Posts by LisaRose

150

Start A Butterfly Garden!

by Bonsai in

jw
friends

time to take a break from debating religion.

take in a breath of fresh air and be healed by the wonders of nature around you.. how many of you have a garden?

how many have a nice flower patch to go with your vegetable garden?

LisaRose

maginative fence decoration Lisa Rose! In which part of the world do you live to be able to grow succulents? Do they stay out all year round? I see you have an agave and echeverias also a lovely acanthus in the ground. Any aeoniums? One of my favourite succulents is theHottentot fig Carpobrotus edulis but like most succulents it's not hardy in the UK except in the Scilly Isles, on the beaches in the far south west.

Thank you. I have space at an antique mall, so I was able to use some of my own inventory. I live in the San Francisco bay area of California, we are blessed with a very mild climate, you can grow just about everything, so yes you can leave them out all year. I have gardened in the hot and dry California inland and also the cold and dry Colorado flatlands at 6,500 foot elevation, this is so much easier, it's a joy to garden. No aeoniums that I know of, but I don't always know the names of things. I think you can grow succulents anywhere, but if you are in a colder climate it does limit which ones. I grew hens and chicks in Colorado (don't know the Latin name). In fact I brought a pot of them back with me and it survived the journey even though it was in storage for six months with no light or water. It's one tough plant. A friend gave me a cutting of one, no root. I stuck it in a pot and by six months it was huge.

The acanthus was my husband's pick. I am not fond of it. It's beautiful but It's supposed to be drought tolerant, but I find it gets limp in the hotter months even with supplemental water. I just don't have time to baby things!

61

Demon possesion, bunch of crap or?

by raven in

i've been using the forum to vent and post a lot more frequently lately as a venting purpose & way to obtain peace of mind with the craziness i've been going through recently as i fade away form the org.

anyways today i'm sitting here at work and thinking to myself about demons... ok i know this sounds crazy but has anyone else out there been traumatized by the thought of demons?

i had a dream the other night, just flat out spooky and i woke and couldn't help but feeling it may have been evil ole' satan and his demons at it again.. i don't want to believe that, (trying not to, & just brushing it under the rug so to speak) but have any of you out there been talked up about demons?

LisaRose

I do not believe in demons, I think they were invented by early man to explain things they didn't understand. I believe people who say they have seen demons are simply experiencing hallucinations brought because of being in a transitional state between sleep and wakefulness or hypnagogia.

From Wikipedia

Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness tosleep: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. In contradistinction, hypnopompia denotes the onset of wakefulness. The related words from the Greek are agōgos "leading", "inducing", pompe "act of sending", and hypnos "sleep".
Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.

11

Funny stories how u got caught while secretly smoking

by Gefangene in

jw
friends

hey folks.

to those of you who were secrely smoking while being a jw how did your cover get blown?

do you have any funny stories to share even if at that time they may not have been funny at all due to impending consequences.

LisaRose

My daughter got caught, she had the cigarette out of the window in my car (so as not to use the ashtray and leave evidence), some ash broke off off and went into the back window and burned the upholstery. I was pretty mad, fortunately it was just teen rebellion and she didn't make it a lifelong habit. One of the few things they got right was telling people not to smoke, imo.

33

Field Service Privilege Can Be Taken Away Due to Hairstyle and Tight Pants???

by Wild_Thing in

jw
friends

millie2105 hours agohere is something i just found out this week.former belief - field service is a publishers inalienable right new belief - field service privilege can be taken away if person styles hair or wears clothing in a way that is deemed metrosexual.i was pretty much dumbfounded.. this was posted on another thread, so i decided to start a new topic about this.

i think this is amazing!

i wish this was in place when i was a kid.

LisaRose

It does seem like a change to me. Historically If you were on reproof for some major tresspass you wouldn't be allowed to comment at the Kingdom Hall but you would be allowed to go out door to door.

It seems very strange that somebody who had an adulterous affair a month ago could go out door to door, but somebody who's only sin is being fashion forward cannot.

28

I'm getting disfellowshipped

by raven in

hi everyone, a bit of an update here on my continuing disaster of a situation.. (refer to my previous posts for the full story) my mom met with me yesterday for dinner, it was nice.. however, she brought up the fact that because i live with my boyfriend and how everything has gone down, i will be disfellowshipped.. i think the elders basically have enough proof of this.. due to the anonymous tipper (still have no clue who it was, i live in another town 100's of miles away from my old congregation territory), and my mom telling them.

i'm not sure when they will announce it, or if they will contact me prior.. at this point i feel so emotionally dead i don't care- on the other hand, i don't want to be disfellowshipped because i do not want to loose a relationship with my mom.

that is the whole reason i tried fading out.. .

LisaRose

I am very sorry to hear that you are being disfellowshipped, I know how painful it can be.

Whether parents continue to shun seems to vary quite a bit. It's a very difficult thing to shun a child, no parent wants to do that. Very hardcore JWs do shun of course, they believe it's the only chance for their child to gain eternal life. At the other end of the spectrum you have parents who treat their children like nothing happened. Most parents are somewhere in the middle, often you have a kind of hot and cold, they miss you and then allow contact, but then the Watchtower comes out with a guilt inducing article and they go back to the hardcore shun for a while. It can be crazy making, try not to let it affect you to much one way or the other.

