GentlyFeral

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Posts by GentlyFeral

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  29

  How the JWs helped me

  by larc in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  all of us have had negative experiences as a result of leaving the witnesses, some much worse than others.

  many here, have expressed a bitterness and an anger over loosing so many "wasted" years.

  while these are natural feelings, i think there are several positives we can dwell on as well.

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  GentlyFeral

  I have a good friend who didn't leave until he was 40...

  This story sounds familiar. Are his initials M.H.? (Can't remember his name; he used to post on the old philia list.)

  I was forty when I left. I'm still overcoming the ignorance and pessimism about grown-up takin' care of business that the jaydubs fostered...and which was the principal reason I joined them, in retrospect. At 18, I knew I couldn't take care of myself and knew that the jaydubs would take care of me. I learned a lot of other bullshit from them, too, but that was the most damaging.

  Someone, in a recent post about testing religions, admitted she had a void in her heart. I have one too, and it isn't god-shaped at all. Rimbaud once complained that "those three Magi, the body, mind and soul, are immobile and mute"; I feel the same way. This particular combination of fear and immobility is fatal, and it trips me up every time I come close to doing anything important.

  I'm going to spend the next year or two working on it directly.

  GentlyFeral
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  53

  Two sex questions

  by Seeker4 in

  1. social
  2. relationships

  ok, have had enough to drink tonight so i will toss these two questions out.

  will discuss this a bit more tomorrow.. 1. how many of you had sex outside of your marriage after leaving the witnesses?

  provide whatever details about how and why that you're comfortable with.. 2. funny question: had a friend write me today that probably more jws per capita enjoyed oral sex the night they read it was a "conscience matter" than any other group in the us.

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  GentlyFeral

  SixofNine:
  

  are you still with your husband? If so, has the hetero side of your sex life waxed, waned, or stayed the same?

  Yep, we're still together -- like I said, Jehoover Hisself could not break us up. We've gotten even queerer, so we've drifted apart sexually...for now...who knows what the future holds? On the other hand, we're better friends than we've been for years.

  He's starting to come out of his shell, wrestling with old fears and suspicions, developing artistically and spiritually, and just generally opening up. I like to watch }:)

  GentlyFeral
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  53

  Two sex questions

  by Seeker4 in

  1. social
  2. relationships

  ok, have had enough to drink tonight so i will toss these two questions out.

  will discuss this a bit more tomorrow.. 1. how many of you had sex outside of your marriage after leaving the witnesses?

  provide whatever details about how and why that you're comfortable with.. 2. funny question: had a friend write me today that probably more jws per capita enjoyed oral sex the night they read it was a "conscience matter" than any other group in the us.

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  GentlyFeral

  Seeker4,

  This is the one that interests me:

  How many of you had sex outside of your marriage after leaving the Witnesses? Provide whatever details about how and why that you're comfortable with.

  Our marriage started opening up about a year after we DA'd and my husband realized that bisexuality was not going away. He got involved with a man we'd known for years, and somewhat to my own surprise, I thought it was cute. Of course it helped that he had already stuck with me during our religious breakdown; I knew that Jehoover Himself could not break us up, and He had tried!

  I started playing around with nice ladies about a year after that; a member of my Full Moon Circle told me she had two queen-size beds that I could choose from, and I took her up on it. We were together for about a year and a half. She, like me, was a Damn Cute Fat Chyck.

  Now before this relationship ended, I ran into a fascinating mind on a bi women's email list. Did my best to sweep her off her feet via email. It worked, and when she moved near me (for OTHER reasons), we hooked up. That one only lasted six months. She dumped me because I kept stepping all over her issues without realizing it. They were real issues, too, so I don't hold it against her. (But damn, she was great in bed.)

  About a year ago I put up a personals ad online. Last week, someone interesting and intelligent answered. We've exchanged some email and we're meeting for the first time this weekend. After that ... we shall see.

  GentlyFeral
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  11

  Shades of blue

  by hungry4life in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  help i named both of my daughters after shades of blue navy and cyan.

  i love their names but i am tormented when i think of someday having a third child what could i name him or her?

  can you help by suggesting other shades of blue including those in other languages.

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  GentlyFeral

  Cobalt.

  Especially if it's a boy.

  GentlyFeral
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  13

  An apostate looks at the 10 Commandments

  by Mindchild in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  well gang, for my 100th post i thought i would see if i could either amuse or get some of the more traditional thinkers hair to stand up.

  i thought a good place to go would be an apostates look at the 10 commandments.. commandment 1: you shall have no other gods but me.

  well the first thing that comes to my mind is why cant i have no gods?

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  GentlyFeral

  Fred,

  I can get stoned by listening to the Beatles

  You are a cheap date.

