Carol Lee Flinders

Biography

Flinders (birth name Ramage) was born in Portland, Oregon, on 12 December 1943 to Gilbert H. and Jeanne Lee Ramage. As a child, she grew up on a farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley. In 1958 her family moved to Spokane. She graduated from North Central High School (Spokane, Washington) in 1961, later receiving a bachelor's degree from Stanford University (1965), and a PhD in comparative literature, with a focus on medieval women's mysticism, from the University of California at Berkeley (1973). She married her husband Timothy Flinders in 1971. They live at a spiritual community in northern California.

Flinders became nationally known in 1976 through her coauthorship of Laurel's Kitchen, a widely acclaimed guide to vegetarian cookery that has been described as a "renowned countercultural cookbook," and as "the Fannie Farmer of vegetarian cooking." It sold more than a million copies, and cultural historians later contended that "Laurel's Kitchen was as much a lifestyle guide as it was a cookbook." Following the success of Laurel's Kitchen, Flinders began writing a weekly newspaper column that in 1987 was syndicated by 20 newspapers across the US, including the Washington Post and others. She continued writing this column for 12 years, until 1989. During this period she gave birth to one child, Ramesh Flinders.

Turn to spiritual themes

Beginning in the late 1980s, Flinders published a series of books on spirituality. The first, entitled The Making of a Teacher (1989), was coauthored with her husband Timothy Flinders. It provided an oral history of the life and work of spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran, who had helped inspire the creation of Laurel's Kitchen, and who in 1968 at U.C. Berkeley had taught what was believed to be the first accredited course on meditation at a Western university.

Four years later, in 1993, Flinders published Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics, a well-received collection of spiritual portraits of 7 Catholic mystics, 5 of them canonized as saints: Claire of Assisi, Mechtilde of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux.

Several additional books by Flinders have focused on various intersections of feminism, spirituality, and cultural and biological evolution. At the Root of this Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst (1998) chronicles her struggle to reconcile the claims of a lifelong meditation practice with her emerging feminism. The book argues that both feminism and contemplative spirituality represent authentic, and complimentary searches for truth. In Rebalancing the World (2003) she explores the historical and anthropological dimensions of the gender divide, and suggests ways that contemporary movements can restore an ancient harmony between the sexes.

In Enduring Lives: Portraits of Women and Faith in Action (2006), a "sister volume" to Enduring Grace, Flinders raises questions such as: What would Saint Teresa of Avila or Saint Clare of Assisi do today? She examines the lives of four contemporary women spiritual activists: Jane Goodall, the primatologist and environmentalist; Etty Hillesum, the young Jewish mystic-philosopher murdered at Auschwitz; Jetsumna Tenzin Palmo, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher; and Catholic death-penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean.

Flinders is now faculty at the Sophia Center for Culture and Spirituality at Holy Names College in Oakland, California, where she teaches courses on mysticism and contemplative spirituality. She is also a Fellow at the Spirituality and Health Institute at Santa Clara University. In the past, Flinders has taught mystical literature at the University of California at Berkeley, and has taught at the Graduate Theological Union, and elsewhere.

Flinders has been interviewed and profiled numerous times in the media (see below). In the 2000s, with her husband and others, she coauthored several reviews of scientific studies of the passage meditation program (see below). Between 1984 and the 2000s, she also continued to contribute as a coauthor to additional books related to Laurel's Kitchen (see below).

Books on spirituality &/or feminism

Flinders has authored or co-authored books on spirituality and/or feminism that include

Books on vegetarian cooking

Flinders' coauthored books on vegetarian cooking include

Chapters

Flinders has authored or coauthored several chapters in edited books, on topics that include meditation, spirituality, and feminism. She contributed a chapter to Women, Spirituality, and Transformative Leadership (2012), which won a Nautilus Book Award, and was recognized by Booklist as one of the "Top 10 Religion & Spirituality Books" of 2012. Flinders' chapters include:

Syndicated column

Flinders published a syndicated newspaper column from 197 through 1989, focused on vegetarian cookery. Entitled Notes from Laurel's Kitchen, it appeared in 20 newspapers in 1987. The column was published in newspapers that ranged from The Washington Post, to The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA), The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), and the Milwaukee Journal (Milwaukee, WI),

Interviews and profiles

At different times in her career, Flinders has been interviewed or profiled by several periodicals, including Yoga Journal, the Marin Independent Journal, The Salt Lake Tribune, the Spokane Chronicle, and The Spokesman Review (Spokane):

Flinders' impact has sometimes been mentioned in writings by others. Actress Ashley Judd has referred to Flinders as a "mentor."

Excerpts

Flinders work was excerpted in Sacred Voices, a 2002 book edited by Ford-Grabowsky: