but, libraries should not be wet.

dry air towards your library, libkitty.

and sending out all the ma i can to those in need

A short vacation in Ohio?

YES! And what Ginger said.

Chikat, your niece kills with cuteness.

Susan, she's such a big girl! and so cute!

I was not able to get ashy this year; no transportation. Next year.

Health to Erin!

I had more, but I lost it. It wasn't about sex or religion. Though I do want to get that book that JZ recommended.

Okay, I caught up, now I'm tired. Goodnight lovely peoples.

Goodnight, Deena-who-has-a-new-tag!

Oh! That was the other thing. I tagged Jessica (I hope you don't mind Jessica). It was just too perfect to leave laying there.

Thanks, PC, and now, really, goodnight.

'Night, Deena. Sleep good!

And the conclusion she came to was that he'd been by and large dicked around with by his translators; that in the closest thing we have to the original texts, he's clearly uncomfortable with women in priestly authority, but also accepting that it's happening despite his discomfort, and trying to set standards to let it to keep happening without wrecking either the women's reputations, their new little communities, or the larger communities by whom they were still trying to be accepted. And in later centuries, when that small gasping breath of egalitarianism had been totally smothered, translators looked at what he'd written, said, "No fuckin' way, Jack!", and wrote down what they thought he really must have meant, because he couldn't possibly mean what they were seeing, because only a nutjob would say things like that about women, who as we know may not even have souls at all.

Y'know this really sounds like...Islam. Wherein some of the more insecure men read the Koran and said, "Naw, man, he didn't really mean THAT about women," and proceded to create purdah and punitive and restrictive laws for women.

Fundies. Making life hell on earth the world over.

And Beverly says what I was thinking. Except I'd been going to quote someone else, who'd said (I paraphrase, since I failed to cut'n'paste and am stoopid) that Christianity all gets tarred with the same brush of Mad Fundamentalist Extreme Right stuff, whereas most Christians are getting on with their lives and not being all extremist, yo.

The more I listen to your discussioon about religion in America, the more I realise that the US has a lot more in common with Egypt in terms of religion than it has with the UK. Which - blimey.

(And, yes, Mohamed was v. much all about women having equal rights with men, definitely having a soul, having responsibility for their own actions and choices and money and getting to initiate a divorce if they wanted to. Which Saudi Arabia? Not so big on, these days.)

All of which comes back to my faith/society divide wrt religion. afaic, attending church is a 'society' thing, not a faith thing. Yes, you can then use your time in the church to focus upon God, just as you can in your living room or on a mountain top. But equally, you can just take your presence in the church as you doing your bit, and passively take in the words of your pastor whilst thinking about what groceries you need to buy and wondering whether Mrs Smith over there is giving you disapproving glances because she thinks your top is too slutty. In a church/mosque/temple what you're being presented with is the appearance of engagement with faith, but it's down to the individual whether they're doing so actively or passively. Moreover you've got someone trying to mediate between you and God, and you've got groupthink and your need to be accepted by the rest of the crowd all going on, and I think that can actively get in the way of one's relationship with God and with one's personal engagement with faith and with one's conscience. I think faith is a profoundly personal thing, and organised religion an inherently social thing.

On a related note - it's not uncommon here to see men with dirty smudges on their foreheads. The first time I saw this, I asked the guy if he'd got a bruise. No, he said, he'd been praying. Now, afaic, if you had a dirty forehead for any other reason, you'd damned well wipe it clean. (And indeed cleaning oneself prior to prayer is something people are v. big on in Islam.) So afaic? Wearing a big old dirty smudge on one's forehead is egotism, nothing more. 'Look at me, I'm so devout my forehead's dirty, and I'm far too humble and high-minded to go cleaning away the dirt that got there through my abasement of self' type of thing. I have no patience with it. It's a signal to other people, not to God.

FAY!

Moreover you've got someone trying to mediate between you and God

Mostly as an aside, this isn't the way most of the synagogue service works in traditional Judiaism. For most of the service (there are a few parts that are done differently), the person leading the service says the first two lines and last two lines of the prayer out loud, to sort of keep everyone vaguely on track, but mostly, each person prays on his or her own, just in the same room as a lot of other people doing the same thing. (This is something I don't like about some of the more modern congregations. They get a choir and a cantor to do more and more of the prayers, and it ends up with a kind of "be quiet and listen" vibe.)

It isn't how it is in Christian denominations that don't have officials in the office of priest, either. Much of Protestantism is very big on the priesthood of all believers.

Camilla and Charles are getting married.