OMG

The plot thickens--in novels and our lives--forcing us from the fairy tale into a bewildering, even heartbreaking narrative. We look at the god we're holding, and find it too fragile, too brittle to meet reality. Cling tighter? Move on godless? In fact, rejecting a god image (or as C. S. Lewis puts it, allowing God to smash our limited god) opens space for deeper faith in the midst of painful life experience. In OMG, Mary Ellen Ashcroft invites readers to look over her shoulder as she traces her god growth, beginning with a capricious childhood god. The loving savior who embraced her when she was eighteen, followed her into strict fundamentalism, while the god she met in an Anglican seminary shocked her by caring more about poverty than a seven-day creation, but then called her to a South Africa tipping toward revolution. An interweaving of narrative theology and creative nonfiction, OMG invites readers to grow into deeper faith, retelling their stories in the light of the biblical one, dropping inadequate gods to grasp a mysterious, awesome one.

""I came to OMG with enormous excitement. A longtime reader and admirer of Ashcroft's work, I couldn't wait to see what new insight, wisdom, wit, and witness Ashcroft had uncovered in her latest book. Still, even I was unprepared for the sheer linguistic beauty, intellectual rigor, and spiritually transformative power packed into this volume. OMG is both spiritual memoir and spiritual guide--and you could not find a wiser, funnier, fiercer, gentler guide. This book is electric, essential.""
--Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Bestselling Author of Wasted, Madness, and Waiting: A Non-Believer's Higher Power

""God may be eternal and unchanging--but our personal versions of God are not, and should not be. This is the liberatory message of OMG. Mary Ellen Ashcroft traces her dynamic relationship with God as it evolves through her own experiences of change, loss, and complexity. This is a book for those who need to know that God is what they may not yet have discovered.""
--Gail Griffin, Professor of English, emerita, Kalamazoo College



Mary Ellen Ashcroft was an English professor at Bethel University and Kalamazoo College, and is now vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church in Grand Marais, MN. She has published a number of books, including Dogspell: The Gospel According to Dog, The Magdalene Gospel, and Spirited Women. She teaches a course using a narrative theology to invite people into Scripture, and is also an active wilderness guide and grandmother.