Peace, Politics, and Feeling Groovy

Feb 19, 2023

It’s November, 2018, and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson is in our living room in rural Madison County, talking about her vision for America.

Marianne, you may remember, was the outlier Democratic Party presidential candidate who inspired some of the most creative memes of the presidential debates. She often was referred to as “groovy,” inspiring tweets like this one from comedian Jerry Seinfeld: “Marianne Williamson is the first presidential candidate from the Twin Peaks universe.”

She’s also one of the best-known teachers of A Course in Miracles, a spiritual self-study program that I’ve studied, taught, and written about for decades. When we hosted the house party for her in 2018, it was an honor to meet her, not so much because she was running for president, but because her lectures and books turned my life around after I went through a divorce thirty years earlier.

I was fascinated to see how she, a leader in a program of peace, would step into one of the most conflict-ridden, divisive systems in this country: politics.

So here we were at our house with 50 people crammed into a living room that previously had held 20, tops. Marianne perched on the arm of a chair, and people sat on the floor, on the fireplace hearth, and on chairs in the dining room, craning their necks to see.

Marianne explained her platform, then opened it up for questions. Before long, someone made a dig at Republicans. And Marianne, in a simple statement of unity, said this:

“I don’t assume that everyone in this room is a Democrat.”

Talk about groovy. Immediately, the energy in the room shifted. She had just made space for an “opposing” belief system. For the “enemy.”

Sure enough, a friend who I’ve known for years—someone who has been a student of A Course in Miracles and who I assumed was a Democrat—spoke up.

“I’ve been a Republican my whole life,” she said. “I’m here because I want to consider all sides.”

I don’t remember a lot of the other things Marianne talked about that day. But that moment left a deep impression.

Maybe it’s because I grew up with a Republican dad and Democrat mom. I think they were both more adamant in their beliefs than they let on around the house. If they argued about politics, they did it behind closed doors. The one time I ever heard a tense political moment between them ended when I walked in the room.

Maybe it’s because my husband is a Republican, and I'm a Democrat. We’ve realized over the years that I’m not going to change his mind, and he’s not going to change mine. In our détente, we have to make room for each other. I don’t throw out his mail from conservative organizations, and he—well, he agreed to a house party for Marianne Williamson.

I have to admit that the idea of sharing the same political views would make life easier in some ways, since the political divide extends to vaccinations, sports and the choice between AM and FM radio.

Then again, if I’d married a Democrat, I wouldn’t have learned some important lessons in finding and keeping peace while standing up for what you believe. There’s something powerful about knowing your votes are going to cancel each other out, yet driving 15 miles through sleet on country highways to make it to the polling place anyway.

I’ve discovered that, when your political views are different, you have to find what you do agree on. And once you find the common ground, you can see that the other person’s path to the same answer often is just that—another path, not necessarily better or worse.

It’s easy to make assumptions, but Marianne and my friend both reminded me that there’s no one right perspective, no one correct answer. And if peace is the ultimate goal, maybe we can start practicing it now.

Marianne didn’t advance far in the presidential campaign. Then again, she made it a lot farther than many people expected. And she got people’s attention. When she said she’d defeat Donald Trump with love, people heard her. Whether it gave them pause or inspired a snarky tweet was up to them.

But she uttered the word “love” in a presidential debate, and in my mind, that’s pretty groovy.