Listen with Your Heart: Seeking the Sacred in Romantic Love

Flanagan's first book offers a spiritual antidote to the spate of guides based on what she calls ""a consumer approach to love."" Flanagan laments that ""most courtship manuals speak to our fears rather than our hopes... promot[ing] manipulation rather than real loving."" A Roman Catholic turned Quaker, she presents a contemplative approach to dating that rests on the concept of ""discernment,"" the ""active waiting"" for divine guidance to reveal itself through a calm, intuitive certainty that one path or another is the right one to take. Some people, she explains, are ""called"" to singleness, others to partnership; some to parenthood, others to alternative forms of service. What is important, she asserts, is to get past social pressures and internal fears and to ""change our focus from what we will receive to what we will become."" While not the first self-help author to espouse taking time to develop one's inner life and outer accomplishments before entering into a relationship, Flanagan takes a uniquely spiritual view of ""finding the path that will unleash the great love within us."" She describes the post-dating ""challenges as well as blessings"" of marriage and same-sex partnerships. Using the personal stories of other women, as well as her own--she married a former priest--Flanagan offers a gentle, comforting alternative to ""shopping"" for a partner. Agent, Sheree Bykofsky. (Jan.)