Carol Ochs – författare

As a survivor of the Flood, Noah had to confront a paradox: though God's covenant blessed the world with unending time, Noah experienced time as a burden. Carol Ochs, author of the popular and critically acclaimed An Ascent to Joy: Transforming Deadness of Spirit, offers us once again her unique vision of how the Holy resides in the ordinary. The Noah Paradox wrestles with the fear and paralysis that sometimes threaten to overwhelm us when, mindful of past and present suffering, we contemplate a future of continued trials and failures.In searching for renewal and courage, Ochs finds in the Hebrew Scriptures three paths to change: creativity, spirituality, and love. "We think we are living in an unprecedented time," states Ochs, "but much of what we now experience was faced as far back as biblical times. Reading the Scriptures in light of our present conflicts will provide us with insights into our most troubling problems." She employs the Creation account in Genesis to demonstrate that understanding God's creativity can give us courage to go on because we can reaffirm that we are created in the image of God. The five stages of the spiritual way are outlined in the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt. And the third path to change, the way of love, is charted in the Song of Songs.The Noah Paradox draws on the traditions of Jewish biblical commentary but turns the traditional questions into contemporary ones. Ochs's generous combination of the philosophical and religious traditions reminds us how vital the biblical text remains, while encouraging us to return to the originals.

In this powerful book, Carol Ochs shows us how to develop a personal theology by examining our life stories, learning to recognize God at work in them, and bringing them into conversation with Torah. Using timeless biblical texts as lenses to see the present, she helps us understand who we are and who God is for us by exploring the tightly interwoven basic elements of our lives--our love, suffering, work, bodies, prayer, community, and experiences of death. Through the process of seeing our experiences in relation to Biblical stories, we begin to recognize our lives as part of the ongoing story of the Jewish people--as Torah. This insight allows us to see these experiences as meaningful, not accidental, and opens us to recognizing God's power in and through all that happens to us. Rather than a collection of random events, our lives are part of the Jewish people's ongoing adventure. Armed with our personally shaped theology, we can face this adventure of living in the vanguard of history with awareness and confidence.

Written by an acclaimed scholar to enrich and complete the vision offered by traditional Western spirituality, Women and Spirituality demonstrates that women, as women, have a valuable contribution to make to religion. This new edition is revised and updated in light of thirteen years of feminism, including new biblical role models and a new chapter on women's special relationship to time. Prodding readers to pay attention to their own experiences, Ochs challenges traditional religious concepts such as solitary struggle, otherworldliness, and the spiritual journey to a distant goal, and shows how women's spirituality focuses on relationships with others, commitment to this world, and engagement with the present.