I don't know that I have a favorite, but I do like the following quote by Robert Ardrey: "But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses."
veradico
JoinedPosts by veradico
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54
Your Favorite Poem or Saying
by compound complex indear friends,.
my favorite poem is not in vain by emily dickinson:.
if i can stop one heart from breaking,.
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UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (helping JWs see)
by apocalypse ini am an "active" jw.
i serve.
give talks.
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veradico
When I still attended, I tried to do what you are talking about. Every answer I gave, I pushed things to the very limit of what is allowed. Gradually, they called on me less and less, but I persisted. People in the Hall would notice if I were completely ignored, so they had to let me talk every once in a while. In my public talks, I did not base things on the Society's material, but what I said was not exactly forbidden. And the neat thing was that real conversations developed after the meetings. People in the hall would come up to me and start expressing their thoughts about controversial subjects. "I was thinking about abortion. It's wrong. I know it's wrong. But I'm wondering why it's never explicitly condemned in the Bible, since people in ancient times did perform abortions with herbs and things. Why do we have to use 'biblical reasoning' to determine what Jehovah feels about this matter? Why is the Bible itself silent?" Another Witness said, "We have to stick with it. They are like scared parents who are making rules that are too strict out of their concern for us. You young ones will be the next generation. You'll change things." I said, "But the difference is that we are ADULTS who are being infantilized. And they don't promote the kinds of people who would generate postive change. They only want people who will submit." He did not disagree. I think it can be done. It just came to a point where I wanted to have my own life. I could not spend any more time in that world.
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Your opinion: Are those raised as Witnesses more likely to end up godless?
by under_believer inwas thinking about this the other day and wanted to get your (yes: your) opinion.
i find myself slipping farther and farther down the agnostic scale in my thinking--it's possible that i'll end up an atheist.
my suspicion is that because i was raised being taught that all other religions are false, that i came to the conclusion that if the witnesses don't have "the truth" then nobody does.
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veradico
I definitely relate to what you’re saying. As a Witness, I was free to analyze and criticize other religions as long as I focused on their flaws, and, once I made the first steps toward freedom, I found that being a JW had in many ways trained me to start analyzing the JW religion. However, as I stopped believing the Watchtower, their condemnatory perspective on other faiths and traditions was one of the first things I questioned. I found that Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, and various philosophies all have wonderful, beautiful, and useful insights. But, as I learn more about religions and philosophies, I find them all both more enjoyable and less believable, in the sense of compelling my absolute assent. Instead of coming to the conclusion that objective and universal moral laws, incorporeal beings, or even I myself exist, I tend to view all normative claims as conventional and useful, spirits as products of the imagination, and my sense of self as a emergent byproduct of the cognitive system in my brain. Of course, I can’t live as an absolute skeptic, so if I feel like behaving as if God exists (for example, when I read a beautiful devotional poem, see an impressive cathedral, or hear an inspirational hymn), that’s how I behave. I don’t think we can ever know anything with absolute certainty, but even this conviction is not certain enough to be a belief. Some people claim to really know that God exists. Maybe they’re correct.
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Nemesis raised Jehovah's Witnesses now artists
by Dogpatch injust saw this on google search on jehovah's witnesses:.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/10/11/entertainment/e092638d11.dtl.
they were raised jehovah's witnesses in montana's big sky country.
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veradico
I think this is great. I wish I had known of a group like Nemesis Rising when I was growing up as a gay JW.
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the apocalyptic wrath of Jehovah
by veradico inhas anyone here ever read donald hall's "prophecy," from the one day: a poem in three parts?
it gives deuteronomy chapter 28 a run for its money.
its disturbing vision is sure to thrill those dubs whose only christmas wish (if they could have such a pagan thing) would be for everyone else to just die already.
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veradico
Has anyone here ever read Donald Hall's "Prophecy," from The One Day: A Poem In Three Parts? It gives Deuteronomy chapter 28 a run for its money. Its disturbing vision is sure to thrill those dubs whose only Christmas wish (if they could have such a pagan thing) would be for everyone else to just die already. And it makes the perfect tribute to that strange deity, Jehovah, that manly person of war who drowned to death an entire world for the ironic sin of being too violent.
Where shopping malls
spread plywood and plaster out, and roadhouses
serve steak and potatoskins beside Alaska king crab;
where trianguar flags proclaim tribes of identical campers;
where airplanes nose to tail exhale kerosene,
weeds and ashes will drowse in continual twilight.
I reject the old house and the new car; I reject
Tory and Whig together; I reject the argument
that modesty of ambition is sensible because the bigger
they are the harder they fall; I reject Waterford;
I reject the five and dime; I reject Romulus and Remus;
I reject Martha's Vineyard and the slamdunk contest;
I reject leaded panes; I reject the appointment made
at the tennis net or on the seventeenth green; I reject
the Professional Bowlers Tour; I reject matchboxes;
I reject purple bathrooms with purple soap in them.
Men who lie awake worrying about taxes, vomiting
at dawn, whose hands shake as they administer Valium, --
skin will peel from the meat of their thighs.
