Titch: " But, I don't know if I'd call it a situation of "almost dying" --I'd call it a case of almost not coming into existence."
Yes Titch, my head was in a Back to the Future mode...watching people disappear from a photograph :)
Death is non-existence which is almost the same thing as BEING a JW.
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WingCommander: "Do you still live in California?"
No, WC, I moved back to Texas with my kids in 1983. I was out there for ten years. When my wife died in a car crash it was just the kids and myself starting again from scratch.
Posts by Terry
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7In 1923 - I almost died!
by Terry inin 1923 i almost died.
__________in 1923 i almost died.. allow me to explain .... on the day of my parole from seagoville federal correctional institution, i walked out of the entrance of the prison and my grandfather was waiting for me at the gate.. the last time i’d seen him was in 1967. today was 1969.. he looked older and i must have looked much skinnier.. i opened the door and climbed into the front passenger side.. there were no seat belts back then.. jack avery hybarger was a private man, very shy about looking into anyone’s eyes.. he bottled up his emotions.
we weren’t a family that hugs or says “i love you.”.
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Terry
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In 1923 - I almost died!
by Terry inin 1923 i almost died.
__________in 1923 i almost died.. allow me to explain .... on the day of my parole from seagoville federal correctional institution, i walked out of the entrance of the prison and my grandfather was waiting for me at the gate.. the last time i’d seen him was in 1967. today was 1969.. he looked older and i must have looked much skinnier.. i opened the door and climbed into the front passenger side.. there were no seat belts back then.. jack avery hybarger was a private man, very shy about looking into anyone’s eyes.. he bottled up his emotions.
we weren’t a family that hugs or says “i love you.”.
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Terry
In 1923 I almost died.
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In 1923 I almost died.Allow me to explain ...
On the day of my parole from Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution, I walked out of the entrance of the prison and my grandfather was waiting for me at the gate.
The last time I’d seen him was in 1967. Today was 1969.
He looked older and I must have looked much skinnier.
I opened the door and climbed into the front passenger side.
There were no seat belts back then.
Jack Avery Hybarger was a private man, very shy about looking into anyone’s eyes.
He bottled up his emotions. We weren’t a family that hugs or says “I love you.”
We lived like animals in a kennel; familiar but not too close - or risk a bark or scratch!
I don’t remember what we said or - how we greeted. It was always a bit uncomfortable. Formal. What do you say to an ex-con?
“How does it feel to be free?”
Duh.
My head was filled with absolutely nothing but an exploding feeling of something I couldn’t define. I just wanted to get home. To BE home and reconnect with the “real” world.
That’s when my Paw Paw (my childish name for grandfather) started talking as though he were telling me a story. He had chosen this very odd moment to reveal a deep dark secret.
It struck me odd and bowled me over. I sat stunned...listening.
He took me back to a moment in his life in the year 1919 when he was 29 years old.
My Grandfather, Jack Hybarger, told me he had stood with tears running down his cheeks and a small-caliber pistol in his right hand atop a building in New Orleans.
"I was going to shoot myself in the head."...
(All I could manage to speak was one word: "Why?")
"I felt your grandmother (my wife) was going to leave me. She met somebody else. Went out dancing with him every weekend. I followed her. I saw. I knew. I climbed a ladder outside a dance hall and watched them. I climbed back down and bought a snub-nose pistol at a pawn shop and returned. I walked in straight over to the table where they sat."
We suddenly turned off the freeway to a barbecue stand where we used to go for lunch way back before prison.
He fell quiet for a while, lost in memories. Was he even aware he had said what he'd said out loud?.
I bowed my head for silent prayer before our meal. (A brand new habit I’d picked up.)
When I finally looked up, I could see he was embarrassed. This, in turn, caused my self-awareness and I too was embarrassed.
(I never prayed like that ever afterward.)
We ate in silence and returned to the car and the trip back to the house.
We'd be 'home' in another twenty minutes.
I was often uncomfortable being in his presence. In fact - there was an entire year when I was in Jr. High School, Paw Paw wouldn’t say one word to me. He’d drive me to school but we sat silent. It was like swallowing acid.
He carried secrets, never met my gaze, and sometimes gave in to tempestuous fits of anger.
At other times, he was generous, fun-loving, and upbeat. He taught me how to teach myself things.
“There’s not anything you can’t teach yourself.” He’d admonish. I assumed that excluded brain surgery.
He was a climate unto himself.
I learned early on to keep an eye out for brewing storm fronts.
We rode along the turnpike between Dallas and Ft. Worth with our windows down in his ‘66 Ford Falcon. I had so many emotions to sort on my release day--I couldn't really put two thoughts together about my future.
I stared at the OUTSIDE WORLD but no longer viewed from the INSIDE of prison.