You know her best, but even so It's impossible to predict what will happen, so I suggest you prepare yourself for the possibility that she will cut off contact. This will be very difficult, there is no getting around it, but try not to take it personally, if she does shun you it is not because she doesn't love you, but only because she is being manipulated by a heartless organization. Let her know that you love her and will always be available to her. At least you have the hope she might someday see the organization for what it is, and even if not she may soften her stance as time goes by.

Sometimes peace comes with acceptance of things that are outside of our control, and this is one of those situations. If your mom passed away you would eventually come to terms with it and move on in your life, at least with this situation you have hope that she may eventually come around, who knows, maybe she will find ttatt on her own. Try to build up a network of friends to rely on so that you will be OK no matter what.

I highly recommend meditation for dealing with difficult situations like this, it has been life changing for me. It is easy to do, costs nothing and has proven health benefits as well. Another coping strategy is to journal, just sit down every day and write a few pages of your thoughts. No editing, just stream of consciousness, whatever pops into your head. There is something about the process that helps to you deal with things, you will be amazed how well it works.

Again, I am so sorry you have to deal with this ((hugs)). You are young and have your whole (cult free) life ahead of you, I am sure you will be just fine.

45

Died Due To Refusing Blood Transfusion

by rrb2016 in

well, last monday my mother, a jehovah's witness since her baptism in 1968 died last week because she would not accept a blood transfusion.

she was 76 and had lung and skin cancer.

i know that the cancer would have gotten her anyway, but she was bleeding internally, and was told that she needs a blood transfusion, as her blood count went all the way down to 3.2 (should be 12-14.

LisaRose

I am so sorry for you loss. How sad that you were robbed, not only of precious time with your mother, but of the peace in knowing that everything that could be done was done.

43

Freedom of speech?

by The Rebel in

attending my boys parents evening it was mentiond they were to study the " diary of anne frank".

( he is 10 years old) i pointed out to the teacher that having read the book, in my option the book was not written entirely by anne frank, and i would educate my boy on why i believe this to be so.. in my mind this was a totally reasonable responce by me, but it has resulted in the head-master of the school wanting to meet with me.

i think it wrong that an educational system will i suspect meet with me and presumably suggest my options on the " anne frank diary" constitute hate speech, as nothing could be further from the truth.. freedom of speech is never absolute, but at what point do you think it reasonable and justified?

LisaRose

How is the headmaster wanting to meet with you a free speech issue? He just wants to meet with you, you aren't being sent to jail.

9

What about hermaphrodites?

by neat blue dog in

a recent post about transgender people made me think.

i think its obvious that transgenders and homosexuals are easily banned in jwdom because the people in question were clearly born with their respective sex organs.. however.

what about intersex people aka hermaphrodites?

LisaRose

There is also a condition where a person is genetically male, but appears female at birth, due a genetic defect that caused the genitalia not to develop. If not caught by the doctor the child is assumed to be female, however often the child does not feel like a female, especially as they get older, and will never develop into a woman. What would they expect the person to do?

In another famous case from many years ago, the penis of a boy was inadvertently lost due to a medical error. They mistakenly thought the best thing to do was to raise him as a girl. Unfortunately the child never adapted to being a girl, because not having a penis does not actually make you a woman, the child's identity was male no matter how much therapy and counseling he received. Gender identity ids far more nuanced the the existence of a penis or not.

It's a problem for a religion that sees things as black and white, because nature isn't always so black and white.

114

Evidence for a Young Earth

by Perry in

for additional information:.

LisaRose

51

Help needed: transgender people and other unclear topics

by TeaBiscuit in

first of all, i am not quite sure whether this is the right place to ask my questions.

if this is not really appropriate, please tell me in advance, but i really did not know who to turn to, so i thought why not ask the internet... now, i know many of you are apostates and i'm not really looking for "leave it all behind you" answers, but really for experiences, thoughts and ideas... as well as maybe some verses if you can think of any.. anyway, first things first.

since this is very anonymous and i'd like to keep it that way, i will not give you my name, but still, i think some background info might be helpful.

LisaRose

It was my understanding that any individual who was not living as the sex they were assigned at birth would have to change back before they could be baptized. I am assuming that to change your sex would be considered a disfellowshipping offense. I doubt many people would do that just to get baptized, but you never know.

Personally I think it should be left up to the individual, gender identity disorder is now recognized as a legitimate problem by the medical community. It is not something people choose to do on a whim, or because they are confused or have mental issues. There are various things that happen in the development of a baby that causes gender identity to form, sometimes things go wrong and the child is born with a gender identity that just doesn't match their outside genitalia.

The medical community treats this as a medical condition, and letting the person choose to live as the sex they feel they are seems to work. It's no small undertaking, but it can be done. Treating it as a moral issue, as the Watchtower does, is like blaming a diabetic for taking insulin. They are causing needless suffering to JWs who are born transgender. Imagine losing your family and friends because you have a medical condition and choose to get it resolved, it seems cruel.