Posts by tula

All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness.--Han Suyin
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.--Thomas Browne
Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.--Alice Koller
Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life's greatest tests alone.--Agnes Macphail
I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.--Peter Hoeg (Smilla's Sense of Snow)
I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.--Brenda Ueland
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.--Albert Einstein
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.--Henry David Thoreau
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.--Pearl S. Buck
Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.--Jeanne Marie Laskas
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking . . . in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.--Franz Kafka
It is well to be alone. It fertilizes the creative impulse.--Max Nordau
Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone, and the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.--Paul Johannes Tillich
Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.--Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed.--Indra Devi
One must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.--Meister Eckhart
Only in quiet waters do thing mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.--Hans Margolius
Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.--Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)
The person who has not learned to be happy and content while completely alone for an hour a day, or a week has missed life's greatest serenity.--H. Clay Tate (Building a Better Home Town)
Solitude can be frightening because it invites us to meet a stranger we think we may not want to know--ourselves.--Melvyn Kinder
Solitude gives birth to the original in us.--Thomas Mann
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.--James Russell Lowell
...solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition...--Amelia Barr
Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.--May Sarton
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone.--Thomas De Quincey
There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.--Sidonie Gabrielle Colette (Earthly Paradise)
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare.--Kenko Yoshida
Solitude, if rightly used, becomes not only a privilege but a necessity. Only a superficial soul fears to fraternize with itself.--Alice H. Rice
Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.--Abraham Joshua Heschel
Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines.--Paul Brunton
Solitude is the human condition in which I keep myself company. Loneliness comes about when I am alone without being able to split up into the two-in-one, without being able to keep myself company.--Hannah Arendt
Solitude is the place of purification.--Martin Buber (I and Thou, 3)
Talents are best nurtured in solitude: character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.--Goethe
There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried within. More inaccessible than the ice cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea: the solitude of self.--Elizabeth Cady Stanton
True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.--William Penn
We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.--Philip Gilbert Hamerton (The Intellectual Life)
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature--trees, flowers, grass--grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...we need silence to be able to touch souls.--Mother Teresa
What a lovely surprise to discover how unlonely being alone can be.--Ellen Burstyn
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness", the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.--Thomas Merton
When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death--ourselves.--Eda LeShan
Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.--Barbara De Angelis
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with.--Wayne Dyer

19

Died faithful so she has a chance for a resurrection --- Huh?

by mimimimi in

jw
friends

yesterday at the grocery store, i ran into a sister from the hall.

i have not attended meetings now for 15 to 16 months, but most people there think my health has been really bad and that is why i don't go any more.

anyway, i asked her how her mother was and she told me her mother passed away in july at the age of 95. she then said that her mother died faithful, so she would have a chance for a resurrection.

tula

can anyone pinpoint WHEN this "teaching" of selective resurrection came about?

Has it ever been stated in publication or is it one of those "word of mouth" teachings so later wbts can say..."oh, the evil slave class started that rumor".

54

nine pages of BS from October AWAKE

by purplesofa in

i hope that some of you lurkers out here really take a look at some of the thread in this section of the board.

this awake magazine says not one thing about how families are asked to trust their elders and how these very elders were and are abusing their children.

it mentions nothing about watching out for these trusted men in the congregations.............oh it brings out the internet, other family members and fathers and males in particular.. it will tell you how much your child needs to do to prevent something like this from happening.

tula

Purps,

can you post any links to any newspaper articles that expose settlements in wtbs concerning the child abuse? Or any newspapers articles at all that discuss the issue with wbts specifically mentioned? Thanks.

22

40 Years Ago Today.....

by Sunspot in

i was putting the finishing touches on my wedding plans for tomorrow!

we were married by a j.p. in a country home with a beatiful braided rug, rustic furniture and a big fireplace.

we couldn't afford a honeymoon .

tula

From The Times September 21, 2007

How to cure seven-year itch? Limit marriage to seven years

Roger Boyes in Berlin

Marilyn Monroe would have approved. The Seven Year Itch, argues Germany’s most glamorous politician, could be cured by making marriage vows valid for only seven years, thus legislating away what is regarded as the most unstable phase of a relationship.

