A Woman's Journey to God: Finding the Feminine Path

A distinctly feminine spirituality is emerging in our culture, according to Borysenko, a Harvard-trained medical researcher and author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind and other titles. Drawing on her intensive experience leading spiritual retreats for women, Borysenko observes that a woman's way of worshipping the divine tends to be ""natural, earthy, relational, mystical, embodied, intuitive, sensuous, and compassionate."" Yet, the same women (predominantly adventurous baby boomers) who are going on retreat and otherwise expressing their spirituality in a feminine way often have painful relationships with the hierarchical, patriarchal religious traditions of their birth. Here, interweaving ancient myths and Scripture with contemporary stories, the author explores how women can find healing and guidance even within the confines of those traditions. Borysenko replaces the heroic model of step-by-step progress up Jacob's ladder with the image of women walking Sarah's circle (from a stray song lyric by Pete Seeger). She suggests that, like all women, themother of Isaac, came to know herself in a deep, intuitive way through the medium of her relationships rather than strictly in terms of a relationship with a transcendent God. Borysenko shows women, in a work that reads like a down-to-earth conversation between friends, how to make religion their own. (Jan.)