Posts by fairchild

15

back after a strange year. update

by fairchild in

jw
friends

hi i am back.

haven't posted here in a long time.

i even went back to the jws for a while and then quit again.. i lost my best friend to throat cancer in march 2006. we had been very close for 14 years and i was convinced that i would still be able to 'feel' him, or best case scenario, 'talk' to him after he died.

fairchild

Thank you all for the comments (and for the private messages).

It is thanks to scully's help that I was able to retrieve my fairchild account and I'm very grateful for that also. I've sporadically been in touch with Dave (almostatheist) over the past months but had pretty much lost contact with everyone else from JWD.

"You can be abandoned by everyone, and you can lose everything – except yourself. So why not look there, within you, where your only real possession, your only real certainty, can be found? Whether you are on earth or in the other world, you will never be separated from yourself.

You know.. I'm a true loner and don't have much contact with people at all except for a few close friends. I once read somewhere that there are only 9 months of your whole life that you're not truly alone. I've never been lonely and I can't imagine the feeling, but I do feel the void of where a close friend used to be. And from experience I know that it changes one's life forever. Only time will make it easier and I must say that things have gotten easier indeed although the holidays were rough. Even when I loyally went to the KH 3 times a week, I had an understanding with my friend.. he would go to the memorial with me every year and I would go to midnight mass with him on Christmas Eve (oops) So Christmas sucked this year but I watched midnight mass on TV though. Looking glass I am so sorry about your loss, it is not easy I know. I think that everyone reacts diffeently in the aftermath of loss but distress and the unbearable feeling of loss is universal. Hang in there, it will get better. It's nice to 'see' so many known faces here. Lol you are all going to stay around forever, aren't you? It's great to see everyone, it feels like coming home. I hope I didn't miss anything funny. Just when I disappeared defd was troll number one on the board. Did he ever come back?

32

Toasting is wrong because.........

by Gill in

jw
friends

so why, according to the feb 15th watchtower is toasting wrong?.

apparantly:.

'toasting today may not be viewed by many as a religious gesture.

fairchild

>>Superstition holds that clinking glasses will scare away evil spirits.
That may be true. I've noticed that shortly after toasting, the spirits in my glass seem to disappear!

Hahaha only Dave.

But maybe toasting is wrong because it is fun?

15

back after a strange year. update

by fairchild in

jw
friends

hi i am back.

haven't posted here in a long time.

i even went back to the jws for a while and then quit again.. i lost my best friend to throat cancer in march 2006. we had been very close for 14 years and i was convinced that i would still be able to 'feel' him, or best case scenario, 'talk' to him after he died.

fairchild

Hi I am back. Haven't posted here in a long time. 2006 was a strange year to say the least. I even went back to the JWs for a while and then quit again.

I lost my best friend to throat cancer in March 2006. We had been very close for 14 years and I was convinced that I would still be able to 'feel' him, or best case scenario, 'talk' to him after he died. Great was my disappointment when nothing happened. Nothing at all. He was gone, period. Once again I started to believe that we are really gone after we die, a bit like sleeping, just like the bible says, but then I was not sure of anything.

His passing left a huge void, and I found consolation in the words of the priest at the cemetary while we were standing in front of the casket. He said "Our true citizenship is in heaven". I started to imagine that he was not gone, he had moved to a different place where he now had true citizenship. Silly me I even talked to the JWs about it but they said that the poor priest just didn't know any better. As the months went by I was still searching for truth, knowing that I would never find it and sure enough, I didn't. I'm not going to say "I haven't", because technically this would leave room for the possibility that I could still search and perhaps find something, but I have given up at least for now.

I started to go back to the meetings over the summer, perhaps to fill the void, I don't really know why I went back. I didn't believe in all of the JW stuff anymore, but it was something to do. I was asked to go to a different kingdom hall because technically I had been going to the wrong kingdom hall all of those years, they said I lived in a district that was part of a different kingdom hall. Sure enough when I went there, many (but not all) of the people who live around this town here were now going to this other kingdom hall. Strange though that two of those people were elders in the previous KH I went to and they were no longer serving as elders. I smelled something fishy going on but couldn't put my finger on it. I didn't like the new KH so I stopped going about 3 months ago.

A week before Thanksgiving, another friend became ill. Long story short, he was in a coma and on life support within two weeks of becoming ill, he was barely being kept alive until they found out that he had been affected by a very rare but deadly illness that affects less than one in a million people. As soon as they figured it out they could give him the right medications and he is now slowly recovering. But while he was so very ill, his heart stopped beating several times and they had to use the paddles to bring him back. He is still weak and even talking seems to be difficult, but when he talks about his "near death" experience, there is suddenly a lot of passion in his voice. He is a level headed person and I have no reason to doubt what he tells people. He says he walked up the stairs. There were 13 steps and they were made of a bright white marble stone. It was very peaceful around him but he was scared. When he reached the top step he was being pulled back by an invisible force. He was never religious before but now he has become religious and he is planning on going to church when he gets all better.

