Posts by Mommie Dark

15

Halloween!! What do I dooooooooo!!!!!!

by expatbrit in

jw
friends

ok this will be my first year participating in halloween.

i grew up a jw, so have never enjoyed it as a kid or as an adult.. so, i need some guidance!.

what do i do when the little bastards come to the door?.

Mommie Dark

It always cracks me up eavesdropping on the kids as they divvy up the loot. They really do tell each other who gives 'good' candy and who gives the cheap waxy taffy things nobody really ever eats. "Trade ya three o these fer that Jolly Rancher" "No way man!"

I buy tootsie roll midgies and tootsie roll pops coz they arent very expensive and most kids like em. We get very few trick or treaters in our neighborhood. Parents drive over to the 'ritzy' section of town so the kids can get 'better' loot.

A couple of the dorms at the local college organize trick or treat for the community too. They decorate all the student lounges and common rooms, make little haunted house mazes and fortune-telling booths, lots of them dress up, and the kids stream through the building up & down all the stairs collecting treats and having fun. This year one of the nursing homes is advertising safe trick or treat with them, too.

My ten year old? Entirely uninterested in beggar's night this year. Has no plans to go out and shrugs when asked about the seasonal candylust. Mommie Hallowe'en maven is crushed. No playacting no dressup no ghoulish joie de vivre en famille.

The moon is most excellently doing its thing for the hols though. A truly cold and foreboding moon, perfectly suited to communion through the veil between the worlds.

Dressing up in her best moon suit,
MD

32

trick or treating

by teejay in

jw
friends

of all the holidays, for me halloween has the least appeal.. i have a memory of going trick-or-treating once, at my "worldly" father's insistence (he roasted peanuts in the oven for the door-knockers... i remember), about the time my mom learned the truth.

i must've been about five years old.. despite the fact that i'm a hard-core agnostic and a fear of gods or demons are a non-issue, i still have trouble encouraging kids -- under the guise of costumes and fun -- of extorting treats from neighbors.

can i get a witness?

Mommie Dark

Hallowe'en and Days of the Dead have always been a part of harvest rituals in lots of cultures. In Mexico cleaning the cemeteries is part of the routine after the crops are in and it's done in time with the harvest moon. The veil between the living and the dead was believed thinnest during the 'death' of the year and it was considered respectful (and prudent) to honor your dead at this time of year. The fact that life can only continue if rooted in the decay of that which has gone before was celebrated with macabre glee, a collective ghoulish grin at our inevitable mortality, a necessary reassurance that the cycles of life continue whether we wear a mortal coil or not.

Carve the veggies into lanterns for old lost skeptic Jack who didn't believe the faerie folk could lure him into the darkness...and give the little ghoulies and ghosties some sweeties so they don't play tricksies...you never know what spirits walk among the mortals on All Hallow's Eve, so smile and giftie all the wee ones who tap at the doors on Beggar's Night.

It's not a Christian thing, it's a mortal thing.

2

Poem: Why Words Are Unsatisfactory

by Mommie Dark in

jw
friends

language, bane and blessing, i have savored your wares,.

saccharine, strychnine, balm of gilead,.

and other flavors so removed from moderate.

Mommie Dark

Language, bane and blessing, I have savored your wares,
saccharine, strychnine, Balm of Gilead,
and other flavors so removed from moderate
only the jaded, bored, and desperate dare to sample.

In your world are many waters:
Oceans with rhyme and meter and measured tides,
currents and undertows and reefs
from grim to Paradise green;
vast lakes formed from the pressure of political ice
where storms churn and the sturdiest craft can be sunk
and one bright Beat phrase may float the only survivors.

Language, you have had your worshippers,
martyrs, sycophants making sacrificial offerings of verse
and sweat and tears and blood;
your essential flaws dispose of most with a historic shrug
and they disappear
sink without a bubble
beneath the surface of your inadequacy.

Occasionally a desperate note in a jade-green bottle bobs to the
surface,
to be found and revered by some mad shaman
in an ivy-covered ivory tower.
Its meaning is misconstrued at best.

My home has been here, rafting the seas of verse, hiking the arid trails
of fact,
seeking El Dorado across the trackless wastes of a thousand ideologies
and praying nonstop to all the gods in your pantheon of synonyms for
goodness.
I get lost and waste valuable time hacking my way through hybrid kudzu
drafts.
Sometimes the trails are tortuous, littered with doggerel and dangling
participles
and snarls of hopelessly mixed metaphors.
I am getting weary of your scapes and climes; the range of your
possibilities
appears of late to be just another obstacle.
I grow weary of the substance of this world; itc very elements confound
me with their
complexity, their substance too solid for emotion, too weak for
comfort... the clay feet of my paradigm.