The proposal to turn marriage into a kind of time-share arrangement has shocked Germany. It comes from Gabriele Pauli, who is running to become head of the Bavarian conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party.

“Many marriages survive only because people think it gives them security,” Ms Pauli told a news conference in Munich. “But only love should count.”

Her idea would apply only to civil marriages. Vows sworn on the altar, “till death us do part”, would not be amended. Civil marriages would be regarded as a limited seven-year contract. “After that initial period each partner would have to say ‘yes’ again in order to prolong the marriage,” she said. “If they do, there is no reason why marriage should not end up as a lifelong partnership, but in the meantime we will have saved the financial and emotional cost of many divorces.”

The Seven Year Itch - the supposed urge to stray into adultery – was a fixture of advice columns long before Billy Wilder made his 1955 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe as the blonde temptress of a bored husband. The subject matter was deemed so sensitive by Hollywood that the extramarital romance was played out only in the head of the protagonist, acted by Tom Ewell.

Since then agony aunts have also identified the Two Year Bloat (when complacent husbands start to put on weight), the Fourth Year Slip (when office co-workers start to look more attractive than one’s partner) and any year after the birth of a child as being as perilous to marriage as the seven-year restlessness.

Johann Reisel, head of Catholic marriage counselling in Bavaria, said: “It sounds to me like renewing a mobile phone contract,” he said. “This is just a random number; statistics show that marriages tend to last either three or four years, or significantly longer than seven years.”

Although conventional wisdom is that every third marriage in Germany ends in divorce, the reality is worse. By one calculation, 43 per cent of marriages in western Germany (including Bavaria) end in divorce. In 1970, only 15 per cent ended this way.

Catholic bishops called yesterday for Ms Pauli to be thrown out of the CSU. So too did Edmund Stoiber, who is head of the party and prime minister of Bavaria until next month. Mr Stoiber is standing down from both posts after a campaign by Ms Pauli. Her rivals have seized on her comments as evidence that she is unfit for office.

Ms Pauli is determined to shake up the party, which has ruled Bavaria for the best part of six decades. She posed for a magazine as a dominatrix, and is often photographed on her motorbike.

She has been married twice. Her second marriage ended in divorce last February. It lasted seven years.

Congrats to you both. I think you should share your ideas and secrets of how you have been able to make 40 years.

28

you are the evil slave class!

by tula in

jw
friends

well, that's where this idiot tells my friend i am getting my information.

so when did "apostates" rate a whole class of their own?

i have never heard about this before.. this idiot is a jw wannabe.

tula

I don't think you all are grasping this.

This person is NOT capable of an intelligent conversation.

He is uneducated, actually illiterate, and I doubt he has much reading skill. So reading the actual Bible verse will not mean anything because he is one of those who NEEDS the FDS to interpret it to him.

His ears do not work. His mouth is uncontrollable.

He cannot reason. He is a parrot. He will even answer with phrases that have nothing to do with what you are discussing.

For some reason my friend likes this person and has known him for years. So I do not want to cause offense.

I just want to be able to make a simple statement that will make him realize the foolishness of wts and what he's saying. He seems so superstitious.

When he "quotes" scripture...it reminds me of Bullwinkle and the "Fractured Fairy Tales" segment.

The spoon idea is good, Shawn. But this person could not follow a lengthy conversation with any depth.

My problem is I do not like him trying to influence my friend with this crap or trying to convince my friend that I am trying to drag him onto the devils side.

I would like to say something that will make him feel trapped by his own words or his own actions.

