Posts by GentlyFeral

98

Why is Hope a good quality?

by Bleep in

looks like someone on this forum hates this word hope.

hope is a great thing to have for all christain.. it is one of the best things a true christain can have.. the bible gives us alot of hope.. lets use it in our everyday lives.

we have bible understanding threw research do we not?

GentlyFeral

I know that the Watchtower provides me hope.

I have to confess that I joined the Watchtower because, at 17, I was an essentially hopeless person. The war in Vietnam was still raging; I had long been aware of the racism in American society; learning about environmental degradation hit me very hard. And then there was the threat of nuclear war that popped into the public consciousness from time to time. So, yeah, I really needed to hear that "the meek shall inherit the earth."

How do you find hope? I am asking all you ex-jws.

Much to my surprise, I'm finding that hope is the default setting -- the state of mind I'm in whenever life doesn't absolutely suck.

Without the hope of everlasting life everything is vanity in Gods creation.

I don't believe it. Mortality actually makes everything more precious -- even if there is an afterlife, our time here on earth is (probably) limited. As COMF would say:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly---and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

That's from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Where else can you find one orginization that studies the same thing around the globe at the same time? If you go to another religion they will have some other thing to say than the same religion in another town. Jehovah made it possible to have unity on a wicked earth.

This is uniformity, not unity. Two churches of the same religion can preach different things on the same day and still "be there" for each other in times of need. The UU church I attended was much different in "flavor" from the other UU churches nearby, but we marched in the Gay Pride Parade together, contributed to each other, and organized conferences together. I believe in religious "biodiversity."

If I had no direction I would be lost and trying to make people feel bad about religion as well. It is so true that young people have less concern about the need for spiritial things.

Then why is Paganism the fastest-growing religion in the English-speaking world? And why is the US the most religious country in the Western world? It all depends on how you define "spiritual things." Anything that breaks down the barriers between people and between people and nature -- that is spiritual. Love is spiritual. Art is spiritual. I am studying a religion in which spirituality also includes most forms of sex.

And I wouldn't take young people to task for their lack of "concern." The body ripens, it fascinates, why not see what it can do? Not just the groin either, but from head to toe.

So much to learn about Jehovah and some people want to turn away so they can do whatever they please I suppose.

But perhaps that is exactly what the Creator intended. As Emerson said, "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string." I really do think the Creator wants variety.

gently feral

12

Back to Bacon!

by professor in

jw
friends

back to baconyou already know how to get famous movie stars back to bacon.

now get yourself back in 5 steps or less.

i can do this several ways.

GentlyFeral

Naturally, I weigh in a day late and a dollar short ;)

My step-grandmother, whose stage name was Mariann Walters (not sure of the spelling) had a bit part in Bullitt. Steve McQueen was the star of that movie.

Steve McQueen was in The Towering Inferno(1974) with Robert Wagner; Robert Wagner was in Wild Things (1998) with Kevin Bacon, which gives Mariann Walters a Kevin Bacon Number of 3.

But I'm more interested in this:

Leonardo DiCaprio was in The Quick and the Dead (1995) with Pat Hingle; Pat Hingle was in Nevada Smith (1966) with Steve McQueen; so Mariann Walters also has a Leonardo DiCaprio number of 3...

And come to think of it, that gives me a Leonardo DiCaprio number of 4.

Pray for me.

Gently Feral

4

Apostate "Daily Text"

by GentlyFeral in

jw
friends

ok, here's a brilliant idea.

select a quotation from a worldly author that has blown your mind or changed your life or at least made you think.

the stranger the better, but let's stay more or less comprehensible, ok?

GentlyFeral

any mutt can write
plays for this london public
says bill if he puts enough
murder in them what they want
is kings talking like kings
never had sense enough to talk
and stabbings and stranglings
and fat men making love
and clown basting each
other with clubs and cheap puns
and off color allusions to all
the smut of the day oh i know
what the low brows want
and i give it to them

Man, didn't I squirm when I read this. I've been doing just this kind of whining for the past...how many years now? It's one thing to hunger for meaningful work, but it's something altogether different -- and crippling -- to spurn your own gifts because you can't do everything. This is when perfectionism becomes a vice. I'm fighting this thing every day. It hamstrings me politically and spiritually all the time.

And didn't this same attitude drive us into the jaydubs, and doesn't it keep some of them there all their lives?

"Wah, f***in' wah," as they say over at Heartless Bitches International.

Here's the source document: pete the parrot and shakespeare, by Don Marquis.

