The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • January - April 2013 • Page 34
Mary Anne Perrone ~ Spiritual Guide, Anam Cara
And with a delightfully ready sense of humor, she can share a belly laugh as easily as a prayer By Jeanne Ballew Photographs by Joni Strickfaden If you were preparing to embark on an adventure full of risk, mystery, and challenge, who would you choose as your guide? A big, beefy guy? A wizened old man who knows all the short cuts and back roads? You may be surprised to find that a slight, soft-spoken, middle-aged woman with attentive blue eyes can offer just the expertise you need. After all, diving headlong into the void, the abyss of consciousness, the great unknown of the divine is exactly that kind of adventure. Travelers on this path who have Mary Anne Perrone as their spiritual guide count themselves fortunate for she offers a most profound quality indeed — presence.
Mary Anne comes to this career as a spiritual guide after a range of life experience. She spent about 12 years cumulatively as a special education and bilingual teacher at the elementary and middle school levels, not including time off to raise her two boys, do community organizing, and live overseas doing social justice and Latin American solidarity work. From 2000–2005, she was the founding principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a small middle school for girls in southwest Detroit. In addition to her career in education and being a mom, Mary Anne has been a nonstop activist for peace and justice issues for over thirty years. Inspired by her own spirituality and faith, she has worked extensively with the Interfaith Council for Peace