UNKNOWN

Mending Prayer Rugs is a meditation on the hidden ways in which women suffuse the life around them with their spiritual force - their creativity, passion for justice, and enduring devotion. Our poetry is kindled in the writing of a letter or the search for a songbird. In the lover saying farewell, and the act of folding laundry. Prayer can bring the distant child as close as a garden bench. Stitching in a refugee camp or lighting the fire on a well-worn hearth can illuminate the hidden beauty of humble tending. Women arrive here as artists, prophets, and ancestors, in pivotal moments in which memory and resilience strive to heal the history of war and exile. In a time when the "feminine" is often suffocated by the clamor of aggression, these poems offer witness, sanctuary, and a vision of regeneration.

Kathleen Hirsch was an award-winning journalist before turning to literary non-fiction and poetry. Her books include Songs from the Alley, A Home in the Heart of the City, and A Sabbath Life: One Woman's Search for Wholeness. She facilitates the Contemplative Writers Group at Bethany House of Prayer, Arlington, MA, where she is a spiritual director, and writes a regular blog, Spirit Work, at www.kathleenhirsch.com