And here's the origin of archy.

gently feral

5

Kingdom Melodies Writer Revealed!

by Stephanus in

jw
friends

http://www.dundee22.freeserve.co.uk/default.htm

some examples of his work:.

http://www.lester.smith.net/mcgonagall.htm.

GentlyFeral

Yeah, but you never know who the Muse is gonna inspire, just because She can!

Consider these two verses from "The Moon":

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the fox in the night,
And lettest him see to steal the grey goose away
Out of the farm-yard from a stack of hay.

And then, the LAST VERSE...the verse that usually ties up the poem in a neat tidy law-abiding moral...

Beautiful Moon, with thy silvery light,
Thou cheerest the poacher in the night;
For thou lettest him see to set his snares
To catch the rabbit and the hares.

That's brilliantly subversive, that is. I think I'll go and do something similar, on purpose.

gently feral

4

Apostate "Daily Text"

by GentlyFeral in

jw
friends

ok, here's a brilliant idea.

select a quotation from a worldly author that has blown your mind or changed your life or at least made you think.

the stranger the better, but let's stay more or less comprehensible, ok?

GentlyFeral

OK, here's a brilliant idea. Select a quotation from a worldly author that has blown your mind or changed your life or at least made you think. The stranger the better, but let's stay more or less comprehensible, ok? If you can write the "commentary" yourself, so much the better, but coherent cut-n-paste from the author is OK. And, of course, include the author's name so we can websurf and raid libraries and stuff.

I've got the first one already cued up.

Every once in a while however I have managed to behave as if I were stupid enough to try to change my life.

I have come to despise the "End of the World" as an ideological icon held over my head by religion, state, & cultural milieu alike, as a reason for doing nothing.
I understand why the religious & political "powers" would want to keep me quaking in my shoes. Since only they offer even a chance of evading ragnarok (thru prayer, thru democracy, thru communism, etc.), I will sheepishly follow their dictates & dare nothing on my own. The case of the enlightened intellectuals, however, seems more puzzling at first. What power do they derive from this telling-the-beads of fear & gloom, sadism & hatred?
Essentially they gain smartness. Any attack on them must appear stupid, since they alone are clear-eyed enough to recognize the truth, they alone daring enough to show it forth in defiance of rude shit-kicking censors & liberal wimps. If I attack them as part of the very problem they claim to be discussing objectively, I will be seen as a bumpkin, a prude, a pollyanna. If I admit my hatred for the artifacts of their perception (books, artworks, performances) then I may be dismissed as merely squeamish (& so of course psychologically repressed), or else at the very least lacking in seriousness.
... I am all too well aware of the "intelligence" which prevents action. I myself possess it in abundance. Every once in a while however I have managed to behave as if I were stupid enough to try to change my life. Sometimes I've used dangerous stupifiants like religion, marijuana, chaos, the love of boys. On a few occasions I have attained some degree of success — & I say this not to boast but rather to bear witness. By overthrowing the inner icons of the End of the World & the Futility of all mundane endeavor, I have (rarely) broken through into a state which (by comparison with all I'd known) appeared to be one of health. The images of death & mutilation which fascinate our artists & intellectuals appear to me — in the remembered light of these experiences — tragically inappropriate to the real potential of existence & of discourse about existence.
Existence itself may be considered an abyss possessed of no meaning. I do not read this as a pessimistic statement. If it be true, then I can see in it nothing else but a declaration of autonomy for my imagination & will — & for the most beautiful act they can conceive with which to bestow meaning upon existence.
Why should I emblemize this freedom with an act such as murder (as did the existentialists) or with any of the ghoulish tastes of the eighties? Death can only kill me once — till then I am free to express & experience (as much as I can) a life & an art of life based on self-valuating "peak experiences," as well as "conviviality" (which also possesses its own reward).
The obsessive replication of Death-imagery (& its reproduction or even commodification) gets in the way of this project just as obstructively as censorship or media-brainwashing. It sets up negative feedback loops — it is bad juju. It helps no one conquer fear of death, but merely inculcates a morbid fear in place of the healthy fear all sentient creatures feel at the smell of their own mortality.
...
Only the dead are truly smart, truly cool. Nothing touches them. While I live, however, I side with bumbling suffering crooked life, with anger rather than boredom, with sweet lust, hunger & carelessness...against the icy avant-guard & its fashionable premonitions of the sepulcher.
— Hakim Bey, Against the Reproduction of Death

gently feral

17

What would it take for you to be happy

by kenpodragon in

jw
friends

what would it take for you to be happy in life?

does it take the fall of the organization, or just one person?

or does it take something else completely unrelated to the witnesses?.

GentlyFeral

I'm already very happy, but I still want lots more money, and continued poetic inspiration, and a girlfriend or even a harem.

