Yeah, Herk, but anybody who has studied post-metafoozballic philanthropia should understand that those recent discoveries at El-Wazzamattayu have preempted neo-scocio-religio-coolio-exfoliolyptic thought. Or, in the words of professor emeritus of psythiocultic literature, Dr. Joe Schmoe: "nyaa nyaa ne boo boo."
Posts by COMF
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53To Ros, Re. "Ouija Please"
by IslandWoman inhi ros, .
i was just wondering what the phrase "ouija please" means and what is it's significance?.
iw
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53
To Ros, Re. "Ouija Please"
by IslandWoman inhi ros, .
i was just wondering what the phrase "ouija please" means and what is it's significance?.
iw
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COMF
Settle down, ouija please? I mean, woodja please?
woodja - a term consisting of the old English word "wood" meaning "wood", and the hebrew word "ja", short for "Jaweh" or "Yahweh". Obviously a reference to a wooden idol.
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24
The Story of Beans (Finally)
by Beans inmy short journey out and now reunited with friends!
in the beginning, my father was a pioneer in the province of quebec and in south western ontario and i always asked why these places and he said it was because the need was great in these regions, im sure it still is!
my mother was in toronto pioneering and was sent here from germany to spread the word and was on her way back when she met dad the super pioneer.
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COMF
How cool! Thanks for telling the story.
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28
Told my JW Story at AA Meeting
by COMF ini was invited to be a guest speaker at the saturday night aa speaker's meeting.
this meeting usually has a large crowd and they get somebody with longtime sobriety to come up and tell his story of "what i used to be like, what happened, and what i'm like now" as an example for others.
i'll have eight years in january, so i guess that makes me fairly longtime.. i told them:.
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COMF
Dan, what was really interesting in my case is that my method of dealing with the "God" aspect of the 12 steps was to just say, "Okay, I recognize that this part of it is here, but I just can't deal with it right now, so I'm going to have to put it on hold and skip over step three to step four." And the stuff you do from step four to step ten had such a cleansing effect on me that I wanted to stay like that, so I started taking regular inventory, catching myself when I was wrong and correcting it, actively applying those principles for living that the steps contain. And they worked for me without the need to say it was a higher power doing it! Just living right causes stuff in your life to calm down and flow properly. Deal honestly with people, keep a calm head under stress, and things are just naturally going to smooth out for you!
I didn't tell the AA group that I am agnostic. I just encouraged them to work the steps actively. I said, "when we end a meeting we always say, 'Keep coming back; it works IF YOU WORK IT". That's "if YOU work it." We may be powerless, true, like the first step says. But read the first step again" (pointing at it on the wall behind me here) "'...that we were powerless OVER ALCOHOL'. It doesn't say that we're powerless over everything; just over alcohol, and that because of our powerlessness over alcohol our lives became unmanageable. It doesn't mean that we aren't capable of doing anything for ourselves and have to wait on the higher power to do it all. We do stuff. We work the steps. It's not the higher power working the steps; that's our job. And when we work the steps, that's OUR power being used. It works 'if YOU work it.'"
The whole concept of personal responsibility is probably too much for an alky with a few days' sobriety to be able to use. In fact, it probably would discourage them from trying, which is why the "higher power" idea is good for them. But there comes a time, after you've detoxed and your body is a bit healthier and your brain isn't foggy any more, that you need to shoulder the responsibility for your life yourself. AA doesn't really take people that far. I guess it's something each person has to figure out on his own.
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25
Some Readers Owe An Apology
by nickpark ina day ago the following was posted and namecalled a "cult" although it champions the real truth which is that god welcomes diversity in views, unity coming from kindness rather than forced sameness of beliefs.
would you like to apologize?
hey there!
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COMF
Well, I see you figured out a way to post your solicitation on here again without appearing to be just blatantly advertising.
Open-minded... you mean, like, they have a hole in the head?others who are open-minded
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34
My new toy
by Princess ini see lots of people posting threads about their new toys.
mostly male, trucks, motorcycles stuff like that.
this afternoon while making lattes for mulan and big red, my espresso machine became quite rude with me.
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COMF
Ahh, Princess, the trappings of royalty, eh? Lucky you! I have an El Cheapo model that makes a mess and doesn't have independent frothing; you have to catch it while the espresso's brewing. Nevertheless, it gets the job done. Make mine a double latte, Irish creme with one pump mocha.
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Told my JW Story at AA Meeting
by COMF ini was invited to be a guest speaker at the saturday night aa speaker's meeting.
this meeting usually has a large crowd and they get somebody with longtime sobriety to come up and tell his story of "what i used to be like, what happened, and what i'm like now" as an example for others.
i'll have eight years in january, so i guess that makes me fairly longtime.. i told them:.
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COMF
I was invited to be a guest speaker at the Saturday night AA speaker's meeting. This meeting usually has a large crowd and they get somebody with longtime sobriety to come up and tell his story of "what I used to be like, what happened, and what I'm like now" as an example for others. I'll have eight years in January, so I guess that makes me fairly longtime.
I told them:
I grew up in the sixties when there were peace demonstrations that turned into riots, civil rights and women's lib issues coming to the fore, the Vietnam War, the hippie movement and Woodstock, and a big swirling mess of ideologies coming at us from all sides. My family was abandoned by my dad, and my mom was a single working parent who held a bachelor's degree in journalism and still couldn't earn a decent income working for the newspaper, simply because she was female. My mom worked hard and was tired at the end of the day, and although she provided for our material needs she wasn't able to do much as far as giving us training in how to live life, and when I came of age I was clueless and in desperate need of some guidance.
I looked for it in mainstream religion and didn't find it; looked for it in one-on-one bible study groups with friends and didn't find it (they were fun and we felt good while we did it, but I didn't get any guidelines for living out of it), studied with the Mormons and saw through that... and by the time Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door I was disillusioned and disgusted, and I decided, "I'm going to accept their bible study and ask them questions that force them to admit they don't have any answers."
Turned out they did have answers. Clear, simple answers, straight out of the bible. They had answers for why everything's in the mess it's in, why God hasn't done anything about it, what happens to you when you die, why we're here, what God expects of us, what hope there is for a happy future... I mean they had it all, neat and seamless and all wrapped up in one neat little package. And to my young, inexperienced, thirsting-for-knowledge mind it was like turning on a switch. I grabbed it with both hands. I asked them, "How do you keep from shouting this stuff from the rooftops?" And they explained to me about field service.
"Field Service" is the term they use to refer to going door to door selling books and magazines. They don't say "selling" because of what it implies; they like to call it "placing" magazines, but selling is what you're doing.
As I got on into the religion I began to encounter problems. Turned out they don't encourage you to use your innate talents in the furtherance of the message. They don't want you to take it upon yourself to explain the scriptures, or come up with novel new ways of spreading the good news of the kingdom, or really do anything that takes any initiative. They frown on independent thinking and actively discourage it. All they want you to do is listen to what they say, the leaders, the governing body; just listen to what they say and accept it without question, and go out in field service selling magazines.
Turned out, field service was their answer to every problem. The way it was explained was, when you're out in field service, you're "preaching the kingdom", and that's where God's holy spirit is, it's blessing the preaching work. So if you're feeling depressed, you need to go in field service and sell more magazines so you can get holy spirit and feel better. If you kid is acting up and getting in trouble, you need to take him in field service so God's holy spirit will set him straight. Selling magazines was their answer for every problem.
Because their little package of answers sounded so clear and logical to me, it never occurred to me to question whether they were what they claimed to be. I was disturbed by lots of things I saw, but I never made the connection. Things got steadily worse for me over the years because I wanted to use my own brain and skills; I wasn't content to just be a mindless zombie selling magazines and parroting answers. I needed to think for myself. And this went against everything the religion taught, so I was constantly butting heads with the elders and getting more and more frustrated. It built on itself until I was just a big mass of emotional stress and tension, and one day somebody at a meeting said something from the platform and it just went all through me, and I got up and walked out.
Now, understand, even then I still believed this was God's chosen religion, the only one. There's a bible scripture Jehovah's Witnesses like to quote: "God will not let you be tested beyond what you are able to bear; but along with it he will make the way out for you to be able to endure it." Well, for 12 years I'd been praying to God, asking for him to make the way out for me to be able to endure it. "Please give me strength to endure, give me wisdom to understand, help me make this work, I want to serve you right. Give me what's missing so that I can be what I'm supposed to be, help me understand, give me faith." And the result of 12 years of praying for that was that I was walking out.
To me, this meant that God obviously didn't want me in his religion, or else he would have given me "the way out for me to be able to endure it". I viewed it as God having rejected me from his religion. So I said to God, "Okay, I see how it is. You don't want me. Fine. You leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone."
There's another bible scripture, speaking about people without hope, that says, "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." And buddy, I did. with a vengeance.
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Next I told the story of my drinking and how I got into recovery, and I gave them a unique slant on the 12-step program: how you do the 12 steps when "God as you understand him" has rejected you and intends to kill you at Armageddon. Then, back to JWs again, after I'm in recovery:
---------------------------------------In 1996, I got internet access and discovered some websites on the internet that delved deeply into the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses, examining them critically... their prophecies and predictions, their changing claims and teachings over the years, their methods and thought control tactics. Now, I'm not going to stand up here and tick that stuff off, and dog a particular religion. That's not why we're here tonight; we're here for recovery, a positive thing, not negative. So let me just say that, again, it was like a switch was flipped in my mind, and I was able to get past my concept of "God as I understand him" being a god who didn't want me and intended to destroy me. Over time, as I've studied and applied this program in my life, I've developed a different and much more comfortable understanding of God, one that works for me. Again, it is not my place to tell you about "God as I understand him" because each of us needs to come to our own understanding of God; the understanding that works for us.
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And then I talked some more about recovery and applying the principles of the Serenity Prayer: knowing what things you can and can't change, and acting on that knowledge. It came off rather well, I do say. :) -
53
not my enemy
by teejay infollowing on the heels of what bowen said about ray, i began to see a statement that real soon began to get under my skin.
i've read it several times since and i hafta say: that little irritant is beginning to fester more than i care for.
the statement was something in the neighborhood of, "let's not get side-tracked with this franz / bowen fiasco and remember who our real enemy is... the watchtower society!".
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COMF
Teejay--you're in your thirties? I was 37 when I started college. Four years later, I was 41 with a degree. If I hadn't gone to college at 37, four years later I would have been 41 without a degree.
Life is mighty good these days, man.
The past is gone. The present is yours. You decide how it will be used; nobody else does.
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Forever Bashing JW's??
by ScoobySnax inok.....here's one for you.....maybe this follows on from previous posts about not forever being "ex-jws" as after all, you say you have to move on, and many here claim that they have.....however reading most posts here it becomes obvious that that doesn't seem to be the case.
many seem to be trapped in a "go get 'em" crusade against the jws that seems to go round and round ...... and others just go round.. why?
how long before resolution occurs?
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COMF
Hey, scooby. Eat shit and die.
There, I know you feel better now. That's the reaction you're trying to provoke.
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Live Close By, Visit Often
by COMF inthat's what i'm talking about!
omg, finally, someone who understands!
and a woman at that.
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COMF
FTP client, hon. I personally prefer FTP Explorer - old now, but a fine program. Most folks use WS-FTP. Both programs are freebie downloads. See your provider's instructions on how to set it up for access.