Connect with the birth, growth, change, joy, love and inner strength of mothering. Take a spiritual voyage through blessings, prayers, anecdotes and meditations about the sacred undertaking that is motherhood. These words of hope and healing, pain and promise, are for all mothers-traditional, single, adoptive, foster, step and bereaved-and are drawn from many faith traditions, including Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Native American. Special multifaith ceremonies offer ways to honor many aspects of motherhood, such as: becoming a new mother, either through birth or adoption; welcoming children into the larger community; and acknowledging the experience of weaning a child. Insightful and wise, the expressions in this soulful collection illustrate the paradox of motherhood and will speak to your heart as you see motherhood in a whole new-and holy-way. Contributions stem from both ancient and contemporary sources, and many contributions were written specifically for this book. Contributors: Maya Angelou . Dev Arjan .Isaac Babel . 'Abdu'l-Bahá . Sarah K. Bain . Winona L. Baker . Ellen Bass . Rev. Susie Crawford Beil . Big Thunder . Kathryn Black . Johanna Bodenstab . Emily Brontë . Martin Buber . DeLona Campos-Davis . Jane Welsh Carlyle . Gilbert Keith Chesterton . Rev. Linda Morgan Clark . Fr. Robert DeGrandis . Anita Diamant . Mary Douthitt .George Eliot . Saint Ephrem . Euripides . Kathleen Finley . Saint Francis of Assisi . Erich Fromm . Robert Frost . Saint Gertrude the Great . Kahlil Gibran . Maria Mazziotti Gillan . Stacey Goldblatt . Grace of Monaco . Hafiz . Leigh Hancock . Hanh, Thich Nhat . Fr. Edward Hays . Margaret Hebblethwaite . Jackie Heil . Sibilla Hershey . Lauri Hewitt . Rev. Gina Hilton-VanOsdall . Alicia Hokanson . Gerard Manley Hopkins . Jill E. Hopkins . Margaret Anne Huffman . Linda Lawrence Hunt . Crystal Hurdle . Jane Richardson Jensen . Saint John of the Cross . Julian of Norwich . Kabir . Hazrat Inayat Khan . Charles Kingsley . Laurie Klein . Jacqueline Kramer . Jean Baptiste Lacordaire . Fiona Tinwei Lam . Anne Lamott . Lao-Tzu . D. H. Lawrence . Dr. Donald Liebert . Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters . Rev. Dr. Henry McKeating . Lauren McLaughlin . Rosemary Bray McNatt . Maude Meehan . Amy Klauke Minato .Mirabai .Gabriela Mistral (pseudonym for Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga) . Janet Morley . Claire Rudolf Murphy . Sarah Napthali . Sister Nivedita (Margaret E. Noble) . Gunilla Norris . Theodore Parker . Christine Ryan Paulus . Margaret G. Payne . William Penn . Petronius . Po Chü-i . Jan Reynolds . Rivage (pseudonym for Mary Newman) . William H. Robinson . Christina Rossetti . George William Russell . Sappho . Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso . Meghan Nuttall Sayres . Edythe Haendel Schwartz . Ramprasad Sen . William Shakespeare . Trish Shields . Masaoka Shiki . Sadhu Sundar Singh . Mirabai Starr . Janeen Steer . Jonathan Swift . Rabindranath Tagore . Henry David Thoreau . Tukaram . Mark Twain . Miguel de Unamuno . Swami Vivekananda . Gloria Waggoner . Sophia Waldenberg . Jeanne Murray Walker . Robert E. Webber . John Woodroffe . Virginia Woolf | Honoring Motherhood by Lynn L. Caruso, Paperback | Indigo Chapters