Becoming Flame: Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom

By Isabel Anders and Phyllis Tickle

"As it is written, 'Our God is a consuming fire' (Heb. 12:29); so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work."
--Amma Syncletica, fourth century.

What could be more natural and timely than …

Spiritual wisdom drawn from a woman's world; word paintings expressed in the poetry of mother-daughter dialogue?

Home and hearth lessons in eternal truth, firmly grounded in day-to-day experience?

Small scenarios of inquiry and response, deep questioning and fledgling faith, that reverberate with quiet insight?

Dialogues that reflect modern levels of questioning; knots of paradox that require a woman's patient attention and inner care to tease out true, gentle wisdom?

A poetic exploration of the large and the small issues of women's life-nested, braided, interwoven, never fully unraveled-in precise language that retains the mystery but awakens the soul?

Enter into the world of Becoming Flame: Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom

Dialogues with questions at the end for individual and group study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Apr 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781498272216

Isabel Anders

Isabel Anders is also the author of Awaiting the Child: An Advent Journal, Soul Moments: Times When Heaven Touches Earth, The Faces of Friendship, and 40-Day Journey with Madeleine L'Engle. She is the mother of two grown daughters and lives with her husband Bill Keller in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Book preview

Becoming Flame

Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom

Isabel Anders

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BECOMING FLAME

Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom

Copyright © 2010 Isabel Anders. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

ISBN: 978-1-60899-266-9

EISBN: 978-1-4982-7221-6

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Excerpt from Rejoice, Beloved Woman by Barbara J. Monda. Copyright © 2004. Used with permission of the publisher, Sorin Books, an imprint of Ave Maria Press ®, Inc., Notre Dame, Indiana 46556. www.avemariapress.com

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For my daughters

To be a guardian [of the great spiritual work] signifies two things: the study of and practical application of the heritage of the past, and secondly continuous creative effort aiming at the advancement of the work. For the Tradition lives only when it is deepened, elevated, and increased in size. Conservation alone does not suffice at all.

—Valentin Tomberg

The Mother and Daughter saw a great ship on the horizon, its sails catching the red and gold of the morning rays.

I long to be carried by such a glorious ship to the land of my hopes and dreams, wished the Daughter aloud.

You have been blessed with just such a Ship, said the Mother.

What is its name? asked the Daughter.

Her Mother replied: It is your Soul.

—From Becoming Flame

Foreword

The genius of Becoming Flame lies in Anders’s singular ability to both occupy and employ the tone and cadence of wisdom literature effectively and without violation to the historical integrity of that genre.

The words and dialogues given us here could just as easily have been those of the Desert Mothers themselves. Certainly the thrust and breadth of Anders’s insights are resonant with those of all the wise women of faith who have preceded us.

I cannot imagine either a mother or a daughter who will not be the richer for having read and savored these dialogues. But just as much to the point is the fact that I cannot imagine sons or fathers who will not likewise find themselves to be