Sometimes life just chafes my brain, and that's when material pleasure does me the most good. Sex, weed, food, movies, shopping. (I'm a cheap date, though. I just finished an eBay spree that felt like it was gonna bankrupt me, and cost only about four hours' wages.)

For future happiness, I wouldn't object to an interdisciplinary degree in kick-ass, or the legalization of marijuana.

gently feral

53

Gay Pride Week: Who's Celebrating & How?

by Fire Dragon in

jw
friends

how many of us xdubs are glb or t?

(gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender).

this weekend i'll be celebrating with friends and "family" over burgers and beer!

GentlyFeral

I'm not. I've marched in every SF Gay Pride parade for the past 5 years (the one before that was the first one I had ever seen). And I've been on the Gay Prom receiving line for the past five years. Last year I was also in the Dyke March, which was much more fun than I expected. Naturally, the words "gay pride" make my feet hurt, so no parades for me this year. I don't even have any queer films queued up at Netflix, but that's just an oversight.

There was a monthly women-only tea-dance in SF Saturday night. I missed it because public transit across the Bay turns into a goddamn pumpkin after midnight.

Oh, wait. I got it on with a queer man this morning -- my husband -- does that count? :)

gently feral

3

Poems, poems, poems.....

by thinker in

i've updated my site which has a collection of poetry written by many of you here.

there's now 35 poems, more or less.

http://www.geocities.com/avalon_dream/jehovahs_witness_poetry.

GentlyFeral

Yes, it is a wonderful thing to do. I looked over the site and realize my poems wouldn't quite fit in there; I haven't written anything about the experience of being a jaydub, or about leaving.

Here's one of my newer pieces, though...with an explanatory preface:

The sin-eater was found in England, Ireland, Wales, parts of the Southern U.S., and, of a sort, in India. The sin-eater was a person, usually a social outcast or recluse, who was brought into a village whenever somebody died. The body would be laid out with bread and salt on its chest and coins in its eyes. The sin-eater would eat the bread and salt, thus taking the dead person's sins onto himself (or herself). In payment, the sin-eater could take the coins from the eyes and then was chased out as a human scapegoat. According to lore, the only person who could absolve one sin-eater was another (who took the old sin-eater's accumulated sins onto himself) or the sin-eater's son.

Sin Eater

In the old days they used to pass me a slice of bread across the corpse
And I'd eat it standing over the coffin; but now
The corpses meet me in the cafeteria and
We eat each other's troubles like dandruff on our daily bread.

If we speak at all.

O America give me your sins or I'll take them by force
Of habit.

Your clamorous troubles fill me up and make me hungry.
Beaten children, homeless men, needles on the pavement:
I'm hungry
For kif, for chocolate.
Rape, queer-bashing, threats of war:
I'm hungry
For spangled skirts, for pretty stories.
Acid brown skies, treasuries scoured empty, aliens thrown together:
I'm hungry
For sex, for starry nights, for living trees.

For solitude.

For your happiness.

6/3/02

Gently Feral

Edited by - GentlyFeral on 15 June 2002 15:49:32

26

Kid's Names

by StinkyPantz in

jw
friends

this is really dumb but i'm gonna ask it anyway.

well, i am in a bi-racial relationship.

my husband is white and i am black.

GentlyFeral

Unfortunately he thinks the names I like are too BLACK. He says we can't give our kids black names, what if the comes out looking more white.

What an asinine thing to say. It's an ill wind that blows no minds. You can tell him I said so.

My son had a biracial friend named Mel -- short for Melanin. Yes, his parents knew what it meant, and Melanin himself was offended when people refused to call him by his right name.

My daughter's middle name is Swedish for "butterfly" -- Fjrell. We picked it as a bilingual pun -- my stepfather's family is Swedish and my mother's maiden name was Ferrall. My kids were jealous of each other's names -- my son's initials spelled JEM and my daughter's name had an umlaut in it.

Gently Feral

45

Giving thanks in restaurants!

by Beck_Melbourne in

jw
friends

when i was in dub-dom....i used to hate eating out....my ex always made us bow our heads and close our eyes tight shut while he gave thanks out loud.

did you do that in public??

or did you do it discreetly with your head bowed but eyes not shut....or.....head in hand...hoping people would think u were in deep thought?

GentlyFeral

When I was a dub, I would gaze meditatively down at my plate while praying. Restaurants aren't as quiet as home, though, so it was difficult to concentrate, and sometimes I just skipped it.

Now I believe that "All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals," so my "grace" consists of, "This is GOOD! Would You like some?"

GentlyFeral