"Carol Lee Flinders writes so exquisitely that you want to go with her into every nook and cranny she explores."

Vicki Robin

The official web page for Carol Lee Flinders, Ph.D.

Who we are...

Carol Lee Flinders received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in medieval studies. She then spent fifteen years writing about natural foods, co-authoring the popular Laurel's Kitchen cookbooks and writing a weekly syndicated newspaper column.

In 1990 Carol returned to her field of study and wrote Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics. Subsequent books include At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst and Rebalancing the World. She has taught courses in mystical literature at UC, Berkeley, and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She is currently a Fellow of the Spirituality and Health Institute, Santa Clara University and serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Advancement for Women and Religion. Carol will be teaching a graduate seminar this fall at the Sophia Center, Holy Names University, Oakland.

Carol's latest book is Enduring Lives: Living Portraits of Women of Faith In Action (Putnam/Tarcher). It profiles four contemporary women that she believes live and work in the "spiritual mother-line" of women like Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Catherine of Genoa. You can read Carol's recent article on "Women and Peace" here.

Tim Flinders graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley where he studied English and Sanskrit literature. An educator and writer, he has worked with gifted children for over two decades, and has written about gifted education, Gandhian nonviolence, and health and spirituality. His writings on nonviolence appear in Gandhi the Man and Nonviolent Soldier of Islam. He is also the author of The RISE Response: Illness, Wellness and Spirituality. Tim is a Fellow of the Spirituality and Health Institute, Santa Clara University where he has taught courses on contemplative spirituality. His recent article on the Muslim Gandhi can be found here. And his book on gifted girls, Power and Promise, can be found here.

What we are . . .

At Two Rock Institute, we are working to create a new kind of human story, one that fills in some gaps left in our history, while charting new possibilities for today and tomorrow. It’s an ancient story that imagines life as a web of meaning and purpose, and seeks to restore the sacred to the everyday.

You can learn more about parts of this story throughout this website.

Where we are . . .

Two Rock Institute exists only here, on the web, a virtual but very real interchange between like-minded folk who are working for a more peaceable and sustainable future for their children.

Two Rock is a real place, north of San Francisco, a lovely knoll of grass and Eucalyptus topped by twin granite rocks that look out over the valley near where we have lived in community for the past thirty years. There’s a volunteer fire department where the road passes just below the knoll, and dairy cows graze the hillside.

We like to think that Two Rock was sacred to the Native Americans who inhabited the valley for more than three millennia, its twin knobs presiding graciously over the grasslands that surround it. We made it the name of our institute because of this sense of a sacred history – a real place, peopled and loved.

It’s our belief that if everyday life is to become sacred, then the places we inhabit must be lived in with commitment and reverence. Medieval European monastics believed this very thing, and took a vow of stabilitas, to stay put. We take no vows ourselves, but we have indeed stayed put.

Thanks for visiting us.