Jeff,
I caught you and Carlos last night. Good job. You guys came across as intelligent and caring, not what JWs expect of those who leave!
Being an atheist, I'm not a regular viewer of EWTN, as you might guess, but I enjoyed the show. I also have to confess that Thomas Merton's Seven Story Mountain was very much an influence on me when I was a JW. It's sort of strange that Merton (I eventually had a ton of his books), Alan Watts, Thich Nat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and Mohandis Gandhi, shaped my view of what a spiritual person truly was more than anything I read as a Witness. I was reading those guys when I was a MS and an elder! I had their photos on my bulletin board in my office for years when I was an active elder.
Eventually I read the Tao Te Ching, and saw what a truly spiritual philosophy really looked like. I would eventually use the Tao Te Ching for the illustrations in one of my last assembly talks - a baptism talk - and would quote directly from it more than I did the Bible in my very last official act as a JW - a wedding talk I gave.
Two years ago I did a big, and favorable, feature article on the Benedictine Monks in the Weston, VT Priory. I enjoyed that day with them, and contrasted their approach to their faith against that of the aggressive proselytizers.
Again, nice job.
S4