So--- you are not a "DIVIDED HOUSEHOLD", Besty?
all the best!
Maeve
humbled
JoinedPosts by humbled
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13
Besty + Sweet Pea = Its A Family Affair
by besty inwhat a few days!
this time last week i was not even considering the big chat with sweet pea.
seven days on and:.
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65
The yuk factor and others
by jgnat inwill you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
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humbled
" UN-BELIEVER "
is the cult title for a non-JW spouse. It is emotionally destructive.
That raw descriptor referred to my husband and though I would not call him that to his face, he heard himself called that from the platform at a Circuit Assembly in Iowa where my newly-baptized 14 year-old daughter gave one of those 3-minute "experiences". Being back in Arkansas at the time,I was unable to attend.
You know the kind of part it was--It was intended to be an inspirational example of the adversity young witnesses triumph over in "divided households(tm)" to serve Jehovah.
My poor husband. He had gone to Fort Dodge on the week-end to support this single one of all his children who had continued going to meetings with me in spite of the household trend toward resistence. Sat through the interminable boredom of it all and was hit with this.
I heard about it immediately. His anger was easier to deal with than the pain. And this man was pained.
In spite of my own efforts to mitigate the harshest aspects of the Armegeddon teaching of the Society both in my home and without, he told me that the full implications of JW theology was not lost on him. He could see the poison and he could feel it.
These years out I can say he was right. Dead right
I feel for you, Jgnat. To get that mindset out, root and bough, is hard. And it does affect feelings between spouses--unless you are in a strictly utilitarian arrangement like roommates sharing rent.
The Society talks of divided households? They use a scripture to justify what they do, but they are not kind and do not care about the wrongs they commit.
The family had a rough go through the Witnesses. (He and I may have had a rough go anyway). But, honestly, most the time when he was angry, he was really just hurt, badly hurt. Maybe he felt like in a way, he --not I--was the one kissing a corpse.
Maeve
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65
The yuk factor and others
by jgnat inwill you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
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humbled
"The Paradox Called Gay Republicans" is an interesting read, Great Teacher.
I was raised by a conservative Republican father. I actually am grossed-out by blood pudding. Yet I deal much with blood when I butcher meat.
I have over-come a fairly low threshhold for disgust through necessity. I submit that all of us will avoid the unpleasant when we can. I know I do.
However.
Everyone knows that sometimes shit happens. It's not like anyone embraces it or likes it.
It's only this: when shit happens, some of us who would like to walk away---well, we can't. So we have learned to get along with it somehow. It usually involves gagging, avoidance and finally looking at it square, closely and somewhat philosophically. It's not about being brilliant or being brave.
We just learn to deal with it.
I believe we can think. We can get a hold of our emotions. We can change our feelings if need be--even about things that are yukky.
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65
The yuk factor and others
by jgnat inwill you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
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humbled
I am wary of a judgements that can't discern between what is apparently clean and what is apparently dirty:
When people believe that it is cleaner to excrete every imaginable toxin, pathogen and chemical into the water supply via flush toilets (then drink and bath in what can only be partially removed) think an outhouse is a laughable option to a basic human problem.
Sparkling porcelain is only a problem deferred.
When people believe that the best care for delivering a baby is found in a hospital amongst stainless steel and staph germs they are abhorred by a woman baking her birthing sheets and baby clothes in the oven before birthing at home with intelligent oversight of a midwife.
The sparkling hospital may send you home with a bundle of trouble not just a bundle of joy.
But the Yuk factor keeps us from thinking very deeply about such things.
Home butchering is a dirty work but so is commercial butchering. In both instances animals loose their life. If a person is considerate of the animal(I grant you, this is a delicate part) and clean--which is better? For the animal, I assure you it is better.
I submit, much of the yuk factor is to do with conditioning. I am NOT condemning modern plumbing,hospitals and their role in obstetrics nor the need for large scale meat factories.
However,if just because a person who takes care of their own bathroom, birthing and butchering and are obviously involved to a high degree in Yuk Factors, this does not make them any dirtier ultimately than the person who doesn't.
I'm just saying that intelligent people choose to live both ways.
We need to be careful to pick the yuk out of our own eye before picking the "Yuk" out of our brother's.
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Sorry---it took so long to write this the thread probably went in another direction.. I'll catch up
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51
If You Got a Call or Visit From The Elders How Would You Deal With Them?
by minimus injust curious..
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humbled
What would I do?
I would invite them in.
I would ask them what their business was with me. Also did they even know why I was no longer a JW?
