Like Finding a Kindred Spirit in a Slightly Unexpected Place

books:


	• At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst Carol L. Flinders HarperOne, 1999 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Transformational

This book is critical for women and feminist men alike. All will walk away re-examining their own views and values. A particular idea that is staying with me (on this reading) is the idea of "retreat > magnification > transformation." The book itself provides such an experience by allowing the reader to go within his or her own thoughts on the two themes, putting a magnifying glass to literature, sociology, history, and the writer's own history to illuminate the topics, thus creating the opportunity to transform or critically change one's one view of the Journey. As suggested on the back cover, I am recommending it to all I know and encouraging a local discussion group.

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Essential

This book was profoundly useful in helping me reclaim my spirituality after having left the church in anger years ago. Ms. Flinders identifies elements essential in helping women find their wholeness. The book is written clearly and beautifully. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

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Highly Recommended

This book was excellent and thought-provoking. The topics raised are pertinent to every woman who values her spiritual and feminist sides. Dr. Flinders examines disparate issues which are troubling to many women. She does this in a way that is meant not so much to solve the issues but simply to raise them as subjects to be examined and brought to the light of day. I have recommended this book to many people and will continue to do so. This is a wonderful book!

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Like Finding a Kindred Spirit in a Slightly Unexpected Place

This book called out to me from the shelf of my local bookstore and it was as if I knew Flinders and she knew me.

Perhaps we are both "Upper Middle Class Female Would Be Mystics" as another reviewer seemed to spitefully proclaim - more importantly, Flinders was able to see into the heart of women who before may not have been opened for viewing, so to speak.

I was especially taken with the segments on St. Clare of Assissi, someone new to me - a female compatriot of St. Francis of Assissi. How wondrous is this!

The book launched me on a full scale investigation of St. Clare, who I prefer to refer to as "Chiara" - her name in Italian.

The book is lushly written, poetic yet friendly in tone. Highly recommended and will return repeatedly.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

In At the Root of This Longing, Flinders identifies the four key points at which the paths of spirituality and feminism seem to collide?vowing silence vs. finding voice, relinquishing ego vs. establishing 'self', resisting desire vs. reclaiming the body, and enclosure vs. freedom?and sets out to discover not only the sources of these conflicts, but how they can be reconciled. With a sense of urgency brought on by events in her own life, Flinders deals with the alienation that women have experienced not only from themselves and each other, but from the sacred. She finds inspiration in the story of fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich and her direct experience of God, in India's legendary Draupadi, who would not allow a brutal physical assault to damage her sense of personal power, as well as in Flinders's own experiences as a meditation teacher and practitioner. Flinders reveals that spirituality and feminism are not mutually exclusive at all but very much require one another.

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