And if you believe that, he's got a big rock in the middle of the country he wants to sell you.

Hey, none of my friends have a rock that big.

Someone wasn't worthy. I bet Jennifer Crusie is lots of fun, if she is anything like her people.

Hey, none of my friends have a rock that big.

I knew I could count on you to catch that opening.

Jennifer Crusie is more fun than her characters. Except, not so much with the sexing people up right and left. At least not as far as I know.

Hey, none of my friends have a rock that big.

Oh! Shout out.

Four men were charged today in connection with theft of about $100,000 worth of seafood and meat

[link]

Here's a question: what could one possibly do with that much stolen meat? Call up restaurants and say, "I got some nice meat for ya'. Good quality. Cheap. Don't ask where it came from."

Don't ask where it came from.

Yep. That's what I look for in meat. Er, so to speak.

"fell off a truck." Duh. Y'all need to rent the Sopranos.

Skipped a bit, but could not skim. I picked the wrong time to fall behind in Natter, so much good stuff. Soooo, here's the meara:

Grandma E = Grandma T Thank goodness for the good ones!

"ACCEPT AMBIGUITY INTO YOUR POSSIBLY EXISTENT SOUL!!!!"

This is perfect! Mind if I tag? (I'll email separately, Jessica. Just in case, by some weird stretch of the imagination, you don't see the request in this monster post.)

The God of the old testament is petty, childish, arbitrary, and cruel. I doubt very much if such a God exists. It seems more likely that these characteristics reflect the fears and projections of an early civilization. But if such a God does exist, wouldn't the moral choice of every person be to fight against his power, no matter how hopeless such a fight would be?

Yes! This is why I was somewhere between agnostic and atheist for the longest time. Then I spent the afternoon talking to a friend, just talking about God, not being converted. She said things in a way that never made sense to me before. Since we spent a whole day on it, I won't give the details here. For me, the important part is that the Bible shows people's experience of God and life. Even if it is divinely inspired, people are idiots and we get things wrong all the time. If God does turn out to be all petty and smitey, I can not believe in him when I find out about it. For now, I choose to believe in a good God, the God I see in the example of many great Jewish teachers, including Jesus, as well as in others from faiths that are less familiar to me.

She seems to work with a more literal reading of the Bible than we were raised with. For example, she doesn't believe in women preaching in the church.

How, exactly, is this a literal reading of the Bible? It may be a "conservative" or "fundamentalist" one, but I don't remember where the Bible said women couldn't preach. In fact, my understanding is that many leaders in the early church were women. There are times when Paul's misogyny just bugs me.

Try La Creme. It has very little of the sour.

This is the best stuff evah! It's almost creme brulee, but you can feel much more virtuous having it.

What is the proper response when a complete stranger comes up to you and says, in a very earnest and friendly tone, "I'm going to pray for you." Completely out of the blue, never had any interaction with the person before.

Reading the responses to this was interesting. There's a guy here who periodically walks up to people and asks, "Have you accepted Christ as your personal saviour?" I think it's rude enough for him to do this in the first place, but he has twice invaded my personal space to do this, getting right into my face and blocking my path when I was walking to work. I consider myself a Christian, but I was so flustered and annoyed that my response was, "None of your business." Later on, after venting with friends, we came up with better responses. I think one was something like, "Are you? Because I don't find your actions very Christlike." But I've never actually remembered this when it counts.

If the person were honestly trying to be kind, however misguided, I'd probably go with "Thanks" and let it go. Because there's really no winning that argument.

"And do you know, WHAT WAS THE SIN OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH?"

And I thought of you guys and our conversations here, and so wished I was close enough to answer.

But then, brief pause, and then, over the loudspeaker "Well, you're not being very hospitable, ARE YOU?!?"

I about died laughing.

I just love it when other people know the Bible better than the Bible-thumpers!

they were a video montage of disasters from 1980 to the present, the idea being that romance novels were an escape from the cruel world.

OMGWTF. Sometimes you just need the letters. OMGWTF.

How, exactly, is this a literal reading of the Bible?

1 Tim 2:11-12.

In fact, my understanding is that many leaders in the early church were women.

There were deaconesses, but this wasn't a preaching position. I believe the Gnostic sects would've been different too, but of course they missed out on getting their texts into the Bible.