Importance of family bonding

Marianne Williamson, Author & Lecturer, shares advice for parents on how one night of bonding can have large impacts on the closeness of your family
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Importance of family bonding

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The idea of a Sabbath, is the idea that you take time, particularly one day a week, for God. Now, to say you take one day a week for God, it's the same thing as saying, you take one day a week for the inner truths, the inner realities for love, for that which is most authentic by whatever name we call it. That is where we bond with others. The level of personality, the level of outer things is not the level of genuine bonding, okay? The level of genuine bonding has to do with what happens when we move into that deeper place within ourselves that too much electronics in the house, and too much television in the house, and too much meaningless chatter actually lures us away from. I had an experience several years ago that I'll never forget. I was visiting with an Orthodox Jewish family in Florida. And when I say an Orthodox Jewish family, I'm referring specifically to how they experience and treat the Sabbath. That means that as of sun down on Friday night, all electronics off. And for 24 hours until sun down on Saturday night - this could be an ancient home - there is nothing going on - no TV, no computers, no any of that. I was looking around at this family, and this is a very contemporary family, and the kids are very contemporary. I mean, these kids are wired. All the stuff that you see in the modern home, I mean they're on it, they're on the computers, and iPads and iGame - all that stuff. And I was wondering how they were going to do with that? Anyway, I was wondering how I was going to do with it. And what I saw was so profound. These children have been brought up with this. They've never known any different. So these kids who were so wired and so contemporary culturally, they simply knew, "This is what happens at sun down on Friday night." Everything goes off. You don't even realize how wired we all are until it's off. And what I saw and, I mean, I had the honor of participating in for 24 hours was teenagers talking to grandparents, parents talking to little ones, older kids being with smaller children in really meaningful ways, that's what they did. That's what it meant to give this time to God. It's not separate from giving it to each other because God is not outside of us. It means we give this time to that which is real and to that which is true, and it meant primarily bonding. And then what that does is then it's, "Okay, it's sun down on Saturday, we go back" but nothing is quite the same because that bonding, those deep experiences and the synopsis, literally, that turned on in the brain, the entire family dynamic, then even when you go back to modern society, etc., that kind of family is there because of that one day. It was such a gift to be part of that.

Marianne Williamson, Author & Lecturer, shares advice for parents on how one night of bonding can have large impacts on the closeness of your family

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Marianne Williamson

Author & Lecturer

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual author and lecturer. Six of her ten published books have been New York Times Best Sellers. Four of these have been #1 New York Times Best Sellers. A Return to Love is considered a must-read of The New Spirituality. A paragraph from that book, beginning "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure..." is considered an anthem for a contemporary generation of seekers. Marianne's other books include The Age of MiraclesEveryday Grace, A Woman's WorthIlluminataHealing the Soul of AmericaA Course in Weight Loss, and The Gift of Change. Her newest book, The Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money and Miracles, was published in November 2012 by Harper Collins. She has been a popular guest on television programs such as Oprah, Larry King Live, Good Morning America and Charlie Rose. Marianne is a native of Houston, Texas. In 1989, she 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 founded the Department of Peace Campaign, a grass roots campaign to establish a United States Department of Peace. In December 2006, a NEWSWEEK magazine poll named Marianne Williamson one of the fifty most influential baby boomers. According to Time magazine, "Yoga, the Cabala and Marianne Williamson have been taken up by those seeking a relationship with God that is not strictly tethered to Christianity."

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