On top of that - next to me a seventy-nine-year-old man blurted out his deep secret, then left it hanging in the air!
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I waited silently until he finally continued.
"I pulled the pistol out of my pocket and stood in front of them. Until that moment, I really had no plan--it was all anger and adrenaline. I thumbed back the hammer and found myself pointing it--not at HIM--but HER. I told her to choose between the two of us.. I was in a fog. Sad, confused, desperate. I said whatever I said and walked out. Murder wasn’t in me when I needed it.”
I could only listen. What was there to say to any of this - and the timing of it all?
“I wandered around the French Quarter for about an hour. We were living in New Orleans at that time. Then, I climbed the fire escape to the top of a men's store called Maison Blanche.
I needed to look out at the city and at the world; at life itself a final time.
At the top, I walked to the edge and looked down. Barely breathing.
That's when I saw it.
I bent down and picked up a stray paper under my foot.
An advertisement.
I read it and immediately decided to live.
It was just an advertisement--a handbill blown on top of a building."
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By then we’d taken the highway back to Fort Worth again and making good time.
We were turning down the final few streets before the driveway of the house where, before prison, I'd spent 20 years of my life. I couldn't wait to see it and rush inside and experience the passionate thrill of security in my own home.
Inside the prison, the outside was dreamlike and vague. Now, the reverse occurred.
The experience of prison seemed like it was somebody else’s memory.
As we turned into the long driveway, I saw my cat, Cynthia, perched alert on the front porch swing, her tail snaking nervously at the car's approach. Did she know? Is that possible?
We drove past trees I had climbed as a boy, the pecan tree, pear tree, and I could smell honeysuckle. The gorgeous purple four o'clock flowers my grandmother planted all those years ago swept over me like a gust of perfumed happiness!
This house, new-mown grass, and my cat! Sweet life I'd left behind to serve the fearsome God Jehovah---it was all too much to bear! I felt tears welling up and I didn’t want that!
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My grandfather pulled into the overhang of the garage and switched off the motor. He was lost in his own feelings of 'overwhelm' at that moment. Memory can be kind, or cruel, or punishing.
He finished his thoughts out loud. My hand on the door handle paused, waited; I listened.
"The handbill was an advertisement for Art School correspondence course.
I discovered in that moment’s pause between life and death--I wanted to be an artist of some kind! I’d have a new purpose in life no matter what. I felt a deep conviction - somehow - I knew...I AM an Artist!
I climbed back down the fire escape, off the building-- never again thought about what I'd almost done. Not till I saw you walk out of the prison. It struck me. I had almost killed you back then and not just me."
Engine off and radiator burbling. The free world rushed into my heart.
And ... I'd just been told a dark secret about - my own existence.
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I sat stunned.
What strange mystery runs in our blood? I cannot say.
Art saved my life twice!
First: the day my grandfather chose to live. His attitude changed. He forgave his wife’s indiscretion. They had three daughters and a son and moved to Texas. His career consisted of creating artistic window dressing back in an era Post-WWII when large department stores decorated outside windows with fanciful, captivating tableaus to entice customers inside.
He hand-lettered signs for the store, dressed mannequins, and won many awards as the President of the Southern Display Association. He did one more thing - he started a Mail Order business. He had printed up handbills advertising ART SCHOOL just like the one that saved his life.
As a boy, I’d watch him open all those envelopes that came in stacks of mail each day. The dollar bill would fall out and he’d hand it to me. Every day was Christmas.
That’s how his life was saved and made meaningful, and consequently allowed me to be born - a grandson - in 1947 when he was 57 years old.
I had grown up to be a Jehovah’s Witness facing prison for Conscientious Objection to the Viet Nam war. I was sentenced to six years but received parole (1967-’69).
The second time Art saved my life came the day I abandoned Ft. Worth escaping with my wife and three children to start a new life in California - speculating I’d become an Artist there.
For three years I’d been unable to support my family working lousy part-time jobs as a janitor, sign painter, laborer for $1.60 an hour.
My life seemed incredibly meaningless. Out of one prison into another one.
I was experiencing a kind of nervous breakdown spending 100+ hours a month in door-to-door ministry, attending religious meetings, and trying to feel life had any meaning at all.
My task was to keep it together until THE END (1975).
1974 we arrived in California. After a few false starts, I landed a job at a large industrial art business where statuary, paintings, framed art, etc. was created.
A fresh start, fresh attitude, new friends - LIFE became real suddenly.
The feelings of worthlessness dropped away.
The End of six thousand years of human existence (predicted by Jehovah’s Witness leaders) became a fart in an elevator and nothing more.
The discovery that LIFE is something that comes down to decisions that turns everything dramatically ON or OFF and by choosing ART I was choosing a creative existence - that saved me. All those years of preaching THE END I hadn’t taken the time to begin anything. It had been an eternal deathwatch...
