A pathbreaking anthology representing a tradition of the prophetic and practical wisdom of women's spirituality.
Spiritual experience is a liberating source of women's identity and their resistance to oppression. Moving from the Native American tale "The Creation of Spider Woman" and the poet-nun of Mexico Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz to the contemporary African American thinker Marian Wright Edelman and the Buddhist shaman Joan Halifax, these visionaries see justice and love, loss, aging, and freedom. It inspires them to artistic expression and political action. This deeply moving collection of memoirs, stories, poetry, letters, prayers, and theologies is a source of empowering and uplifting thought for women in any time, at any age.
"It is a resource book to be read initially from cover to cover for the strength of spirit and celebration its accumulated voices inspire, and it is a book to return to frequently when one is troubled by the question of how to renew one's faith and how to bring that renewal of faith into engagement with the world beyond one's self". -- Alison Hawthorne Deming, Bloomsbury Review
"A source of great spiritual enrichment". -- America
"A very satisfying anthology, illuminating and useful". -- Publishers Weekly
-- "From Ishtar of Babylonia and Isis of Egypt to Kathleen Norris, a panorama of women's thoughts, hopes and beliefs". -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution