Wise Women: Over Two Thousand Years of Spiritual Writing by Women

Spiritual experience has always been, and is especially today, a liberating source of women's identity and their resistance to oppression. These selections feature centuries of this tradition's most intuitive writing: women ancient, medieval, and modern articulate the spiritual dimension of life. From Ishtar of Babylonia and Isis of Egypt to the medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen, the contemporary African American poet Lucille Clifton, and the Buddhist shaman Joan Halifax, these visionaries see justice and love as the creative divine presence that can reimagine and recreate the reality of their lives. The spiritual element unites these diverse women across time, race, and age; it embraces the ever-present conflict of love, loss, aging, and freedom; and it inspires artistic expression and political action. This deeply moving collection of poetry, essays, prayers, letters, memoirs, stories, and theologies by wise women is a source of empowering and uplifting thought for women in any time, at any age.