...or least favorite?.
just for fun of course.. i just posted on the top 10 movies to take on a desert island and it had me wonder.. anyways....as to my favorite:.
"there is no spoon.
From "Gone With The wind" (released in 1939):
Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) finally had enough of Scarlett O'Hara's shenanigans. At the very end of the movie, she asked him what she would do without him.
His answer, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."
GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
i thought you might like to see a fax i just sent to j. r. brown.
you can also pick it up on the front page of the website, you may also read and download the complaint that states the basis of this lawsuit.
run wt run...... silentlambs.
This is great news.
Living in the same metropolitan area as the "Reinhardt and Anderson" law firm, I can confirm their excellent reputation. This case is in good hands, far as this observer can tell.
If you want to read more about this firm, and how it has represented victims of sexual abuse in the religious environment, go to this site: http://www.ralawfirm.com/
GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
many of you know that i have a good friend, who is still a dub, and her husband is an elder.
they both talk to us, and i see her all the time, and talk to her everyday.
she called this morning to tell me about the dinner they had last night with some old friends.
Marilyn,
Yes quite a paradox, eh? Faux-Christians like Norma just make me want to wretch! How the hell (sorry) does she come off judging YOU? Hasn't she heard Jehovah hates a divorcing, and he will judge fornicators and adulterers? And yet that type of conduct seems to be the foundation of HER family's behavior.
Amazing. I shake my head when stuff like this goes on, and yet I hear my "ardent/loyal" JW mother spout stuff like "you need to consider that the JW's are the ONLY clean organization in the whole world".
Yeah right. Thanks for posting this, it is by far not an isolated incident.
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
i don't know how the weather is everywhere else, but here in dixie, it's been the first bearable summer in as long as i can remember.. it seems as though mother nature took a rest this year, worn out from her years of relentlessly bombarding us with intense heat.
for so long, it seemed as though the spring and summer months, even october, would bring an onslaught of 100+ degree temperatures with record high humidity and only enough rain to turn our evenings into saunas.. then this year came.
so far, the temperature has topped out in the very low 90's and the humidity just hasn't had the enthusiasm of years past.
Bendrr,
I'm glad someone somewhere had a nice summer. Here in Minnesota we've had oppressive heat and humidity, and it's not going away until later this week. Even today the "heat index" was 100 degrees even as far north as the Canadien border. Last week, we lost a pro football player to heat stroke.
Things all balance out, I guess. It was our turn to suffer. Maybe we'll have a "warm" winter.
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
the three of us are off on our summer vacation this weekend so i won't lurking or posting the odd post for a couple of weeks.. <---- that's me in whistler, b.c.
we are heading in the same direction with a family reunion at mrs. thirdson's aunt and uncle's place on whidbey island, then separately to the san juan's and then on to vancouver for 3 nights.
i need the break and it comes at just the right time.
Thirdson,
Have a great time. It should be a break from our tropical heat-blast we've been enduring here in the Midwestern USA.
So your project is in system-test phase, eh? I say by the time you get back, they'll have discovered 15 more requirements, LOL. But that's how it goes. In the IT world, there NEVER is a perfect time to take a vacation, so go for it, brother!
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
disfellowshiping or ex-comunication puts great strain on family members, it has been successfully used by other religious groups jehovah's witness's are no exception.
any group or government that can successfully put a wedge between family members is a threat to the whole family of man.. by using such phrases or reasons as: its for their own good or its being done cause we love them, or we wakening them to their senses, are simply rationalizing their actions.. think about this: monkeys shun at times one of their own, but the one shunned most of the time dies from it; are we higher than monkeys in love?
humans also die if shunned or become mentally sick depressed to the point of at times taking their own life, because if one has been a witness or other shunning group for all or most of their life who is now a support group for them?
Shane,
You are right. There is a blind loyalty to the "organization" over the family, and that can cause great heartbreak. We were taught that the family IS less important than the organization, and that the JW's would be our 'everlasting' family in an upcoming paradise.
These ideas allow the organization and its elders to exercise unreasonable control over families. Disfellowshipping always consigns families to breakdown. (Good point Shane, God hates a divorcing so he would hate this shunning practice too.) How often the disfellowshipped ones are treated as dead by their JW family and relatives! How little human concern they show!
And here's the other thing. The Society's own "Family" books explain how important a SPIRITUAL bond is between husband and wife, that without it the marriage cannot thrive. But let's say the husband is disfellowshipped. Guess what, he is prohibited from SPIRITUAL contact with his wife and baptized children. This (using the Family book's own reasoning) will doom the marriage. What kind of a marriage is it when you can only talk about life's necessities and the weather, but not about what really matters?
So the disfellowshipping arrangement dooms marriages into which it is introduced.
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
this is the view as found in the latest magazine:.
"for almost 2,000 years, that peace has been enjoyed by faithful anointed members of the body of christ.
" (the watchtower september 1, 2001, page 14, paragraph 3).
Blondie,
I enjoyed your post and understood you were only "reporting". I think we're on the same page!
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
this is the view as found in the latest magazine:.
"for almost 2,000 years, that peace has been enjoyed by faithful anointed members of the body of christ.
" (the watchtower september 1, 2001, page 14, paragraph 3).
Blondie,
The groups you mentioned are the "persecuted minorities" with whom Jehovah's Witnesses seek to establish a link. So to make up your "faithful anointed", according to WT doctrine, you had selected first century Christians, then you had just a handful of Christians belonging to "persecuted minorities" such as the Waldenses and the Lollards, and then starting in the 1870's you add C.T. Russell and his followers (up until about 1935, when the heavenly calling was supposedly discontinued).
You still have a mathematical conundrum about how the number of Christians over 20 centuries (up until 1935) would have been held to a mere 144,000. But JW's take that number as a matter of faith.
As far as what the Society has in print on these "persecuted minorities" down through the centuries, I believe there are only scattered individual articles, not one issue of a magazine to pull all these groups together for consideration.
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
on another thread, i was struck with a thought.
someone mentioned how brainwashed the r&f were to accept the drivel pumped out of bethel and it suddenly dawned on me that the 'tower and the awake!
and all the other literature are irrelevant.
Dan and nytelecom1,
As far as I know, that is a true experience. It was in the outline of a public talk I gave (back when I was a JW, you know), "Serve Jehovah With a Joyful Heart". The thief took the Bible, and as the story goes it was his last theft. He did return the Bible to the family at a later assembly.
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"sometimes those of us who treasure right doctrine think we possess and inside track on the truth of god.
god informs us, however, that supposed knowledge, lacking in a pure love of god, is a sure route to spiritual arrogance (1 corinthians 8:1-3).
there is something about being cocksure of possessing the truth that breeds spiritual cockiness.
Qwerty,
This is such a good point. You could never get JW's to admit that their self-righteousness and cocksuredness resembles the Pharisees!!
This spiritual conceit is indoctrinated into every adherent in the JW organization, man, woman and child, from top to bottom. Everyone is well-trained to block out any consideration of alternate thoughts, or if not block it out to at least play it down so that it's no longer significant.
Does this lack of humility help JW's in their ministry to the outside world? Ha!
GopherEven if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
