Ann, you are receiving the 84th Sullivan Ballou award, and the award list contains a wonderful array of activists, advocates, reformers, teachers, artists, healers and business owners who have merged their hearts and their actions into the wave of spiritual evolution that is making the world a better place. None of those beautiful awards has given us more delight than this one.
We have known you for over 10 years, and we have seen first-hand your effectiveness at community organizing and networking. We remember well how you started showing up in our living room just about every week in 2006 to brainstorm about the people and topics that eventually became the first Midwest Conference of Spiritual Progressives. It seemed like you knew everyone!
We followed with great interest and admiration your pursuit of additional education in public policy at Harvard and how you put that knowledge to work in the pursuit of economic justice, especially for women. We have heard from our good friend, Robin Philips, another Sullivan Ballou award recipient, how you devoted yourself to The Advocates for Human Rights Liberian Women’s Roundtable and became a professional coach for one of the Liberian women members of the Roundtable. You worked from the heart to help a new American improve her professional management skills and make a better life for herself and her family.
But it was your commitment to organizing the wonderfully successful 2014 Women’s Congress for Future Generations that has capped your many accomplishments. We know that you attended the first Women’s Congress for Future Generations in Moab, Utah in September of 2012. Inspired to continue the work of creating a just and livable future for future generations, you devoted yourself to leading the team of over 30 women who created the second Women’s Congress in Minneapolis. Your vision for the Congress evolved over 18 months, eventually bringing together inspiring speakers and activists, rousing music, ritual, and a great deal of education for almost 500 people committed to protecting the Earth and human life on it.
Bruce was able to see first-hand the thoughtfulness, energy, and compassion for all that was evident in the conference and which reflected your guiding heart behind it. And now we understand that you will lead the third Congress!
With your service on the boards of the Headwaters Foundation for Justice and United Theological Seminary, and your engagement in a project providing housing for African-American men leaving prison and in an urban sanctuary for indigenous culture and practices, we know you will continue to share your extensive knowledge and experience.
This is how Sullivan Ballou organized his life-thinking deeply about what his heart was telling him and then devoting his full energy to following that path. It is a true honor and an inspiration for us to be able to recognize not so much your many accomplishments and achievements, but the selfless heart energy behind your lifetime of spiritual activism. There could not be a finer example than you that the spirit that motivated Sullivan Ballou is alive in the world today.
Congratulations!
Elissa and Bruce Peterson, Founding Members