At the Root of This Longing

Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst

Carol L. Flinders

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780062513144
• eBook ISBN:
  9780061738210
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• PROLOGUE:: Linda by Candlelight
• BOOK ONE: Julian’s Visions
• CHAPTER 1: Synchronicities
• CHAPTER 2: “To Burn a Little and Spill a Little ”: The Early Years
• CHAPTER 3: “Be Like the Banyan Tree ”: Harder Than It Sounds
• CHAPTER 4: First You Have to Admit There’s a Problem
• CHAPTER 5: Four Tracks into a Wilderness: Revelations of a Sort
• CHAPTER 6: Sacred Precepts, or the Terms of Our Subordination?
• CHAPTER 7: Stone by Stone: Laying Down the Law of the Fathers
• CHAPTER 8: Cracks in the Walls: Resisting Patriarchy
• CHAPTER 9: The House Made of Dawn: Reinhabiting the Sacred Feminine
• CHAPTER 10: To Construct and Inhabit Our Airy Spaces
• Magic Circles: Island Time
• BOOK TWO: Draupadi’s Dance
• CHAPTER 1: Hindu Myth and Petaluma Reality
• CHAPTER 2: A War Against Women
• CHAPTER 3: A Circle of Beauty, a Wall of Strength
• CHAPTER 4: The Endless Sari
• CHAPTER 5: Draupadi’s Daughters
• CHAPTER 6: The Girls’ Movement: Feminism Reawakening
• CHAPTER 7: Our Daughters, Our Selves
• CHAPTER 8: Two Halves of One Reality
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• PRAISE FOR At the Root of This Longing
• ALSO BY CAROL LEE FLINDERS
• Copyright
• About the Publisher