What peace, to leave this world of language! To just turn oblique to
every phrase, and hang
suspended between the molecules of thought,
in a wordless dimension, fixed, bright;
bearing mute testimony only to the light of being,
without artifact or clue
or telltale jade-green bottle.

***

This old bit of doggerel is offered to those of you who have asked me repeatedly why I don't try to write seriously any more. I think it's self-explanatory. It was written while I was in serious therapy and struggling with some of the ego issues surrounding nurturing alleged talent.

I found a lot of this junk cluttering up a perfectly good notebook recently. Amazing how much time I used to waste on this sort of magic trick. Fortunately I'm much better now...

Realizin she hasn't evolved to a wordless dimension yet but workin on it,
MD
'just another onionhead and damn proud of it'

9

JW Parenting Vs. Your Own

by pettygrudger in

i'm interested in knowing how any of you now raise your children.

we all know how the majority of jw children are raised - berated, guilt-ridden, low self-esteem, spanked regularly, obey in fear, etc.

neither have ever been spanked, i've never really raised my voice to them in anything other than a stern tone, and i don't punish for individual thought or action (unless they are/were in jeopardy of hurting themselves or others emotionally, mentally or physically).

Mommie Dark

Lisa your rules sound so sensible and simple! Of course we all know simple does NOT mean 'easy'; it's obvious your child is learning good lessons in self-discipline from your rules. Congratulations on doing a spiffy job!

I confess I sometimes err on the side of indulgence with Little Dark; reactionism to the whack-'em-into-submission style I grew up with and practiced on my older kids. However the basic rules are simple around here too and he is real easygoing about compliance, so I feel the occasional indulgence of the only kid in a houseful of adults is not harming him.

He has a schedule we can all live with and school is no hassle. He is a fine student, newly-elected to student council, takes violin lessons, does his homework without complaint, and usually doesn't make a chore out of bathing. He loves to read and draw and has an incredible sense of humor. He plays D&D and other games with his grown family and keeps right up with them. I feel blessed to have a relatively 'easy' kid in my middle age (raising ADHD kids in the cult was a daily waking nightmare!) and it's obvious which method of childrearing gives superior results.

If I could go back I would sure change how I treated my grown boys. I'm grateful they have turned out as nice as they did considering how they learned as kids. Personal responsibility is a much better way than cult fearmongering!

21

I Now Provide You With Entertainment.......

by Ranchette in

jw
friends

i put some of the funniest stuff in bold print.. enjoy!.

opic: unique plans for paradise.

pantherkatz wol stepper posted 09-22-2001 12:09 am we all look forward to common things in the new order such as, no more sickness and death, no more wickedness, meeting bible characters, etc.... but what are some of the personal, more unique things that you would like to do?

Mommie Dark

didn't anyone tell these folks that their Society frowns on warlike strategy games like chess? There won't be any need for idle amusements like games in the Wonderful New Order where everything will be peachykeen and perfect.

132

100 Good Samaritans needed

by Trilobite in

jw
friends

two of this board's, and h2o's before it,long time and well known participants have fallen on desperately hard times.

if they could set up pay pal accounts and enough of us could contribute say $20 - $50 per month it would help them though their hardship.. these two people have helped many escape from the wts and i know for sure have given money and other material help to those in need, even when they could not afford it.. if you can help, send an email to: [email protected].

you need not include any particulars of who you are etc, just an indication that you could support this and how much you could send.

Mommie Dark

Part of the reason I got so pissed off at waiting's remarks was that a CAREFUL READING of the thread would have shown her that at least two of the people she named were ALREADY MENTIONED as having been active behind the scenes in enabling some assistance for at least one of the gents in question.

She wasn't interested in actual facts though she was just tying to make some waves while pissing in the pool. I can understand that. I hate it, but I understand it.

It's a group mentality thing right? Let's all kick those who are down, and if we can, by all means, let's kick each other around, hierarchically, and use this as an opportunity to establish a pecking order, with blood drawn if possible. Let's humiliate those in need and call their integrity into question because for whatever reason they chose to stop using a public message forum. And while we're at it, let's also take a second to take sniping jabs at those who are high-profile activists in ex-JW circles.

After all it's not enough to mind our own business and respond to a request for assistance privately, discreetly, quietly. We gotta encourage by example, give our real names, addies, circumstances, and oh yeah permission slips from two witnesses attesting to our validity as humans before we can give OR RECEIVE any charitable kindness.