Armies that march all day with elephants past pyramids
and roll pulling missiles past generals weary of saluting
and past president-emperors splendid in cloth-of-gold, --
soft rumps of armies will sissipate in rain. Where square
miles of corn waver in Minnesota, where tobacco ripens
in Carolina and apples in New Hampshire, where wheat
turns Kansas green, where pulpmills stink in Oregon, --
dust will blow in the darkness and cactus die
before it flowers. Where skiers wait for chairlifts,
wearing money, low raspberries will part rib bones.
Where the drive-in church raises a chromium cross,
dandelions and milkweed will straggle through blacktop.
I will strike from the ocean with waves afire;
I will strike from the hill with rainclouds of lava;
I will strike from darkened air
with melanoma in the shape of decorative hexagonals.
I will strike down embezzlers and eaters of snails.
I reject Japanese smoked oysters, potted chrysanthemums
allowed to die, Tupperware parties, Ronald McDonald,
Kaposi's sarcoma, the Taj Mahal, Holsteins wearing
electronic necklaces, the Algonquin, Tunisian aqueducts,
Phi Beta Kappa keys, the Hyatt Embarcadero, carpenters
jogging on the median, and betrayal that engorges
the corrupt heart longing for criminal surrender.
I reject shadows in the corner of the atrium
where Phyllis or Phoebe speaks with Billy or Marc
who says that afternoons are best although not reliable.
Your children will wander looting the shopping malls
for forty years, suffering for your idleness,
until the last dwarf body rots in a parking lot.
I will strike down lobbies and restaurants in motels
carpeted with shaggy petrochemicals
from Maine to Hilton Head, from Skagit to Tucson.
I will strike down hang gliders, wiry adventurous boys;
their thigh bones will snap, their brains
slide from their skulls. I will strike down
families cooking wildboar in New Mexico backyards.
Then landscape will clutter with incapable machinery,
acres of vacant airplanes and schoolbuses, ploughs
with seedlings sprouting and turning brown through colters.
Unlettered dwarves will burrow for warmth and shelter
in the caves of dynamos and Plymouths, dying
of old age at seventeen. Tribes wandering
in the wilderness of their ignorant desolation,
who suffer from your idleness, will burn your illuminated
missals to warm their rickety bodies.
Terrorists assemble plutonium because you are idle
and industrious. The whip-poor-will shrivels
and the pickerel chokes under the government of self-love.
Vacancy burns air so that you strangle without oxygen
like rats in a biologist's bell jar. The living god sharpens
the scythe of my prophecy to strike down red poppies
and blue cornflowers. When priests and policemen
strike my body's match, Jehovah will flame out;
Jehovah will suck air from the vents of bombshelters.
Therefore let the Buick swell until it explodes;
therefore let anorexia starve and bulimia engorge.
When Elzira leaves the house wearing her tennis dress
and drives her black Porsche to meet Abraham,
quarrels, returns to husband and children, and sobs
asleep, drunk, unable to choose among them, --
lawns and carpets will turn into tar together
with lovers, husbands, and children.
Fat will boil in the sacs of children's clear skin.
I will strike down the nations, astronauts and judges;
I will strike down Babylon, I will strike acrobats,
I will strke algae and the white birches.
Because professors of law teach ethics in dumbshow,
let the colonel become president; because chief executive
officers and commissars collect down for pillows,
let the injustice of cities burn city and suburb;
let the countryside burn; let the pineforests of Maine
explode like a kitchenmatch and the Book of Kells turn
ash in a microsecond; let oxen and athletes
flash into grease: -- I return to Appalachian rocks;
I shall eat bread; I shall prophesy through millennia
of Jehovah's day until the sky reddens over cities:
Then houses will burn, even houses of alabaster;
the sky will disappear like a scroll rolled up
and hidden in a cave from the industries of idleness.
Mountains will erupt and vanish, becoming deserts,
and the sea wash over the sea's lost islands
and the earth split open like a corpse's gassy
stomach and the sun turn as black as a widow's skirt
and the full moon grow red with blood swollen inside it
and stars fall from the sky like wind-blown apples, --
while Babylon's managers burn in the rage of the Lamb. [emphasis added] -
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The JW phrase I most despise is...
by exwitless in"need greaters" ugh!!
i hate that phrase and i always have.
we knew a jw couple who applied every year to bethel and giliad until the age cut-off (age 35 or 40?).
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veradico
Even though "the end must be close," I walked on the "spiritual" "road leading off into destruction" because I listened to "higher criticism" and "worldly association." My "independent spirit" led to a "fault finding attitude," and I lost my "appreciation" for the "spiritual food" with its "spiritual" wine left on the "spiritual" dregs, "spiritually" filtered by God's "spirit-directed organization" of "spirit-appointed" "overseers." The "spirit of the world" finally won, and I left the John-Jeremiah-Ezekiel-Daniel-and-any-other-prophet-we-can-think-of-while-claiming-not-to-be-false-prophets-class.
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Do the dubs have a Judaic feel about them?
by greendawn indid or do you ever feel that the whole jw ambience is very judaic in nature and not at all authentically christian?
to me the one thing that really does it is the perception of god as a lord and not as a father as is the case in the old testament.
the whole point of baptism and the anointing of the spirit is to effect that adoption by god yet virtually all dubs deny this anointing ergo god remains to them a lord and a very harsh one at that.
