Voices Series
Nurturing the Spirituality of Girls
Reaching deep into the hearts of adolescent girls is critical to the development of healthy self-esteem and self-awareness.
The Our Voices series is a set of activities, prayers, retreats, and collective wisdom that helps adults truly listen to the concerns of Catholic young women and encourage them to find their own paths toward a deeper relationship with themselves—and with God.
Voices is designed for single-gender settings; activities are appropriate for Catholic girls from early to late adolescence. Relevant topics, presented creatively in the context of the Scriptures and spirituality, include media awareness, conversion, rites of passage, sexuality, and female role models.
The young women in your parish will be forever grateful for this opportunity to explore their role in being "created in the image of God."
Click on any cover or title for more information.
The Voices series is part of Saint Mary's Press's ongoing commitment to more fully serve the needs of young people by providing gender-specific resources. It consists of six manuals of strategies to use with adolescent girls in schools, parishes, and single-gender settings. The authors and consultants in the series have extensive experience working with girls in both coed and single-gender situations. The manuals in the series are different from one another in content and focus, yet they all share the same purpose: to help girls embrace the true meaning of the phrase "created in the image of God," a profound statement about who they are and who they are becoming.
Also available from Saint Mary's Press, Digging Deep is a manual for fostering the spirituality of young men, which can be used on its own or can be combined with the Voices series to plan concurrent boy-girl sessions. To order any of these titles, go to http://www.smp.org.
$28.25
Seeking: Doing Theology with Girls is an introduction to theological methods and reflection, with an emphasis on actively engaging girls in making connections between their experience and the wisdom of the Scriptures and Tradition. The overriding theme of this manual is that the life experience of women brings richness and balance to the academic discipline of theology. Topics covered include images of God, Gospel feminism, women theologians, morality, sexual integrity, ecofeminism, and personal and global justice grounded in a theology of life.
$28.25
Awakening: Challenging the Culture with Girls offers activities to help girls, ages 10 to 19, critique the culture for both its negative and its positive influences. Each of 10 themes is presented in one or more springboard activities, then further developed in additional or optional activities. The suggested options make it easy to adapt the material to fit younger adolescents or older teens, as well as a wide range of time frames and settings.
$28.25
Church Women: Probing History with Girls outlines strategies for discovering the richness of women's contributions to the life of the Church. Some of the women featured in this manual lived centuries ago, like Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich. Some are heroines of recent times, like Sr. Helen Prejean, several martyred women of El Salvador, and a young woman from Iowa named Carrie Mach. All have one thing in common: they changed their world because of their faith, courage, conviction, and action.
$28.25
Retreats: Deepening the Spirituality of Girls presents two one-day retreats on the themes of childhood myths and sexuality; three overnight retreats on the themes of media, conversion, and friendship; a fourth overnight retreat for mothers and daughters; and a weekend retreat on the spiritual journey.
$28.25
Prayer: Celebrating and Reflecting with Girls provides ideas for community prayer services and suggestions for enriching girls' personal prayer lives. Twenty-three experiences rich in symbol and ritual are designed to put the hearts and minds of adolescent girls in touch with the sacred. Themes include discernment, nature, wisdom, friendship, peace, brokenness, heritage, life's burdens, and saying yes to God.
$28.25
Help girls discover new perspectives about both the familiar and the hidden stories of their biblical sisters. Biblical Women: Exploring Their Stories with Girls introduces the stories of over 70 women in the Scriptures. Exploring the lives of biblical women can lead girls to an understanding of the roles that their foremothers played in communities of faith, from the ancient Hebrews to the early Church. This manual offers seven chapters of activities and materials (including journal-writing, prayer, and reproducible handouts) that highlight ways that the lives of women and girls of the past can be relevant to the lives of girls today. The creative activities are informative, fun, and flexible, and can be adapted to fit younger adolescents or older teens as well as a wide range of time frames and settings. An appendix, "Voices of Biblical Women," tells more than 70 first-person stories.
