Posts by Queequeg

39

why celebrate xmas?

by enoughisenough in

many on here are ex jw....they have left the jws because of coming to find out the many false indoctrinations.

one of the things learned as a jw is that there isn't anything true about xmas being the birth of jesus.

( matt chapter 2 tells a whole different narrative about the baby jesus than what is portrayed by the christian churches) they learn the ways that are celebrated are pagan practices jesus told the samaritan woman that god wanted to be worshipped in spirit and it truth.

Queequeg

Like peacefulpete said, for us, it's about the people.

When we first walked away from JW world, some of our first new friends decided that we needed some new traditions in our life. So, with them, we started an annual Christmas day hike and feast afterwards. There's no religious element to it, the majority of our friends are not religious. It's just an organized excuse for friends to get together and enjoy each other's company.

The hike is done rain or shine. We've done it in the snow, and during crazy winter storms.

Sometimes there are 15 or 16 of us for dinner, sometimes there are 30 plus. Sometimes dinner has a theme (like Southeast Asia etc.). No theme this year. I think I'm going to make homemade spaetzle x3. Alsatian style sauerkraut with spaetzle, fresh local seafood (salmon, crab, shrimp) mac and cheese spaetzle, and foraged wild mushroom (bolete, lobster, hedgehog, chanterelle) spaetzle in riesling cream sauce. My wife's making a yule log.

One year we had an Israeli and an Iranian cooking and laughing together in the kitchen.

Several years we had a local Indian chief guide our hike through tribal land.

This year, we're going to hike through the sand dunes that inspired Frank Herbert to write Dune.

For us, it's a reminder and an appreciation for the good people we have in our life since leaving our former social group.

39

why celebrate xmas?

by enoughisenough in

many on here are ex jw....they have left the jws because of coming to find out the many false indoctrinations.

one of the things learned as a jw is that there isn't anything true about xmas being the birth of jesus.

( matt chapter 2 tells a whole different narrative about the baby jesus than what is portrayed by the christian churches) they learn the ways that are celebrated are pagan practices jesus told the samaritan woman that god wanted to be worshipped in spirit and it truth.

Queequeg

Lost In The Fog, I love your post!

"Was it a rebellion against my JW upbringing? No it wasn't. It was me being a normal human being in the society beyond 'The Society'."

If someone wants to maintain the "alien resident" JW persona, fine. But I sure as hell have had enough of that.

I live in an area that gets dark with crazy weather in the winter. These ancient customs developed for a reason, the lights, the evergreens, the festivities. One of the reasons Scandinavian countries are regularly on lists of the happiest people is because they've learned how to turn their crazy winters in to a positive thing.

Lighten up Enoughisenough. Have some friends over, down some brennivin, and thank Freyja that you are alive! Lol.

13

Ice Skating on Eiffel Tower?

by peacefulpete in

jw
friends

my wife and i are heading to paris for christmas this year.

it's a landmark year for all sorts of reasons, milestone anniversary her milestone birthday, and my recovery.

she loves ice skating.

Queequeg

Ice skating the Eiffel Tower would be amazing! My wife grew up around ice skating and would love that too. Let us know if it works out.

We were in Paris near Christmas once, and if the weather permits, walking around the (main) streets at night is fun because all the shops have lights and displays.

Figure out the subway system (ahead of time if possible) and you'll go all over Paris with no problem.

Of course, there's a ton of museums, my favorite is the Cluny with Middle Ages stuff.

If they are open this time of year, Marche Monge and one of the several Marche Puces (flea markets) can be interesting.

Fauchon is a store with fancy foods, candies etc., great for gifts.

Restaurants, well, like most big cities there's a lot of choice and they come and go. Our favorite thing is to go to a bakery and get bread (or croissants or whatever), then a cheese shop, then charcuterie and go have a picnic. Get yourself a French knife like Opinel or Laguiole for your food.