28

you are the evil slave class!

by tula in

jw
friends

well, that's where this idiot tells my friend i am getting my information.

so when did "apostates" rate a whole class of their own?

i have never heard about this before.. this idiot is a jw wannabe.

tula

dont shoot him down play dumb and make him WORK....oompa

oompa...I know that would be good advice in most cases. But I don't think it would work here. This idiot talks so fast that he doesnt even make sense. When talking about ESC he suddenly starts talking about "all the apostles "running away" except for two of them because Jesus said eat my body and drink my blood and the apostles didn't get it---except for 2 that understood what he meant." I think I just relayed it almost exactly the way he said it. It sounded like a cannabilistic vampire orgy when it comes out of his mouth. This person is just insane. I am concerned about his interference with my friend at this point. I would like to isolate my friend from him, but right now its not possible because he is helping him with certain things for the next few weeks.

oompa, can I make you work? My brain is burned out. Give me a text to work with. The idiot has had many many years for this stuff to become ingrained...attends every meeting and probably amens every word. He would be one, but he doesnt qualify.

This idiot does not ever stop to think or choose his words...so I don't think a conversation of any intelligence would be productive.

play dumb

this would be like dumb and dumber. I just dont think I have the patience anymore. This person is not worth the effort.

I just need one good phrase to make him shut up and leave my friend alone without causing hardship between everyone. I would just like to give him enough rope so that he can hang himself. Know what I mean?

28

you are the evil slave class!

by tula in

jw
friends

well, that's where this idiot tells my friend i am getting my information.

so when did "apostates" rate a whole class of their own?

i have never heard about this before.. this idiot is a jw wannabe.

tula

Say the JWs are the Evil False Prophet Class. Their history of false Armageddon dates is easily documented in their own literature.

I tried something like that. He said to my friend it was the evil slave class that started all that about false prophecies. Says they "came into being after 1975 and it was the ESC that said wtbs made those predicitions when the wbts did not."

This person is very very ignorant...no education...I have all ideas that his reading skills are very minimal and he probably just repeats what he thinks they are talking about...... however, my friend thinks he is kind hearted. I dont know. He is absolutely beligerant when he talks religion.

Seriously, there is no intellect here. I doubt he could read anything in the Bible because he is illiterate, so therefore, he does depend on the wbts/FDS to tell him what the bible says. To him it is the great light.

My friend tried to share with him his new-found info about UN. The idiot tried to tell him that the evil slave class has put that on internet. I laughed in his face. Oh, so now the UN is the evil slave class.... So he said the evil slave class has falsified that info. I told my friend "well, you saw for yourself it was the official UN website."

The idiot just went on and on. So finally I told my friend, well, if it wasn't true the wbts could sue the UN for putting out false info. So the idiot says "no, wbts does not get involved in politics and lawsuits."

So people, you see what I am dealing with here. Utter ignorance and stupidity.

Give me something I can say to shut his mouth and make him leave with his tail between his legs.

28

you are the evil slave class!

by tula in

jw
friends

well, that's where this idiot tells my friend i am getting my information.

so when did "apostates" rate a whole class of their own?

i have never heard about this before.. this idiot is a jw wannabe.

tula

well, that's where this idiot tells my friend I am getting my information.

So when did "apostates" rate a whole class of their own? I have never heard about this before.

This idiot is a JW wannabe. Also a smoker. What can I say to shut his a$$ up? He is constantly babbling crap.

Before, I just walked away, but that leaves him feeling like he's won.

Also, can't be rude because he is friend to my friend.

Just need a very pointed few words that will hit him hard and shut him up. For good. I dont like him constantly stirring up my JW friend as I am dealing with my friend to show him the real truth. I don't want this idiot to have a leg to stand on. I want him to be ashamed of himself to the point he cant parrot this sh*** to my friend anymore. Something scriptural or a JW belief that shows him he's so far off the mark, he has no right to consider himself approved to even talk about it. Not unkind, but just blunt to the point...what you say doesn't count....you don't qualify kind of stuff. With some scripture to reinforce.

thanks.