Until now.
The day of my parole my grandfather watched me walk out of Seagoville prison - it struck him for the first time:
Standing on top of a building with a loaded pistol - he had come close to murdering himself, three daughters, a son, two grandchildren. Seven great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren!
_____________________________
In 1923 I almost died.
Holy shit!
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Liberal vs. Conservative mental health study - what do you make of it?
by Brock Talon ina pew study from 2020 (but one i just now came upon myself) reported that the more liberal you are, the more likely you are to have a mental health condition.
the worst suffering group are white females, ages 18-29 where over 56% have admitted to be described by their own doctors as having a mental health condition.
conservative females of the same age group suffer at less than half that number (27%).. while women tend to have more mental health problems than men (don't be mad at me for saying it, this is what the study reports) it is notable that liberal men have a higher percentage of mental health conditions than conservative women in the same age group.
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Terry
There appears to be a cross-over point on motivating push-back in political discourse when the issue is less important than the "idiots you hate".
Who can doubt the Trump vote was a vote AGAINST Hillary rather than a delectable
affirmation of the man himself?
For each party, it is the OTHER side to be vilified, despised and demonized AD HOC.
Whatever the other side is FOR motivates an automatic AGAINST.
The election of Biden conversely was a cry of "anything and anybody (even Biden) rather than four more years of 24/7 negative Trump coverage".
The election of Trump was kryptonite for the Left, a classic bête noire -
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A "killer" question for Jehovah's Witnesses
by Terry inhere is a 'killer' question for jw's.
which description best describes how you see yourself and how you feel?which would you choose?
are you: 1. a christian 2. a jehovah's witness here's the scenario.
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Terry
Definitely a patchwork, cut-and-paste theology from Rusell's days.
Pastor Russell took the buffet approach, walking through Adventist-style doomsday writings and placing on his lunch tray whichever items tickled his bias.
Rutherford was like the villain two-face. He turned Western theology inside out.
He was the Rebel without a Cause who created his own causes. painting a target on rank and file JW's so they'd be always in the cross-hairs of controversy, then
hold the persecution up as a billboard advertising his brand of Jehovah-style home cooking. -
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A "killer" question for Jehovah's Witnesses
by Terry inhere is a 'killer' question for jw's.
which description best describes how you see yourself and how you feel?which would you choose?
are you: 1. a christian 2. a jehovah's witness here's the scenario.
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Terry
J.F. (Judge) Rutherford used "Jehovah's Witnesses" as a
disambiguation branding for a very good reason.
So many fractures among Russell's followers (schisms) challenged his
power and leadership.
Under C.T. (Pastor) Russell, congregations were autonomous self-governing entities who subscribed to Russell's dogma.
After he died, Rutherford ran roughshod. He ignored Russell's Last Will and Testament rather brazenly under a fig leaf. The Bible Students under many different names spoke up and challenged Rutherford's rude takeover and policies.
Rutherford undertook a way of controlling them and guiding them from inside under their local roof, so to speak.
Slowly and insidiously he tightened his grip. The identity of loyal followers
(of Rutherford's bully pulpit style) was an amorphous fog of "who" exactly?
As a part-time Judge and lawyer, the term "witness" had a legal ring to it.
Jehovah's Witnesses was the new brand name and Rutherford boldly launched
a series of schemes to make that brand stand for something completely contrary to mere Bible Students or Christianity.
Rutherford was so fanatical about it - he directed a non-religion uniqueness separating the language of Christianity into a shadow of normal language.
Church into Kingdom Hall
Grace into Undeserved Kindness
Cross into torture stake
Christmas and Easter and etc into Pagan rituals
and on and on and on.
Jehovah was far more important to Rutherford's brand than was Jesus.
Today's JW's are barely Christian at all.
Christ means Anointed but JW's only have very few living anointed and all the rest aren't CHRISTian they are Jehovah's etc.
Very confusing choice the average JW would have to make if those two questions were presented as an EITHER / OR decision. -
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Liberal vs. Conservative mental health study - what do you make of it?
by Brock Talon ina pew study from 2020 (but one i just now came upon myself) reported that the more liberal you are, the more likely you are to have a mental health condition.
the worst suffering group are white females, ages 18-29 where over 56% have admitted to be described by their own doctors as having a mental health condition.
conservative females of the same age group suffer at less than half that number (27%).. while women tend to have more mental health problems than men (don't be mad at me for saying it, this is what the study reports) it is notable that liberal men have a higher percentage of mental health conditions than conservative women in the same age group.
