At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst - Hardcover

Flinders, Carol L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062513141 ISBN 13: 9780062513144

Publisher: Harper San Francisco, 1998

Synopsis

Examines four important points at which feminism and the paths of spirituality apparently collide, assesses the sources of these conflicts, and explains not only how such conflicts can be resolved but how feminism and spirituality complement each other. $30,000 ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

Review:

‘In the spirit of Women Who Run with the Wolves and Reviving Ophelia, this book has the potential to change women’s lives.’
Publishers Weekly

An eloquent meditation on spirituality. When Flinders convinces us that spirituality and feminism are part of the same truth... the book takes on unbelievable power. Give yourself time to absorb the many complexities of At the Root of This Longing. Then await the profoundly life-altering conclusions you take away.’
San Francisco Chronicle

From the Back Cover:

In this brilliant exploration of the apparent conflicts and tensions between feminism and contemplative spirituality, Carol Lee Flinders uncovers how a life of meaning, self-knowledge, and freedom depends on both.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper San Francisco
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0062513141
• ISBN 13: 9780062513144
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 369