For us, what has always been fun in Paris, is to just walk and explore, without doing google searches (just maps when we're lost lol), just really explore. You'll stumble on things that you wont find on the interwebs. Cool little hole in the wall shops, restaurants. Last time we found an archaeological site that went back to Roman times. It was really interesting, they gave tours, but had no internet presence.

Hey, while you're at it, since you are a car guy, could you pick me up a Citroen 2CV? Preferably the van version since I could probably figure out a way to write that one off. TIA!

Have a great time!

22

I`m going out on a limb here ! ....PIMO

by smiddy3 in

jw
friends

pimo , as i said i`m going out on a limb here and i might upset some people ,but i really don`t think this is a real strategy that works and doesn`t help the person who is still in.. while you may be doing this to keep the peace in the household and keep relations somewhat stable in the family arrangement ,it`s not helping the person who is still under the control of wt/gb to break free from it ,and isn`t that what you would really like to happen ?.

and are their children involved as well ?

that`s another issue ,the longer they are subject to this control the harder it will be for them to disengage get free.. maybe you should re-evaluate what you could do more to help your partner / spouse or whatever to free themselves from this bondage they have involved themselves in.. [ of course their may be others who are quite happy to have their partners/mates under the control of the wt/gb.

Queequeg

As several have already mentioned, there's no cookie cutter, one size fits all approach.

When I first started lurking on this site about 14 years ago, I knew that I wouldn't last too long in the JW cult.

I was desperate to figure out a way to escape with my wife. I started reading posts from the beginning of this forum up through the years, looking for ideas that had worked for people trying to get their significant others out. I started noticing a pattern. Generally, when people would say something like, "I can't do this anymore, this weekend I'm going to tell her/him the truth about JW.", it didn't go well. The exception was situations like Tameria2001 described above. I read other forums and saw the same thing.

Because of the examples that I'd read, I decided on the slow, steady, tortoise method of trying to help my wife. At a certain point, I could hardly stand entering a Kingdom Hall, being PIMO was incredibly stressful for me. I was able to keep faking just long enough to help my wife see the "truth". Not long after we left I had an endoscope (stomach scope) and the doctor asked my wife if I'd been under extreme stress in the recent past (I was still knocked out). My wife laughed and said, "Yes, why?" The doctor told her there were scars all over my stomach from recent ulcers!

Was it worth it? My wife says that she's pretty sure that if I'd hit her over the head with things, it wouldn't have gone well. Once or twice a year, I'll get a text or a card from my wife that says something like, "I saw a car group out in field service today. Thank you for loving me enough to help me get out of that awful religion!"

31

Hobbies

by peacefulpete in

jw
friends

i think it's been a while since this was asked.

tell us your hobbies, interests, pastimes, whatever you find enjoyable as a diversion from work and school.

i am lucky enough to live in a small cabin on a lake, i enjoy rowing my old boat and fishing, i play with car projects, and we travel as much as we can.

Queequeg

I stir fry a lot!

31

Hobbies

by peacefulpete in

jw
friends

i think it's been a while since this was asked.

tell us your hobbies, interests, pastimes, whatever you find enjoyable as a diversion from work and school.

i am lucky enough to live in a small cabin on a lake, i enjoy rowing my old boat and fishing, i play with car projects, and we travel as much as we can.

Queequeg

I hadn't really thought about it before, I guess I have quite a few hobbies.

Music - I've played classical guitar since I was a kid. My wife and I regularly get together with friends and play rock, blues etc., I guess I sing too. Just bought a violin, damn it's tough!

Outdoors - We are avid hikers. I love foraging, especially for mushrooms. The first thing you see when you come in our house is a pile of surfboards. I recently started fat tire biking in the sand dunes, that's super fun! .We like to go snowshoeing in the mountains. I could go on, we really like the outdoors.

Travel - My wife is an amazing trip planner! We just came back from three and a half weeks in former Viking territory.