  GentlyFeral
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  4

  Message Blurred

  by joelbear in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  toward the end of my pioneering days i remember beginning to run into people from churches who told me they believed they would live on earth forever.

  they believed jesus would live here with them.

  i also ran into trouble distinguishing witness beliefs in other areas from other denomination's beliefs.. after 25 more years, i would think this would be even more the case now.. has anyone who has recently left noticed more of this blurring of differences between jw doctrine and regular christian church doctrine?.

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  GentlyFeral

  Joelbear,

  No, I don't notice a blurring between JW and standard Christian doctrine. What I see (here in the SF Bay Area) is a blurring between liberal Christian churches and Unitarian Universalism.

  GentlyFeral
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  79

  The watchtower is true

  by billy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just looking briefly on this board, i can see all the warnings given in the watchtower about those leaving the organisation and sinking into the mire of the world are true.. you are all sad losers.

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  GentlyFeral

  fancyschmancy28:
  

  not tuna, more like fine caviar...

  No no. Caviar is crunchy.

  Gently Feral
  speaking from experience
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  24

  The real facts about Islam

  by Rex B13 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is a link to an article by salmon rushdie, who knows more about islam than all of us put together.. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1634000/1634755.stm.

  discussion?.

  rex

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  GentlyFeral

  Bridgette,
  

  I'm interested in what we can constructively DO. So, I ask again, how can we, the average Joe Blow world citizen foster secularism in the middle east?

  http://www.rawa.org is looking for "non-fundamentalist" books of all kinds, preferably in Farsi, but English will do.

  GentlyFeral
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  7

  Eternity Rightly Scares Me

  by D wiltshire in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  eternity scares me.. since time can conceivable go back eternally and goes on in the future eternally we can never know completely what happened in the past.. we can not even comprehend what the eternal future will be like.. and so i hope that the master of eternity is good in the absolute sense.

  .

  if someone lived a trillion x longer than you, and had a billion x more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?.

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  GentlyFeral

  crownboy:
  

  How many houses can you build, how many lions can you pet, how many fig trees can you eat from before you pull all your hair out?

  By the time I'd been in the truth a very few years, I had a long, long list of the skills I was going to master in the New Order. Each one would have occupied at least fifty years of my time before I wore it out. Then I was going to have a talk show, "An Evening With..." in which I interviewed every historical personage I had ever admired -- not too damn many Bible folks, either: I was going to start with John Muir and George Washington Carver. Then I was going to travel the entire world. After a couple hundred years, I assumed I'd have come up with a whole 'nother list.

  I figured that after maybe three to five hundred years, I'd have begun to forget all the faboo stuff I had done in the first hundred, so it would be fresh and new again. Maybe eternity is only excruciating if you can remember it all.

  GentlyFeral
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  13

  Family member coming around

  by TweetieBird in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i went out to eat last night with my neice.

  we had a few drinks and started talking.

  before i knew it the conversation turned to the subject of doubts about the organization and if i recall correctly (hard when you've had a couple) she is the one that brought the conversation up.

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  GentlyFeral

  When presented with a WT, don't people do their own research??

  I don't think many people do. The perception of JW's as a "cult" hasn't seeped very deeply into public consciousness, and religions that aren't perceived as "cults" don't seem to require research. A WT magazine is either read respectfully (by the few) or dismissed without though (by the many).

  I then searched books to show historical evidences of the traditional Christian faith.

  Well, before the JW's got me, this would have been the farthest thing from my mind. I was borderline anti-Christian when they approached me. What little I knew about Christianity made it seem ridiculous. When the jaydubs approached me (with their best foot forward, naturally), it was the first positive presentation of Christianity I had ever seen. (I was raised in an agnostic household; can you tell?)

  how does one get entrapped into the JW org. without doing any independent research?

  Well, in my case, I was not really aware of the possibility - even though I'd been reading books like "Had You Been Born in Another Faith" from childhood!

  And, once you begin to study with the Witnesses, almost the first thing they teach you is that all other sources are unreliable. I can't remember how often Watchtower articles go out of their way to cast doubt on sources that disagree with them.

  What is it in their teachings, that sway so many?

  Matthew 5:5:
  Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
  Psalms 37:10, 11:
  A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found.
  But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace.

  I have to confess up front that I was a little heathen as a child; heaven did NOT interest me (and still doesn't, at least not as described in the Bible.) Inheriting the earth was immensely attractive. The "two classes" (heavenly vis-Ã -vis earthly) made sense; if you didn't want to go to heaven, it didn't mean God didn't love you, only that he meant you to enjoy paradise here.

  GentlyFeral

  edited for funny punctuation marks