that we never grew up. The problem isn't that we're lost or apathetic, narcissistic or materialistic. The problem is we're terrified." As of 2006 HarperCollins had published eighteen of her works. Williamson's monthly lectures are not strictly Christian, and that has been the central core of her appeal. She addresses both established Christianity and Judaism in statements such as "You've committed no sins, just mistakes." She teaches love and common sense, but she does so in the irreverent language of the Seventies. Her earliest renown was for her talks on A Course in Miracles, a step-by-step method for choosing love over fear.