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Terry
This dovetails perfectly into Brock's opening paragraph.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc -
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MIDNIGHT MASS on Netflix is extraordinary (horror)
by Terry ini will post a **spoiler** in a few minutes.a 7 part horror movie on netflix titled midnight mass blew me away and i thought i mightrecommend this limited series (only seven parts.first of all, there is a word never ever mentioned by anybody in this horror drama.that is for a good reason.
a very good reason.
i won't mention it either or i'd ruin part of the build-up inside the plot.suffice to say, this horror story is a very fresh take on a well-trodden path we've all been down many times (if we are fans.
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Terry
The thing about fiction is (drumroll please) it is inconsistent with reality.
Logic, per se, is optional.
A Zombie, for instance, has an appetite for brains and yet - does not poop.
If we insist on consistency and rational consequences (as in the real world) we
have to give up watching Zombie movies.
Superman "flies" by having originated on a planet with greater gravitational force.
In the source comics, his propulsion was a leap. Yet that leap has disappeared from movies and - how does he steer or accelerate? At some point, the audience must give up the tenuous hold on reality to participate in the enjoyment.
Religion is many things to many people and those who are OCD often become Puritanical and insist on cleansing rituals and tests of Orthodoxy. There are 40,000denominations of Christianity - each with separate nitpicks (enough to separate themselves from other Christians into a defined group.)
What is my point?
We bring to a work of art preconceptions and neuroses of our own personality with built-in expectations and do one of two things:
1. Park our sense of logic at the door and "suspend disbelief" or we...
2. Demand a perfectionist view of tightly plotted Agatha Christie-style puzzle solving.
Certainly, none of us can say what's right for others but, in my 74 years of experience, those who do not or cannot suspend disbelief are unhappy most of the time.
Religion (for me) borders on mental illness but can in some instances keep lunatics contained in a tightly bound environment and instill a measure of reward and punishment existence "enough" to make them less dangerous :)
Scripture is not fact and is certainly devoid of science or reality and cannot be used to enforce rules on fiction or especially Horror.
Adam's rib had male DNA and if EVE were made from that DNA ...well, the story of Eden is one of Adam and Steve after all :) -
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A "killer" question for Jehovah's Witnesses
by Terry inhere is a 'killer' question for jw's.
which description best describes how you see yourself and how you feel?which would you choose?
are you: 1. a christian 2. a jehovah's witness here's the scenario.
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Terry
Christianity and Jehovah's Witnesses have (deliberately) nothing in common.
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10
MIDNIGHT MASS on Netflix is extraordinary (horror)
by Terry ini will post a **spoiler** in a few minutes.a 7 part horror movie on netflix titled midnight mass blew me away and i thought i mightrecommend this limited series (only seven parts.first of all, there is a word never ever mentioned by anybody in this horror drama.that is for a good reason.
a very good reason.
i won't mention it either or i'd ruin part of the build-up inside the plot.suffice to say, this horror story is a very fresh take on a well-trodden path we've all been down many times (if we are fans.
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Terry
I saw the twist as the V's being the ACTUAL intent of Scripture!
Not just the delusion of a priest misidentifying a V as an angel.
The thrust of religion (Christian or otherwise) is a rigid dichotomy of:
JOIN US or ya gotta perish!
Living eternally - either way - is a reward that comes at a heavy price.
To be Christian is to take up his "cross" and die the martyr's death.
(Notable was the absence of cringe by the V's in the presence of the crucifix.)
A man's enemies will be members of his own household, etc., etc.
So - in that view - I had only praise for the commitment of the plot as the INVERSE
of religion as we know it. -
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I revisit an old Jehovah's Witness friend from long ago...
by Terry ingoodbye old friend; someday we'll meet again ….
the ghost with the fine china cups.
my last memory of her… a friend from long ago.. julie was a startling beauty, a blue-eyed, natural blonde; a model, guitar player, a singer with glowing purity of tone, a talented writer, and possessed of a wicked sense of humor.. she was too young to be dating and yet she was a natural flirt.
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Terry
Diogenesister: I'm kinda surprised they included you, Terry! If you don't mind my asking, how old are they on average, would you say?
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All of these Brothers are at least 74 years old and some older. (I'm 74)
I was 20 when sentenced under the Youth Corrections Act.
AMAZING as it sounds - none of these old-timer JWs goes on the internet for research or makes Google Searches about apostates because they've been warned off so many times.
At the last minute, I did not log on and appear with the ZOOM meet-up.
Why?
I didn't want to misrepresent myself to these guys. It didn't feel right.
I have spoken to 3 of them privately on the phone.
I'd characterize most of them as "on auto-pilot". Waiting on Jehovah.
What other life do they know but the always changing rough waters of Governing Body churn?
I detected a wee bit of awareness that 'reservations' are held in their private opinions but fear of exposure (maybe) pulls them back from expressing it.
I'm gobsmacked anybody could live the JW life for over 50 years and without going insane.