If they knew what had gone on between me, Brooklyn and the local brothers, then I would ask what made them imagine I believed a word they said to me about faith in God?
Minimus, they will never call on me.
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Religion VS Atheism and the decline of ethics and morals
by EndofMysteries inbeing back in college after leaving the borg, one of the required classes for a degree at my college is ethics.
after learning a few things, i am curious where morality and ethics is heading for the future of humanity.
i wish i could find the source again, but several weeks ago i recalled reading a transcript of a very old document that talked about when christianity was being spread in europe, it brought civility and community.
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humbled
Actually the removal of formal/traditional religion could herald an improvement in human relations.
When people get "saved"--baptism effectly does this for Catholics and also for fundamentalist protestants as well--they are immunized against their personal moral and ethical failings.
But children will learn what a caring parent teaches and models. The discussion of why the golden rule is a ubiquitous teaching is the ground for hope.
Do children learn this in church?
Listen to Billie Holliday's Strange Fruit in a past post. That fruit grew in the churchyards of the South.
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51
If You Got a Call or Visit From The Elders How Would You Deal With Them?
by minimus injust curious..
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humbled
I would love for them to call. But they don't dare.
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Interview with an apostate: Bruja-del-Sol
by Bruja-del-Sol intell us a little about yourself and your family.. im a 45 year old female.
married age 18 to another jw (pos son), became the mother of two wonderful children, girl and boy (now adults), divorced and dfd when i was 33 years old and since 2008 married to my first love who used to be my classmate when i was 16 (but got kicked out of my life by my dad b/c he wasnt a jw).. were you a born in or a convert?.
my grandmother from fathers side, my parents, 2 of my 3 sisters and their husbands (one is an elder) and kids, my brother and his wife and children, and the wifes of my two uncles are all still jw (uncles both have faded, but their cult personas are still intact, unfortunately).
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humbled
I love your clear descriptions of how, what and why you did things. It was heart-breaking to hear how your dear old sister was let down by the "Friends".
I wrote to an old pioneer sister who is 80 now. I love her so much! She is too much a JW to write me back. But even before I left she felt let down, lonesome. She lived in Berlin during WWII and saw too much bad things. She converted in her 30s in the U.S. after marrying an American.
I make a point to drive past her house and saw her once. She is crippled up and so old....
Perhaps your basic human warmth kept you from the greatest poison of the cult....the suppression of free-flowing love.
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So which religion IS actually correct?
by punkofnice ini read plenty of threads here.. what amazes me is how each 'theist/believer' is totally convinced that their way/cult is the correct one.
even xtians are not in agreement over doctrine.. ok. so i've heard the excuse that it's the devil's fault..............but come on.............what a cop out.. is god so incapable of giving a consistant message of which is the true way?.
i'd tend to think god doesn't exist and it's just the thoughts of deluded people with deluded ideas.............otherwise the real truth would be obvious.. god is really powerless if it/she/they/it have to rely on the game of chinese whispers..
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humbled
It seems simple to me now,which church/religion is the right one--
So all these churches have different doctines(or else there wouldn't be a different sign nailed over every door, right?).So the question for me is this:Does god care or not which church is giving out the right story.
If he cares, then he's done a bad job of clearing up the confusion.
If he doesn't care----well then, he doesn't care.
And neither do I.
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65
The yuk factor and others
by jgnat inwill you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
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humbled
The words used to stigmatize a person or a food are always associated with YUK language. For the very young or unsophistocated words like "nasty" ,"filthy", "dirty" or simply "YUK" conveys enough disgust to teach us to reject AUTOMATICALLY any person or thing thus described.
Older and wiserwe use words like "contaminate", "poison", "adulterate","pollute", to proscribe by generating a sense of revulsion.
All these terms discourage the hearer from thinking about WHY.
Why? why is something dangerous, nasty, evil? To label a thing or a person by first tainting its existence makes all further descriptions of it fall under disrepute---even if the actual factors involved are neutral or even comparable to accepted standards.
We cast things, customs, people in this manner until we feel guilty if we even give them a fair trial. If we even say "hold on for a minute--let's think about this---" TO OURSELVES, we feel separated from whatever community we are a part of.
The film "To Kill a Mockingbird" was of course the dramatization of what occurs when a man attempt to give a fair defense of a black man in a southern U.S. town in the 1930-40s. Trying to get people to THINK past their conditioning was the challenge.
The yuk factor trumps fair reasoning for lots of people.