Posts by Merry Magdalene

26

Are you 'COOL'?

by nicolaou in

jw
friends

calvin is way cooler than fonzie.

atheists are so much cooler than christians.

and as for brit's and americans .

i was loading my purchase in my car yesterday when i saw out of the corner of my eye a 20 something man in suit and tie walk up to me and he was holding what i knew was a watchtower.. after 30 years of slavery and i was running late i went off on him, before he could even open his mouth i said, i was part of your cult for 30 years before i left.

he asked what made me leave, i told him that if when christ came invisibly to earth in 1914 and saw russell and his little group of bible students were the only people who had it right and so gave him authority over his earthly preaching work, why would you be disfellowshiped for teaching anything russell tought?

if the bible says that a person who predicts something to happen and it does not come to pass he is a false profit and the society had not been right on one thing, i told him i lived through [stay alive till 75] and knew many who sold their homes and had enough to live on just until 75 and again nothing happend, did he know that the second pres.

Merry Magdalene

(don't know what to say, but didn't want to go away silent)

~Merry

63

Can anyone tell me why this "test" works...this is SO SPOOKY!

by FreedomFrog in

ok, can anyone tell me why this works?

this is so freakin' cool.

do the test as it is instructed...don't cheat.

Merry Magdalene

red spade

19

Songs that reflect the tower

by jacethespace in

what is everyones favourite song that best describes there experience in the tower and their exit form it?.

this is mine http://http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3744443266557702508&q=pink+floyd+brick+in+the+wall&total=2005&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0.

when i heard the lyrics to this i thought it resembled my experience then when veiwing the vid i thought it definatly did.warning some of the vid might be a bit overthetop.. this is the sort of song i would love to turn up loud in the car and walk out of a meeting with the elders to.

Merry Magdalene

"Liars and Fools" and "Shoot the Wounded" by the Irony

~Merry

32

When Your Parent Died

by freyd in

jw
friends

is there a part of you that died with them?

Merry Magdalene

No. Seems strange to say, but it was more like a part of me came to life when my mother died last year.

She was a loyal JW 64 out of the almost 68 years of her life. She tried to shun me after I was df'ed but wasn't as "good" at it as she "should" have been, which caused her a great deal of inner turmoil, which she then sometimes inflicted upon me.

My daughter and I took care of her during the last 3 weeks of her life (with an elder's permission), and during that time, all the old conflicts and resentments just seemed to melt away from my heart and mind. Not that the source of them wasn't still there, it was just that it didn't really matter to me any more. I tried to make sure that through all the pain and difficulty and uncertainty, she was bathed in and comforted by all the love I was feeling for her, and I began to feel some of the qualities I had always admired in her, in spite of the JW stuff, begin to awaken in me.

There was a song on Myspace I listened to during and right after that which expressed some of what I was feeling--"Blood In My Veins" by Jude. (clickable link)

~Merry

32

PLEASE tell me I'm crazy!!!

by Elyse867 in

jw
friends

so... hubby and i have been getting into discussions with a lot of people lately about the wts.

i want so bad to know what to believe... i don't believe that the 'truth' is the one true religion anymore, but i don't know what to believe anymore when it comes to certain things... what happens to you after you die, etc.

so, i've been praying a lot (i still believe in god) asking him to direct me somewhere, just give me something to believe in.

Merry Magdalene

No way I want to step in and mediate between you and God and try to tell you when and how He is answering your prayers! LOL

I will say though, I have felt the same pull you are going through now and I empathize. But I would advise you take a few deep breaths and analyze things rationally. Emotions and feelings are important, certainly, but can often be unreliably colored by that which has nothing to do with sorting through true/false/unproven matters and making important decisions. Even in relationships, or matters of the heart, we really need to use our brains or we can find ourselves making serious mistakes and then repeating them over and over again, hoping that things will turn out differently even though we are refusing to see or do things differently. Not good strategy, imo.

I do wish you well in this struggle, whatever choices you make. You don't have to figure it out all at once. If there is one thing the WTBTS wants to deny people it is the necessity of individual growth, change, exploration and maturation, so I hope you won't let them deprive you of that.

~Merry

51

What Kind of Woman Do you Men Really Want in a Relationship ?

by flipper in

jw
friends

so guys.

i know all the old cliches, all the good women are taken !

but it's just not true !

Merry Magdalene

There was another thread, which one I don't recall at the moment as it's late and I'm tired, but I found what you (speaking to WLG) wrote there, and now here, to be...well...I could read you all night. Have you written any books I could curl up with? You have a way of expressing yourself, and a self that seems thereby expressed, that is quite likeable.

Here's hoping everyone finds their perfect match, if they haven't already!

~Merry

23

"Babylon the Great has Gallen--God's Kingdom Rules!"

by Terry in

this was the book we studied when i went to prison in 1967 at seagovilled federal correctional facility near dallas.. the babylon book, we called it.. it is where i first encountered fred franz's mania for specificity.

franz was the lone ranger prophetic mouthpiece for jw's for a long time and pounded out on his typewriter an amazing array of weird books.

but, the babylon book had it all.

Merry Magdalene

I'm trying to jog my own memory here. Wasn't the Babylon book the one that had the questions on the paragraphs in a separate pamphlet like booklet? Yes. I have my grandmother's.
If so, I wonder why? So the book itself would only be 704 pages it is rather than the 798 pages it might have been? The question-answer study format was an afterthought in its case? Beats me.

~Merry

26

Just informed the sisters at my door.

by wozadummy in

well it's a beauutiful day and it got better in the last hour .. two sisters and a daughter came to our door witnessing and after what i told them i think they are very thankful.. they first spoke to my wife and she told them why she is da'd over the societys stand on them protecting pedophiles ,but she had to go shopping and left me with it.. we had a meaningful discussion and i was able to enlighten them on the facts of the society and the recent cases settled in court in america ,and of course they did'nt know about it .

it came out that they both had observed the society hiding things and especially the pedophiles in the congos.. well then i explained that at least one is in their congregation and one sister said she knew of the same one because an elder had told her to watch out for him because he was seen touching and loitering around one of her children .

well i said that's pretty terrible that a pedophile has to touch your child before an elder will warn you of the pedophile 's history.. then the other sister who is a newly baptised witness asked the other sister why she had'nt warned her too.

Merry Magdalene

So glad your wife and you spoke outSo glad those you spoke to listened

~Merry

7

"Some of us are prisioners...Some of us are guards...

by new boy in

jw
friends

you may feel trapped right now by life conditions.. you are the only jail keeper that surfaces in your own life.. whenever you realize that you have the power to be free, freedom follows.. everything that you do in life is by choice, and you are free to choose again.. even prisioners are free to choose their thoughts so that they feel peace and happiness under any conditions.. love is the only answer....love of self and love of others.....even those who my be guards.

.

Merry Magdalene

When I first read the title of this thread, I immediately thought of this:

When US social scientists conducted the by-now classic prison experiment to test the power of the social situation to determine behavior, values and attitudes, they were surprised by the results. They discovered just how powerful external factors can be in corrupting the behavior of ordinary people. In that experiment, well-adjusted US college students took on the role of prisoners and guards in a functional simulation of prison conditions.

It is worth quoting the results of the experiment: "Many of the normal, healthy mock prisoners suffered such intense emotional stress reactions that they had to be released in a matter of days; most of the other prisoners acted like zombies totally obeying the demeaning orders of the guards; the distress of the prisoners was caused by their sense of powerlessness induced by the guards who began acting in cruel, dehumanizing and even sadistic ways. The study was terminated prematurely because it was getting out of control in the extent of degrading actions being perpetrated by the guards against the prisoners - all of whom had been normal, healthy, ordinary young college students less than a week before." http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6245.shtml

Then I read the opening post and realized what I was thinking had nothing to do with what you were thinking...but now I am mulling over the possiblity that maybe it could be relevent after all, thinking about how we can become trapped in certain mindsets from which it can be difficult to break free. How we see the world, how we treat ourselves, how we treat each other, according to our reactions to various external factors.

How do we get beyond being trapped in an abusive/guard abused/prisoner polarized mentality? Sometimes it takes an intervention by someone who sees what is happening to us and cares enough to step in. But the key to deep change is still within us and must be carried out by us on our own behalf, even if with help. We have to be able to see the possiblity of something better, want it, and be willing to work for it by changing ourselves rather than demanding that others change first, because that is not within our control.

I remember realizing when I was very young that I was not better than anyone else and that the potential existed in me to be anything from the very worst kind of person to the very best. It was a bit shocking (to my mother as well as myself when I revealed my thoughts to her). Realizing we have a choice is hugely important, whatever conditions in which we find ourselves, and regardless of what anyone else is doing.

I have often wondered why people make the choices they do, or why some deny they have any choice.

~Merry