MARIANNE WILLIAMSON is an internationally acclaimed author and spiritual teacher who has published 10 books, including New York Times bestsellers A Return to Love and Everyday Grace. Her other books include A Woman's Worth, Illuminata, Healing the Soul of America, The Gift of Change and Emma and Mommy Talk to God, and her latest book, The Age of Miracles, which reached #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Marianne hosts a daily Course in Miracles radio program on Oprah and Friends network XM radio 156. In 1989, Marianne founded Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area. Today, Project Angel Food serves over 1,000 people daily. Marianne also co-founded The Peace Alliance, a grass roots campaign supporting legislation to establish a U. S. Department of Peace. Marianne is a native of Houston, Texas.
JOY HARJO was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke (Creek) Nation. She has published seven books of poetry, which have garnered many prestigious awards. She has released three award-winning CD's of original music and performances. She has received the Eagle Spirit Achievement Award for overall contributions in the arts, from the American Indian Film Festival and a US Artists Fellowship for 2009. She performs internationally solo and with her band, Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics Band, (for which she sings and plays saxophone and flutes). She premiered a preview of her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, at the Public Theater in NYC; the show opened at the Wells Fargo Theater in LA in March 2009. She co-wrote the signature film of the National Museum of the American Indian and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She lives in Honolulu, Hawai’i and in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
JUDY BIERBAUM is a psychotherapist who currently works in a school-based mental health clinic. She has worked with children and adolescents in the areas of trauma and sexual abuse for the majority of her professional career. Judy and Keith, her husband of 30 years, have traveled and volunteered throughout Latin America and Asia. It was Bierbaums early experience in Calcutta, India, working with Mother Theresa that awakened her passion for peace, justice, and the practice of non-violence. She has given workshops on the practice of nonviolence and the effects of trauma in numerous places, including the United States, Colombia, Bolivia, and Thailand. She has served two prison sentences for her part in actions of civil disobedience while protesting the U.S. Army School of the Americans. She enjoys outdoor activities, including mountain biking, hiking, and skiing, as a way of keeping her life in balance.
MUSICIAN
AMY CAROL WEBB was born and reared in Oklahoma and traces her heritage back to Native Americans through her Great-Grandmothers who settled Oklahoma when it was still a Territory. Amy's music reflects the same pioneering spirit, tenacity, integrity and never-quit grit. By the age of 14, she was writing and playing music at hometown events, studying works from a remarkably diverse palette of artists. After graduating college with a degree in performing arts, she hit the road with the New Christy Minstrels, the New Seekers and her own bands. As a young adult, she wandered the spiritual desert in a self-imposed exile until music led her back over the threshold of faith. She is currently in seminary working on a Masters in Divinity. Music is her calling and her ministry. In addition to performing internationally, she has released seven critically-acclaimed CDs, served as a music minister, and conducted programs for incarcerated women and at-risk kids.
About the Conference Hosts: The Center for Action and Contemplation
Women Wisdom Dancing by Mary Southard, CSJ
Congregation of St. Joseph of LaGrange
Courtesy of www.marysouthardart.org
About the Conference Hosts: The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC), located in Albuquerque,New Mexico, was founded in 1987 by Franciscan Father Richard Rohr who saw the need for a training/formation center that would allow spiritually seeking people to balance social action with contemplation, and contemplation with social action. Committed to offering a constructive message of the Gospel that crosses boundaries of religion, ethnicity, social class and gender, the CAC provides numerous programs and resources aimed at offering hope, inspiration and spiritual challenge.