And if the whole bandwagon doesn't agree on methods and motives the whole smegging deal is OFF...

but let's just let it drop now eh waiting? After all we've all had our jollies muddying a good deed into a bad taste, our work here is finished.

21

Reasons for Leaving JWs/Fatal Flaw

by patio34 in

jw
friends

i ran across this in "river out of eden" by richard dawkins (pgs 131-132) yesterday and it accurately sums up why i left jws 9 months ago and, essentially, belief in a creator:.

re dna survivial: 'when the utility function-that which is being maximized--is dna survival, this is not a recipe for happiness.

so long as dna is passed on, it does not matter who or what gets hurt in the process.

Mommie Dark

Hi Pat: the question I find myself asking is, WHY do humans 'care'? Why do we have the ability to care? Why do we need to make sense out of the randomness of the universe? Why ae we so desperate to make order amongst the chaos?

I sometimes wonder if our unique human self-awareness isn't an evolutionary cul-de-sac? What purpose does it serve in the universal cycle of life eating itself?

Well I've been awake for about ten minutes and you folks have certainly given me some interesting intellectual breakfast!

I love this place...

132

100 Good Samaritans needed

by Trilobite in

jw
friends

two of this board's, and h2o's before it,long time and well known participants have fallen on desperately hard times.

if they could set up pay pal accounts and enough of us could contribute say $20 - $50 per month it would help them though their hardship.. these two people have helped many escape from the wts and i know for sure have given money and other material help to those in need, even when they could not afford it.. if you can help, send an email to: [email protected].

you need not include any particulars of who you are etc, just an indication that you could support this and how much you could send.

Mommie Dark

"Again, no need to jump all over me for questioning - I've already put my money up. Just a glaring curiousity.

waiting"

'No need to remark on the fact that I'm being a cunt, just let me get away with it'... right waiting? Isn't that about the size of it?

FYI it's NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS what anyone ELSE is doing or where or how ...

No need to jump all over 'me' for stating the obvious,

MD
(pissed as HELL waiting's sort of hypocritical bitchiness)

5

JW's Gospet of Incessant Self Praise

by Room 215 in

jw
friends

this observation came to mind in a related thread on cultural changes in the jw community over the years, as the organization evovles from a feisty, intensely radical, militant band of `theocratic warriors'' to a more maintream religion.. as the passage of time has eroded almost all of the plausibilty in the chronological component of their message (remember how big a part of our preaching was ``doing the 1914 drill'' -- you know: 2,520 minus 607, plus no zero year = 1914; ask yourselves how few modern and younger jws can do this by rote nowadays), teh focus has shifte to ``ain't we the greatest?

almost every wt issue runs articles featurng sanitized, idealized, versions of aspects of their modern history.

jws in the concentration camps, the atlanta penitenitary for rutherford and his gang, praise from public officials for jw comportment at assemblies, quick-build kingdom halls, disaster relief for their own kind, lifestyle makeovers, the experiences of oldtimers who unapologetically squandered a lifetime living in nomadic, vagabond poverty out of a suitcase or shuttered away in bethel or a missionary home, etc., ad ininitum, ad nauseum.

Mommie Dark

This was one of the things that started me escaping the cult. That smug arrogant thumbs-in-suspenders self-satisfied attitude, "Aren't we Jehovah's chosen humble people?" made me ill. How can you CLAIM to be the 'humblest meekest people on earth' at the top of your leather preacher lungs and be taken seriously?

It embarrassed me. It's an unconscious thing among most JWs but so very very ugly! How can anyone believe that an attitude like that is pleasing to their God? If he fosters that mindset, then HE is as venal and shallow and unspiritual as they!

Meanwhile there is that petty jealousy and competition to be 'strong spiritually' which is of course measured by CORPORATE WORKS first and Christian charity very very last.

I decided I'd rather die with all the sane worldlings than remain in that topsyturvy madhouse of alleged salvation!

Of course now I am free of all that superstitious claptrap, free as the little sparrows outside my window to choose for myself what path I follow. Life is good even when circumstances SUCK! And nobody monitoring my 'spirituality' and measuring me by some impossible standard of guilt and shame. OH YEAH!

15

First post..kinda long.. sorree

by Parliament in

jw
friends

hey all.

this is my first post to this group.

ive been lurking for quite awhile and to say the least, this board makes me late for work as i oversleep from a late night of reading and wondering.

Mommie Dark

You said " I realize now that true love comes though hard work and what you believe is right in your heart. Not the love shown by a group of men that have to question every move you make."

WOW! How's you get so smart?

Tryin to do what's right just because it's right,
MD
Not Under Mens' Thumb Class