Dear Ann

Sorry to break this to you, but you may, well, be an idiot?

My condolences.

I'm surprised at how many people that have written letters are full of such rage and are so quick to want to impose such a lawful justice against the carpet guy. The guy was a criminal and a jerk. There is no doubt that he has done this to people before and will do it to people again. But, why is that Anne's problem?

It would seem to me that Anne experienced grace and chose to pass that grace on in the world - even to someone that doesn't seem to deserve it. How many of you are perfect? How many of you have never ever manipulated, lied, or twisted a situation to your advantage? Would you rather that your "victims" punish you with revenge or extend the grace to you that you don't deserve? That is the heart Christianity: none of us are perfect, we all hurt the people around us (some in more grevious ways than others), and we don't deserve the grace that God extends to us. Yet, we do have that grace and when we really receive it, we are able to extend it to the people around us that don't deserve it either.

So great to see an article from you, Anne. Merry Christmas!

I almost laughed out loud at the end of this piece. I totally "got" it up until then. Even the flowers and the note -- what a great way to make the guy feel like the scum he is. But then he moves in with the "You did behave badly," which in essence called her bluff.

Still, my thought was initially to have him arrested for check fraud. But you're right. He's not worth it. It's not worth all your time and your energy. Letting go of anger and bitterness is its own reward. He, for a lousy $50, has to be the person he is. Ick.

I think there's a bit of self-punishment involved as well, because she knew she should have avoided such a "shady" place, right?

Either way, it's a good read and gets to the heart of Christianity in a way non-spiritual people can't get: That it's not about win-lose, what's fair, what's "right." And that turning the other cheek actually feels pretty good -- something you don't know until you do it.

Not much sympathy here for Anne on this piece but the essay is not a rant and isn't asking the reader for any. Neither is it a querie to an advice columnist, an overlong complaint to the Better Business Bureau or -- for the angry atheists -- a sermon imploring us to be like Jesus.

The essay is about dealing with injustice on a personal level and where it hits us emotionally. About the unreasonableness and cheating we come across. It's interesting because most people and organizations lie to us through public relations and spin. Here is a man willing to lie to her face, daring her, with each point at the ledger, to "make him."

Whether or not the flowers were merely a psychological trick to shame him into putting $50 in an envelope or the answer to WWJD, it's interesting that the merchant uses the last phone call as a chance to take another dig, not to make amends.

Coming to terms with injustice and powerlessness and conflict is the point here. We all do it differently but we all have to -- including the critics in the Salon readership who think she's a sucker, fool or loser because the shopkeeper kept the church money.

Pray a little harder, Anne, and G-d might remember some of H-s older tricks - ask H-m to murder the firstborn son of the cheat, or at least to send a swarm of carpet weavils to settle the score. Could you also pray a bit harder for the poor, the hungry, the disenfranchised? Your god seems to have dropped the ball a little bit there. Oh, and keep writing these wonderful, uplifting stories for Salon.

You drip. Your bleating on about how great a christian you are makes it even worse. how on earth did this drivel make it in to salon? I thought this website had a little class...

C'mon, Anne, you used to be a good writer, what happened? This is a dull story about a boring subject matter written by an obviously overly-neurotic woman. "Jesus gives crazy people space," .... what the heck did Jesus know about space way back then? You sound like you've become a preacher. So go to your church and apply for a job because I doubt you'll be getting many writing jobs in the future, at least from Salon. (Shame on you, Salon, for pubishing such dribble.)

I agree with gbarton: somebody needs to put the guy in jail and out of business, or at least file with the BBB and the attorney general's office. You could consider it a church project. Forgive him; write off the $50; be an example to him of kindness; but save somebody else from him. Take the Sunday school class on a field trip to picket his shop.

...could someone please explain what the hell this piece of gibberish was supposed to be about? Grace? What would Jesus do to a dishonest carpet merchant? Flowers?

Wtf? If this is some sort of religious parable color me lost, unless it's about the dangers of a confused mind.

I thought Anne Lamott had some great reputation. What WAS this thing?

Since Salon's redesign went up and letters have started getting posted immediately, without any apparent filtering on the editors' parts, I've noticed a really disturbing uptick in vituperation, nastiness, and general ugliness in people's letter-writing rhetoric. Why do people feel the need to tell Anne Lamott that she's an idiot or a fool, just because they disagree with this article? If you have a problem with what she's written here, why not pose a response to *it*, not to some series of assumptions or assertions about her character? Ironically, the nastiest responses seem to presume that their writers actually know something about Lamott beyond what she's written here--but I'd be willing to bet that very few of those writers would actually say anything like the awful things they're saying, if they actually knew her or remembered that she's a real person whose feelings might be hurt by such meanness.