Join global book launch on November 1

Join the global launch 0f Women, Spirituality and Transformative Leadership: Where Grace Meets Power by ordering your copy from Amazon on November 1! We envision a rising tide of sacred feminine energy sweeping in to make women’s spiritual leadership and the Divine Feminine visible on Amazon.

This remarkable anthology featured the diverse voices of women from many spiritual perspectives. Listen in on some of their shared wisdom:

I better understand the ways in which the divine is born from the sheer vulnerability of the human experience. I have suffered since I was an earnest nineteen-year-old writing those audacious words. I have lost people who I loved very dearly. I have been so profoundly disappointed. I have come up against the capacity for cruelty in all of us. And all of this, rather than distancing me from the divine, has tethered me more resolutely to it. My own personal experiences of suffering have given me insight into and empathy for the suffering of others—undeniable evidence of our interconnection. My uncertainty, my failures, my confusion have opened me up even more to the necessity of humility, of admitting what I do not know, of forgiving and being gentle with myself, and at the same time, tuning into my own intuition, my own inviolable sense that there is meaning in this world, in our brief time here, in my one little life. 

Courtney Martin from “Living my Way into Answers”

What if your greatness is in your ability to tell the raw truth, to wail loudly without shame in your grief, to be in your body so much that the mere pleasure of a fresh red strawberry on your tongue excites you wildly? What if your glorious spirit cannot be measured by normal cultural perimeters? Perhaps you knew this to be true, but you valiantly kept on trying to be what you thought made you “successful” or “good.” What if you absolutely knew you were born precious and no one in this world could ever take that away from you, no matter what abuse you have suffered? What if your greatness is equivalent to how awake and alive you feel unfettered by any addictions that numb you from seeing what is taking place in this world? What if every firing dancing neuron in your belly knows instinctively more than what educational institutions could teach you? You are all this and more.

ALisa Starkweather from “Birthing Awake the Dream”

 In the United States, before the women’s movement men (not women) defined who women were using religion as authority. It was only after women spoke for themselves and about themselves that “women’s spirituality” emerged. Only then, did we speak of what we experienced as sacred and what we knew to be spiritual information. This is gnosis, intuitively felt soul knowledge, it is what we recognize in the marrow of our bones, what our heart recognizes as true for us—and from this insight, true for other humans and for the planet. Sacred circles support trust in our own perceptions of divinity, which can be felt as transcendent spirit or felt in embodied holy moments. This is empowering, especially for women who have been told that God is male, demands obedience, and that women since Eve are the source of evil, when her choice was knowledge of the difference between good and evil. Reimaging God as other than and more than a male authority will shake the foundation of patriarchy, which is historically based on theology and hierarchy to justify having and using power over others. Monotheism has brought us fratricidal wars of religion in Europe during the Middle Ages as well as the current conflicts in the Middle East. Jew, Muslim, Christian—all descend from Abraham and thus are brothers. Women’s spirituality is in conflict with monotheistic, Abrahamic beliefs based on words attributed to what prophetic men in ages past said God said. 

Jean Shinoda Bolen from “Catalyzed in Circles”

AND LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE BOOK: 

Many religious institutions still hold to explicit glass ceilings that keep women from formal leadership. This obscures  women’s extraordinary spiritual roles, their potential to change what we mean by religion and spirituality, and what a spiritual lens can offer to the world’s leading problems. Exploring vital and complex themes like communication and leadership with freshly defined terms, the authors look to a world governed by new conceptions of power and success. The personal spiritual journeys of a diverse group of women offer glimpses of the types of transformations that women spiritual and religious leaders might bring to society.”

Katherine Marshall, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Georgetown University. World Faiths Development Dialogue 

Calls us as women to the urgent task of developing a deep spiritual identity, not for our own good but to better equip us to be agents of transformation in a deeply divided world.  Rejoice as you read this inspiring book and ready yourself for transformation.

 Rev. Dr. Joan Campbell Brown, Department of Religion, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY 

This carefully crafted collection of women’s insights into leadership from a spiritual root goes a long way in connecting the concept of power with the concept of love.  Such a linkage stimulates moral courage, encourages social justice, and opens one to deeper, more authentic spiritually grounded relationships. 

Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. , author of Faith & Feminism: A Holy Alliance, President of The Sister Fund