Last night I had my first book signing, with a lovely, intimate audience of women. One remarked on their gender at the end and asked if I thought it was a coincidence. I didn’t, though I wasn’t quite sure how to explain it, either. Several were from the same book group, and book groups tend to be mostly female, but that only leads to the question of why book groups are mostly female. It reminded me of an interview I had earlier in the week with David Crumm of Read the Spirit. A man who has written about and read spiritual books for decades, David mentioned at the end of our hour-long conversation that most of the readers of his site and of spiritual books in general are women, yet most of the writers of such books are men. He was happy to help promote a female spiritual writer, pointing out a passage in my book about paying attention to our bodies and our dreams that he thought was a distinctly woman’s voice, though he immediately acknowledged men who have written about those topics, as well. 

I’ve been musing over this question of a woman’s voice and whether the word “feminine” would be more accurate, since I believe all people have both masculine and feminine aspects. I think of Thomas Moore, who my husband is reading at the moment, and his assertion that the repression of the divine feminine hurts us all. I think of Walter Hjelt Sullivan, a Quaker who teaches a course at Pendle Hill on using our bodies in discernment, and feel grateful for these men’s voices. Yet I think David is on to something about the way men and women tend to write about spiritual experiences. One of the things that inspired my first book on spirituality and romantic relationships was the fact that the books I was drawn to at that point in my life were mostly written by celibate men, like Thomas Merton, whose ideas touched me, though they seemed abstract, far from my lived experience as a single woman who was longing for marriage and motherhood. I believe several writers have said, “I wrote the books I wanted to read,” and it is certainly true for me, as well. 

Much of my writing is about how our spiritual ideas affect how we live every day—our parenting, our relationships, our use of earth’s resources. One of the people I interviewed for The Wisdom to Know the Difference (a Quaker man) wondered what it would be like to live every moment with the awareness of being a branch of a vine, to feel that connected to God. That question is central to me. Living in relationship is part of it, which David also pointed out as something important in women’s spiritual writing. His comment has got me reflecting on how my own writing fits into a broader pattern of women’s writing, and how women’s writing overlaps with and intersects with men’s spiritual writing. 

My final question is whether Quakers are any different than other denominations, perhaps less divided by gender, in this regard. I’m not sure, but I raise up the question. My sense is that the readers of this blog are pretty mixed, though I’ve noticed that some posts elicit responses mostly from women (like Cleaning for Company) and a few mostly from men (like the Washington Post link). The book group we started last spring around Brent Bill’s Sacred Compass was mostly but certainly not all female. Perhaps more significant, Quakers have always valued writing about their direct experience of the Teacher—which we have called by many genderless names—rather than abstract theology. A search under “women” on Quaker Books connects me to a rich tradition dating back to the seventeenth century, a tradition that included male and female voices when few other religious groups did. I’m grateful for that tradition, even as I explore my place in it.