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veradico
They have the same delight in law-making, or, rather, law-explaining that the Pharisees had. It can easily be stereotyped by those who are hurt by the practice, but it can come from a good place. The Pharisees were not all bad. They just fell into the dangerous and hurtful mistake of choosing abstractions over reality, of choosing law over life. The real world does not conform to proscriptive laws. Laws are, at best, reasonably correct descriptions of how reality happens to work. Ethical "laws" are more dangerous. They don't talk about how humans do behave; they tell humans how they ought to behave. Sometimes they are grounded in the reality of human nature and really point to healthy ways humans can conduct their lives. But those who become enchanted by the beauties and benefits of law and comfored by its presence and regularity can forget the real human condition. Sometimes the laws do not correspond to what we are and, instead of helping us realize our potential, stifle us.
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KH restoration in New Orleans
by lostlantern ini just received this from a family member, i was wondering if anyone has any videos that depict bapstists, catholics or any other religion helping out with volunteers?
i would love to respond with my own video that shows jw's are not alone in caring for others when disaster strikes.
what other group of people can do this?
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veradico
The use of the song about the resurrection in the background while the KH was "resurrected" is an interesting touch. If it was sincere, I suppose I just can't relate to the mind who made it, but it's certainly dramatic. If it was a cynical attempt to recruit sensitive young people, the creator learned his lessons well from the folks at the Watchtower.
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Watchtower humility and The Gitanjali of Tagore
by veradico ini was thinking about how watchtower publications talk so much about humility, but really they are designed to humiliate.
we are instructed to distrust our hearts, think of ourselves as sinners, and look to the society for direction and salvation.
the publications spend so much time condemning independent thinking, higher education, higher criticism, the pleasures of life, the diversity of human expression, and the general messiness and complexity of life that the poor people like many in my family who are still trapped are consumed by a fear of getting their white robes (washed in the blood of the lamb) messy in the dirt of the world.
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veradico
I was thinking about how Watchtower publications talk so much about humility, but really they are designed to humiliate. We are instructed to distrust our hearts, think of ourselves as sinners, and look to the Society for direction and salvation. The publications spend so much time condemning independent thinking, higher education, higher criticism, the pleasures of life, the diversity of human expression, and the general messiness and complexity of life that the poor people like many in my family who are still trapped are consumed by a fear of getting their white robes (washed in the blood of the Lamb) messy in the dirt of the world. They want to be saved from the very world that could be their Paradise. Anyway, I wish they could read Tagore's Gitanjali. I'll paste part of it below. If anyone wants to read more, just visit http://www.eldritchpress.org/rt/git.htm.
My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers.
My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.
The child who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step.
In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move.
Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keeps one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.
O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders! O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!
Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all, and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath. It is unholy -- take not thy gifts through its unclean hands. Accept only what is offered by sacred love.
Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where live the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in the clothes of the humble among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost.
My heart can never find its way to where thou keepest company with the companionless among the poorest, the lowliest, and the lost.
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.
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how many atheist and agnostics on this site
by dannygwalsh inhi everyone just a question to satisfy my curiosity , and if you are a non believer are you happier for being so
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veradico
I pray to you, O God who is not. I pray into the silence most dreadful that you would speak, O unseen Lord of Light. How often have the children of humanity hurled their hopes into your vast and terrible emptiness, longing only to hear something, even the echo of their loneliness? The children of Poverty, Poverty so palpably real, beg at your door. O vain hope of love, they cry to you, who they call Love, they, the children hated for their strange and unnatural longings, for their lovers either too foreign or too similar. How appropriate that you, O Void, create division, that you who are empty create the empty space between Good and Evil, between faiths and tongues and nations. Would that you were, O you who are not. Would that you could tell me the meaning that justifies all the inexcusable deeds done in your holy name. Even if this small thing lies beyond the impotent power of your omnipotence, you could at least, O ideal before whom reality shatters, you could at least announce your non-existence. Then, O fabled Prince of Peace, there could be peace. But until that day comes, that day of cleansing fire and expiation, we will live in your hell and consume ourselves in the shuddering fevers of your holy wars. Raise up a prophet, O God, to announce your non-will, to tell forth the tidings of your absence. Lo! He comes on a white horse. In his right hand, he holds a rod for breaking. May he shatter the empty idols I have fashioned after your likeness, the holy words and sacred signs that mark out the shape of the shadow of my dreams. May I be strong enough, Lord, to not feel I need your strength. But I will say of your prophet, “Here is my God, O children of the free. My God has come to give me freedom from the lies of my forefathers.” The rod for smashing will be the holy symbol of righteous judgment. And you will laugh. You will laugh in your empty, hollow way. The joke of course is that I don’t exist either. Just as when I reach for you I find nothing but emptiness heavier than stone, when I look for myself I find merely the play of shadows and light on the surface of consciousness. If there is any content to the names and forms I ascribe to you in moments of rapture and anguish, perhaps you, O God who is not, emerge somehow, like Venus, from the frothing, creative chaos of what is.