Flinders, Carol Lee :

Carol Lee Flinders is the author of Enduring Grace and coauthor of the vegetarian cookbook Laurel's Kitchen. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from U.C. Berkeley, where she has taught writing and mystical literature courses.

"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

"This is how I felt reading Flinders' book. Grateful. And full, and wanting to send copies to all my friends."

--Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D., coauthor of The Feminine Face of God

"Carol Lee Flinders provides the rationale, the means, and the inspiration to create a balanced, essential life--one which responds to the urgings for a strong social voice that matters, and a contemplative solitude that lasts. She is the perfect witness and a wonderful writer."

-- Clarissa Pinkola Est�s, Ph.D., author of Women Who Run With Wolves, The Gift of Story, and The Faithful Gardener

"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

"Flinders earns the right to ask that 'feminism thinks of itself henceforth as a resistance movement based in spirituality' by providing us with a text crowded with personal stories and wisdom, scholarship expertly assembled and interepreted, and lucidity and hope that never falter. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the work she has done."

--Jo Ann Heydron, Soujourners

"Here is a clear feminist voice of both-and, of doing the hard research, the deep reflection, and coming to a new formulation that reconciles the best of both worlds...In an era when more and more people are being attracted to spirituality, the solid work flinders offers is a gift. In an era when women and girls are still finding it difficult to find a voice and a place to survive and to flourish, Flinders' book is a sign of hope."

-- Cathleen O'Meara Murtha, Presence

Submitted by Publisher July, 2001

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.