Plants - I like to grow herbs, hot peppers and that kind of thing. For ex-jw therapy I had a nice indoor cannabis operation for a while. Personally, I don't use the stuff, but it was fun giving people large quantities as birthday gifts etc.

Cooking - I really enjoy cooking and do the bulk of our day to day cooking. I love to cook for friends. I cook a wide variety of styles.

16

Bullied At School

by Lost in the fog in

just curious about the rest of you.

i was bullied quite badly throughout my school years because of being a witness and not participating in religious holidays, sporting celebrations, assembly (worship), and the like.. it was mostly from other pupils but there were a couple of teachers who definitely treated me badly.

that was back when uk teachers still caned pupils or were allowed to hurl the heavy wooden blackboard duster across the room at them.... i still have ptsd flashbacks on some of those events even after 50 years!

Queequeg

I was one of the few JW when I was in school, except honestly for a few weird JW kids.

I always got along with everyone for the most part. Actually, I had a reputation for that.

Also, I was a big kid which didn't hurt.

20

Movies that used the term Jehovah Watchtower or Witnesses!

by Witness 007 in

indiana jones 3...we had elders going to this movie.

life of brian stoning people who say jehovah...so funny!

even "supergirl" where someone knocks on the door of the secret hideout and the villain says "if that's those damn jehovahs witnesses again!

Queequeg

There was a fairly funny segment in the Coneheads movie where the INS agents pose as JW to get in to the Coneheads house.

8

"Why would anyone build a house in this system of things?"

by Queequeg in

recent posts about elders telling people to quit their jobs etc.

reminded me of this.. when i was in my early twenties i decided that i really wanted to build a house (id always wanted to, even as a kid).

i justified my "selfish" desire in my own mind by thinking that once we were living in it we'd have more freedom and skills to volunteer to do things like quickbuilds and international construction (actually, it really did work out that way).

Queequeg

Recent posts about elders telling people to quit their jobs etc. reminded me of this.

When I was in my early twenties I decided that I really wanted to build a house (Id always wanted to, even as a kid). I justified my "selfish" desire in my own mind by thinking that once we were living in it we'd have more freedom and skills to volunteer to do things like quickbuilds and International construction (actually, it really did work out that way). My wife agreed that what I'd laid out made sense and we started making plans. Since both of us worked mainly part time we figured we could pull it off time wise.

How the flip did we get the money? Well, we were both good at saving money and so both came in to the marriage with savings. I found bargains on lumber and other materials. Also, in my late teens I pulled off basically a no money down deal on a triplex, so we lived rent free in one of the units.

Neither of us were the type to go to the elders and ask for advice and we knew that most of the people in the congregation tended to be negative, so we pretty much kept it to ourselves. By the time the elders caught wind of what we were doing we had already poured the daylight basement.

Two elders made a visit while I was working on the site. They told me I was crazy, because I'd never built a house before. They said that my marriage would fail. Of course, I was going to lose my relationship with Johoho and maybe be removed as a ministerial servant (damn, I wish that had happened way back then!). I was told to quit while I still could, "What if armageddon comes while you're in the middle of building this?". I thanked them for their input and when they left we kept building.

After this, elders and their wives started making negative comments at the meetings about people deciding to invest in this system of things. One elder, Bob J. and his wife, any chance they could, would comment and look at us while they said, "Why would anyone build a house in this system of things." Funny thing, I didn't really give a shit.

Our marriage didn't fail. In fact, when JWs would ask us we'd say we couldn't wait to build another one together. That really pissed them off. We still own the house and get a nice rent check every month. Yep, we built the house we're living in now too.

Funny thing, a couple of years ago I bumped in to Bob J.'s son at the lumberyard, he bragged that he was in town... BUILDING A HOUSE FOR HIS MOM AND DAD!

We're so glad we didn't listen to the wisdom of the "elders"!

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Queequeg

"Sad", and "Grifter", is Llyod Evans running for PRESIDENT!