When I had lunch with Dawn in November of 2003, she recommended “Girl Meets God” by Lauren F. Winner to me as a book that I might find interesting. I put it on my “to read” list and it unfortunately got postponed indefinitely due to my local library system not having it. (Technically, I could have gotten it from Concordia College on I.L.L. but I didn’t know that until today.) When I was in Sioux Falls last weekend, I finally got a copy at Barnes & Noble.

My thoughts: as a convert to Christianity who came to faith as an Episcopalian, I could sooooooo identify with what Lauren had to say. I found myself saying “that is exactly how I would have said that” when she was talking about a lot of her experiences in the church and it was actually comforting to know that my conversion experience was not the weirdest one in the world. Having also studied Judaism as a Religious Studies major, I also could appreciate the aspects of Orthodox Judaism that she spoke about.

I got on Amazon.Com and got Lauren’s next two books. I don’t usually buy books (since I can find almost everything I want within my library system) but I felt like I’d use both of them in my ministry life (when I actually am [God willing] ordained) and I didn’t really want to have to explain to my local librarian why I was checking out the third one (Real Sex: A Naked Look at Chastity — there are just some things I don’t want to explain to everyone in the small town where I live).