the the worst thing, someone could call you at bethel, was a "jack".............. as in " that guy is a real jack, he doesn't work at all".
the other term not used very much anymore, was "pot licker" used basically the same way.there has been some bad things done at bethel.
you name it, someone has done it...........but the absolute worst possible thing, a bethelite could do is be a theft!
what great stories - you are the Kitty Kelley of the Watchtower society!
so nice to hear that these folks who are so different from "worldly" people, are actually just like them - one big hypocritical disorganized soap opera. I hope you put together all your memories in a book - what a great read it would be. You tell a good story - keep going.
scary stuff .
http://www.greetingcards.com/pickup?id=a222-a256-jk3h-ycr.
outaservice .
my goodness, politics brings out the nasty in people doesn't it? Especially Republicans, in my experience. Also, republicans never even consider any other party, my Republican friends always act as if someone who isn't republican just HAS to be a democrat. What if you're sick of all of them? I vote Libertarian every chance I get.
That said, isn't voting fun? JWs miss out on some really entertaining stuff by refusing to get involved. I love voting, have even voted for a Republican (Schwarzenegger). I am enjoying watching the two major parties make their moves - one side trots out Hillary, the other side trots out a few people, then the Dems come up with Barrack obama or whatever his name is, so interesting that with every possibility in the world of actually winning the election this time, the dems come up with two front runners that really polarize opinion. and then the republicans counter with Giuliani, great move! All the dems have come up with in response so far, at least as far as I have seen, is a tacky photo of Giuliani kissing his wife.
Not mis-spelling on purpose, and tired of capitalizing, so forgive the errors, please.
i have a dear, long time friend who left the org along with her spouse and teens, about three years ago.
last week, her father, who had always been a sort of jw, died.
he left his final wishes in writing that he did not want a "memorial service" upon his death.. her brother, who is an elder, has convinced her that they will be having one anyway - of course at the kh.
"My friend is just going to go along with it, rather than upset her brother. "
That is how abusive people get their way, one of their methods at least. They make the people around them afraid to upset them. And we enable them by not speaking our minds, and not taking any stand out of fear of "upsetting" them. Let them get upset, maybe they'll get tired of it eventually.
If your friend wants to honor her father's request, she can stay away from the service. She can't win, so she should do what she feels best and if other people want to get upset, let them. Nothing you can do about other people.
we often hear that we have to be postive in order to remain healthy.. are there more negative people than the jw's?
the end is close and just about everything is bad and from satan they say.. considering all this, is it healthy to be a jw?.
"It is very unhealthy to feel like you are never good enough and that everything in the world is totally falling apart."
True, and even now, 25 years later, I still have anxiety attacks. It's not healthy for anyone to be so negative, cynical and fearful. As the previous poster said, their world view isn't realistic, therefore they can't use the "gift of fear" in a healthy way. I remember having dreams about Armageddon - dreams where we were all at a big convention in San Diego, and when Armageddon started, everyone turned to watch me shrivel up like a leaf and die because of course I wasn't good enough to be in the new world.
Arghhhh - so glad to be out of that awful horrible organization - but the effects linger on. However, I have to say that I am much much happier now - so don't think of me as a JW victim, just the graduate of a JW boot camp.
i have 2 alias's.
i only use this one anymore but i started out with 2.. makes me wonder how many members jwd really has?.
does anyone else have multiple alias's?.
17 million visitors? or 17 million hits?
anyway, that's a lot of action. I don't always post, but look in now and then. Have only one name on this forum.
very interesting to see Geraldo Rivera, a real creep himself, call Howard K. Stern "Rasputin" and so interesting to watch Nancy Grace, a real horrible example of a blood sucking journalist, get all upset when a California attorney said that Anna Nicole Smith's little baby might be put in foster care. Nancy Grace says she can't believe he would say a thing like that. The attorney said someone has to change the little girl's diapers until a court decides who is responsible for her. Also really interesting to watch these "journalists" speculate very obviously about whether Stern murdered Anna Nicole Smith, or murdered her son.
The obvious answer doesn't sell television however. Poorly educated easily manipulated woman with drug and alcohol problems - she probably just accidently overdosed. Also, you can't forget the effect of yo-yo dieting, which is bad for your heart. So are all those drugs, illegal and legal. And she was sick recently, but the conspiracy cranks will have her right up there with Princess Diana as a victim of some bizarre plot.
i hope this finds everyone well.
i feel like i am doing something wrong but i really don't care anymore, i've had enough.
i am 4th generation, born 22 years ago and raised a witness and need out.
what no one has mentioned yet is that you will be far happier outside the JW organization than you ever were in it. You'll be in charge of your own life, making your own friends, deciding how you want to live, what matters to you and what doesn't matter. It is so great to have your own mind and run your own life, even if you screw it up.
