In the early 1970's my family regularly travelled 33 miles one way to our Kingdom Hall in blizzards for the Thursday night meeting. Sometimes the roads were barely plowed and we would not get home until 11:30 at night. Now, there is a Kingdom Hall about 3 miles from where I live. Most of the congregation is clustered within a 15 mile radius of the Hall. This past Tuesday night there was a dusting of powdered snow and the meeting was called off! Without something like the 1975 date to drive them on, the average witness doesn't give a rat's ass anymore.The religion is now shallow, moribund and all about appearances.
sparky1
JoinedPosts by sparky1
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29
Lack of zeal
by road to nowhere ini hear rumbling about the rank and file not having the same zeal they had when new.. lets see: door to door at the time least likely to find someone.
waste of a whole morning.
isolated.
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sparky1
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"Get Over It!"
by The Bethelite inthis is what my children tell me... get over the whole jehovah's witness thing!
yes, they tell me they have gotten over the whole thing and they tell me that and i need to also.
my exgirl friend who was raised as a jw also has said the same thing.. my children say they got over it, however they are quick to point out how messed up their lives are now because of no college education and other missed opportunities.
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sparky1
Keith, my friend, here is my 2 cents...
All of our experiences in life add up. The good and the bad, the helpful and the unhelpful, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the positive and the negative, as well as all our 'highs and lows'. Once we have seen, heard, felt or experienced something it becomes part of who we are. There is no 'reset' button to our lives or a subtraction button like on a calculator that we can use to remove things from our consciousness and human experience. The sum total of every minute that we draw breath makes up 'who we are'. You seem to be a very 'sensitive' man that is caring and considerate. A very fine trait to have although it can cause unnecessary suffering at times. No doubt, your children may have inherited the tendency to be 'sensitive' ( I mean this in the most positive and meaningful way) and therein could lie the problem. When you share with them your thoughts and feelings about your life experiences, especially with the Jehovah's Witness religion, it may produce unwanted reactions inside of them and they may want to 'push away' the unpleasant feelings by stopping the conversation midstream and announcing that 'you should just get over it'. Of course, they have their own set of negative life experiences that they have to deal with and probably are overwhelmed emotionally sometimes just trying to get through life still struggling with the excess baggage of being raised as a Jehovah's Witness. Maybe it would be best for all concerned to sit down and have a heart to heart discussion about your 'common' issues. Honor your emotional pain, and allow them to honor your pain . Honor their emotional pain, and teach them to honor their pain. When the 'common issues' are brought out into the light of day, talked over, examined and acknowledged then they will begin to lose power over your life and the lives of your children. I wish you all the best, Keith. Some of my life experiences are similar to yours and I have fellow feeling and compassion for you.
Remember:
"At any given moment, there is more right with you than wrong with you." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Have you heard of a Jehovah's Witness on federal SSDI disability Pioneering ? How common is this ?
by BottleGate_ inasking 4 a friend.
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sparky1
I don't know how common this is. But yes, I have witnessed it first hand. Like minimus, I recall assembly parts that would praise those individuals on welfare for pioneering because they were bringing praise to Jehovah. In the early 80's I remember an Elder that was on unemployment and pioneering. He had a wife and 4 children. I thought his time would be better served looking for work so that he could feed his family and pay his bills.
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Child Abuser
by Lost in the fog inand another one, in wiltshire, england.
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https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18072231.4-wiltshire-courts-2019-sexually-assaulting-children/ .
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sparky1
Anyone 18 years old and older that sexually abuses anyone under the age of 13 years old should receive the DEATH PENALTY. Right or wrong...that's my opinion.
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Disability Discontinued for Lifting Religious Pamphlets!
by Atlantis indisability discontinued for lifting suitcase of pamphlets!.
https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20191202/news08/912331976/disability-discontinued-for-man-caught-lifting-religious-pamphlets .
petra!
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sparky1
"There are probably thousands of JW's getting disability when there is nothing wrong with them." - Petra!
I know some of them personally. And they work on the Regional Building Committee and travel to do construction work on Kingdom Halls! (And they are Elders) -
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How old is old?
by joey jojo inhaving a conversation with a pimi elder and i asked him how he deals with the fact that he never expected to get old.
i get the feeling that some dubs still have the original generation explanation hard-wired, even though they claim to accept the new version.
so my question is, how old do you have to be to be considered old?
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sparky1
You are old when you find out 'that it takes all night to do once, what you once did all night'.
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Why are the Jehovah's Witness Tennis players allowed to "serve two master"?
by I_love_Jeff injw broadcasting sept 2019 issue commentary.
according to the jw in the sept 2019 episode, the ukrainian soccer player andriy nesmachniy (go to 1:04:14 in the video) "abandoned" his career for jehovah????
he retired at 32 years old, the normal retirement age among soccer players.
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sparky1
"Don't have two different scales. You must not have one that weighs things heavier than they really are and another that weighs them lighter than they are." - Deuteronomy 25:13 NIRV
Nothing new here. In Jehovah's Organization, it's not what you are but 'who you are'. There have always been two classes...the in crowd and everyone else. A different set of judging criteria (scales) for one group over and against the other.
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Anthony Morris looking for members with construction skills..Now and after Armageddon
by RULES & REGULATIONS inhere is a screenshot from a youtube video (521 and the circus continues) where anthony morris blasts post-secondary college & university education.
''we will not need doctors or lawyers after armageddon.
so, anthony...what occupations do the society need '' today'' and after armageddon?
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sparky1
This is the only 'diploma of higher education' deemed valid in Tony's eyes!
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Is it me or does Stephen Lett come across......
by JimmyYoung ini get the feelings that stephen lett tries to come across as mr. rogers but there are times it oozes through that he is a lot more dominant and controlling then he lets on.
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sparky1
Hey, DOC...I have great memories of BOZO the clown. I was on his show live in 1962 when I was 7 years old at his studio in Boston. There was an old urban legend about why the Bozo Show went from being live to a video tape delay. Bozo would ask kids live what their favorite joke was and one kid 'blindsided' him with an off color joke. Supposedly it went like this:
Kid: How do you get a squirrel to come down from a tree?
Bozo: I don't know little boy. How?
Kid: Pull down your pants and show him your 'nuts'!
Bozo could take a joke. Stephen Lett is a joke.
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What Did You Do With All Your Meeting Clothes?
by minimus ini literally had dozens of suits.
i still have more dress clothes than anyone i know.
i did give some suits and clothing away and to be honest, i still like wearing a nice suit.. brothers and sisters, are all your “ meeting clothes” still in your closet?
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sparky1
I donated much of my clothing to a homeless shelter.It probably helped some people in a practical manner more than handing them a tract and telling them 'to keep warm and well fed'.