Other than that 2006 was a rather uneventful year. I quit my job to start up a small farm but I didn't make enough off the farm in summer to get me through the winter, so now I am working two days a week to get something extra and pay the bills. I'm looking forward to next spring.

I hope the old timers here are all doing well and that the newer members are finding their way around after leaving the 'truth'

Cheers

8

Interesting statistics

by fairchild in

jw
friends

i was doing a search for the ranking on a web server and while i was there i though about comparing the jwd page view to the watchtower.org page view.. quite interesting.

edited to take out the link, it didn't work.

i'll post a screen shot instead..

fairchild

Here are some more numbers..

Over the past 3 months..

Watchtower.org.

Ranking has gone down 2,915 places.

Reach per million users went down with 9%

Page view remained the same.

JWD

Ranking went up 92,178 places.

Reach per million users went up 94%

Page views went up 79%

When I compare the charts for the past 4 years, there was a major drop in traffic to the watchtower.org site between October/November 2004 and October 2005. What happened in October 2004? During that time the page views for JWD surpassed the page views for watchtower.org by far.

Watchtower.org has a peak of page views each year around the memorial, but the peak was less, much less pronounced in 2006.

8

Interesting statistics

by fairchild in

jw
friends

i was doing a search for the ranking on a web server and while i was there i though about comparing the jwd page view to the watchtower.org page view.. quite interesting.

edited to take out the link, it didn't work.

i'll post a screen shot instead..

fairchild

an interesting JWD spike around Christmas time 2005 and another about this time going way above the WT site.

Yes I noticed that too. Did something out of the ordinary happen? (I've been out of the loop completely)

8

Interesting statistics

by fairchild in

jw
friends

i was doing a search for the ranking on a web server and while i was there i though about comparing the jwd page view to the watchtower.org page view.. quite interesting.

edited to take out the link, it didn't work.

i'll post a screen shot instead..

fairchild

I was doing a search for the ranking on a web server and while I was there I though about comparing the JWD page view to the watchtower.org page view.

Quite interesting.

alt

Edited to take out the link, it didn't work. I'll post a screen shot instead.

16

Did You Ever Have a GOOD Body of Elders?

by Warlock in

jw
friends

when i came into the org.

in the early 1980's, we had a good body of elders.

they took the lead and cared for the sheep.. the oldest was in his mid- 70's, had a sharp mind, great sense of humor and was just plain cool.

fairchild

The last KH I went to had a "good" body of elders. All caring and patient people.

92

What keeps you from killing yourself?

by AlmostAtheist in

jw
friends

every once in a while, the whole "futility of life" thing washes over me and something inside of me mentions the suicide option.

not that it's ever seriously considered, but one of the low-level accounting-types in my head quietly sends around a "worst-case scenario" memo that everyone reads, then dismisses.. after all, things always perk up.

"but," reminds the pessimistic little guy that should've been fired years ago, "they always go back down, too.

fairchild

We haven't written a decent book yet.

Um, but you have, Dave. You have. Now what?

38

What is the name of the Holy Spirit?

by moomanchu in

.

matthew 28:19 therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit,.

fairchild

spook

LOL I was going to say the same thing. My neighbour used to call them Daddy Junior and Spook.

35

So tired of grief

by Sirona in

hiya everyone,.

the thing is, i'm so tired of grieving.

it seems like i've grieved for so long.

fairchild

Hi Sirona, perhaps this will be of some help.

I have lost several people, but two of those were especially close to me. The first one I lost over twenty years ago, the second great loss was last March, just a few moths ago. Both losses have definitely affected my life in a very profound way. Losing someone you love deeply is not something you can step away from in a few days, not even months. There will always be a void and personally I do not believe that this void can be filled by something or by someone else. If you have a row of 6 old huge maple trees in your back yard and one of the trees falls over in a storm, you will never see another old huge maple tree there again. The picture of your back yard will change. It is the same thing. With each loss, the picture of one's life changes and there is nothing we can say or do to restore it to how it originally was. It will never be the same again. Sometimes different is better, but when it comes to losing someone, different is never, ever better. So where lies the consolation in all this? The key word is acceptance. Unfortunately there is no pill to cure grief, but accepting that people we love have moved on to somewhere beyond our understanding will at least have a placebo effect on our minds.

Good luck

Chris