What's the worst that could happen? Quit going to the KH, get involved in other more interesting activities, and when anyone asks you why, say in a pitying voice that you just have to be honest with yourself and you just plain don't believe any of it. Refuse to get involved in discussions, just smile and say "there's no point in talking about it, I'm not going to change my mind." Use the broken record technique, just keep smiling and repeating yourself. Let them get excited if they want to, run around in their little JW circles, call down curses on you and threaten you with the big A. It doesn't matter because it's all a lie, and you know it. If your family shuns you the best thing you can do for them is to be a happy well-adjusted individual who lives a satisfying life - they'll watch and compare, even if they talk the party line.
Garybuss - I feel the same way you do. I run my own business and occasionally a customer will, instead of just saying what he or she wants, start a conversation by saying "I don't want to sue you but..." Whenever anyone pulls that kind of crap on my, I jst tell them I don't respond well to threats and they need to talk to me a different way or we can meet in court. I'm really happy to have my lawyer talk to your lawyer. Most people back down if you call them on their crap. I am a real believer in calling people on their crap, in a pleasant tone of voice with a smile on my face. Piss me off, pay the consequences. That however doesn't have anything to do with this string of posts - just an aside.
I repeat, you'll be far happier when you take the steps to get out of the JW organization, and it's the kindest best thing you can do for your family too. I was the first to leave, and now both my sisters and their children are out too, although it took a few years.
as an elder, i knew a lot of things that happened in the congregation, including "secret sins".
what i also knew was that some persons were quite good at being sneaky----especially the teens.
years after my daughter stopped hanging around certain friends and she was in her 20's, she told me little juicy tidbits of what some of her best friends regularly got away with.
Nothing terrible, except for teenagers getting away with stuff and elders and ministerial servants who liked to caress a teenager's knee when no one was looking...I remember being appalled when I saw JWs at the beach drinking beer but I realized later that it isn't a sin, just me being a judgemental JW and rather puritanical.
roast chicken with a couple of lemons quartered and put inside along with a lot of garlic cloves. Brown rice, salad and a nice green veggie. Makes a very easy dinner.
Chicken pieces browned with garlic, lemon juice, rosemary, garnished with pine nuts and lemon slices, served with couscous (which has got to be the easiest thing on earth to prepare), a sort of Greek yogurt sauce with cilantro and mint, lemon juice and garlic, cucumbers and tomatoes.
But my standard party every year is Thanksgiving - have the same dozen or so people over every year and we have settled down to our favorite items: roast turkey, my stuffing recipe (very easy to do), colcannon instead of mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts, green salad, fresh vegetables (which I guess they call crudites), cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes with dried apricots and bourbon, gravy, home made dinner rolls, pecan pie and pumpkin pie.
Then one of our best friends does Christmas dinner - roast pork, red cabbage, endive and orange slices salad, drop biscuits, gravy, roast potatoes, leftover fruit cake and Christmas cookies for dessert with port.
I'm on a diet - probably not good to think about food, but ... oh well.
god forbid you would talk about the person at his funeral............what do most people get after living 70-80 years..........a 5-10 minutes eulogy....................the transition statment is "let me tell you about what fred really believed in".............................45 minutes later.....that way the specker can count his time.. as we know people in the organization are unimportant living or dead.
.
"Though most people would never think of attending a meeting of the Witnesses, no fewer than 185 attended the funeral, the highest attendance ever for a talk by Jehovah's witnesses."
Of course, they weren't attending a talk by JWs, they were attending a funeral hijacked by JWs. Smug, self-righteous, arrogant, uncaring. The last JW memorial I ever went to was when my mother died. People I had known my whole life, who in a normal world would have been glad to see me and would want to catch up and talk about my mother, gave me pointed looks and pointed comments about what a wonderful person my mother was, implying of course that I am an ungrateful serpent of a daughter. They didn't live with her, so they only knew the public face. She wasn't as awful as Nosferatu's mother, in fact not a bad person, just a mindless smug JW. So glad I don't have to deal with any of those awful people any more, no matter who dies, I'm not going to another funeral.
