With every cross, the Spirit awakens the possibility of salvation - 'provisional escapes from our tentative lives' (115). Since every body carries the cross, the cross loses its exclusive centrality and becomes an ordinary element of life. The cross and resurrection coexist in the same body in the same body they intermingle and form one element' (114). 'It is not just an actual rescue that keeps us alive but also support, like the hope of rescue. Even in the darkest suffering, people experience small bits of salvation: another's solidarity or assistance or even just understanding in difficult situations. Gebara's phenomenological analysis of the particular experiences of evil witnessed to in these women's stories shows that the elements of salvation are often mixed in with suffering. Everyday suffering, especially the suffering of women and others who have been left at the fringes of society, even the suffering of the earth itself, can no longer be justified by calling it an imitation of Jesus' own obedient suffering, nor can it be valued less than Jesus' suffering. Recognizing the pervasive and concrete reality of this 'experience of the cross' leads to the realization that the public suffering of a single man for the whole group can no longer be held up as the only criterion by which to judge the value of suffering. put before us what can be called in Christian terms the experience of the cross - the cross as concrete suffering, one that is physical, psychological, and social' (110). 'The phenomenology of evil as women experience it. Reflection on the experiences related in those stories is the starting point for a more complete discourse about the problem of evil in the world and the ways that evil can be defeated. Their stories, which come from different countries, social strata and times, are the primary data for her inquiry into the ways that women experience evil in the world. Gebara recounts the stories of several women, including her own. Their long-ignored witness is the legitimate ground for theological discourse that remedies the gaps in the classic discourse about evil that 'has always given preference to evil as men perceive it, with no reference to the evil actually borne by women' (7). Gebara's premise is that women's lives give witness to the ways that evil affects people and to the ways that sacrifice can be redemptive.

In Out of the Depths: Women's Experience of Evil and Salvation, Ivone Gebara uses stories of women as the springboard for developing a feminist discussion of evil and salvation. HARRINGTON, Briar Cliff University, 3303 Rebecca St., Sioux City IA 51104 Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2002. Out of the Depths: Women's Experience of Evil and Salvation.

GEBARA: Out of the Depths: Women's Experience of Evil and Salvation.

A Familiar Evil by Anne Patrick