my mother was labeled as having a jezebel spirit.
although she regular pioneered most all of her life.
she was out spoken and remained unmarried so she had no spiritual head.
Queen Jezebear, I think that would be a great drag name.
Waiting-I agree about the labels. That has been a hard habit to break. Letting things just be without catagorizing or labeling things this or that.
Just brought to mind how it would have been fun to exercise my Jezzy spirit in the Kingdom Hall or in the service group.
my mother was labeled as having a jezebel spirit.
although she regular pioneered most all of her life.
she was out spoken and remained unmarried so she had no spiritual head.
My mother was labeled as having a Jezebel spirit. Although she regular pioneered most all of her life. She was out spoken and remained unmarried so she had no spiritual head. This really hurt her feelings, as well it should.
Have any of you been labeled the same? Told you were not submissive to headship for having a brain or talking out of turn? I was to shy to be labeled having a Jezebel spirit.
jesus, save me from your followers!.
i do work for food!
"I don't have a problem with God
It's his fan club I don't like"
taking a brief break from my 'deceptive jw elders' series, i thought about conventions and recalled the annual exhortation from the congregation service meetings and the kingdom ministry about not saving seats.. in the early 1970s, my wife was pregnant with our second child.
we were attending the disctrict convention at the oakland, california coliseum where the oakland raiders and oakland a's teams play.
the stadium hold about 70,000 give or take 5,000 with extra seats on the field.. during the summer in the bay area, sitting all day in the sun listening to speakers you can barely understand due to planes flying overhead, poor sound system, and crying babies, becomes a tortureous event.
I attended those assemblies at the Oakland coliseum. But I was very young, and don't really remember the miserable conditions.
I do remember it was that stadium I lost one of my front teeth at. During a long convention the temptation to play with that tooth is too great for a 6 year old. I bleed all over the flower yellow dress my mother had made for me.
I don't remember if it was that assembly or another one but I got lost at the coliseum. Talk about a HORRIBLE place to be lost as a child (which might be an interesting thread). I walked around the giant fish bowl, until finally I started crying. Don't remember much after that.
When I used to drive by that coliseum I would shudder!
the excellent threads started by amazing and jt sum up different aspects of a way of looking at my family i only recently realised that i had developed.. to give background, i walked away in '93 but have retained fairly good relations with my family although i have never had a 'show-down' regarding beliefs, just a few half-hearted fire-fights.. my girlfriend (never a jw) had met them a few times.
a few months ago we went for a meal at their house.
i think that my parents had decided beforehand to 'get her alone', so my dad asked for help with his pc in his office at home.. my mum and my girlfriend were in the living room; i could hear what was going on from where i was.. my mum was basically doing the "it is the truth you know" bit (a jw mind trick; sincere repetiton, eye contact, gesture, head nod... what do they think they are, some kind of jedi??
A very similar thing happened to me the past weekend. My mother came to visit my boyfriend and me. She said she would not stay with us, but when she got to our place she felt very comfortable (due to my boyfriend being very kind).
At the end of her visit we did talk about our relationship, and she said to me "I was a good mother" "I did the best I knew how" and things of this nature. What I said to her back was yes you were a good mother. You as an individual without the dogma and rhetoric. That person I cherish, and value all of the lessons that person taught me. She did not know how to take that. Her face scrunched up, and she changed the subject.
I describe my mother in the same manner to people. She has 2 people inside of her at war. Who she is really, her brilliant feminist personality, and the cult person rigid and hard. Since I was a child she has been at war with her duality.
i wonder what the percentage is of ex-jws who become involved in other organized religions.
i had a discussion with a psychiatrist friend recently.
he told me that i am a "psychiatric anamoly," that most "devout" people who leave a religion will join another and become as devout in their new religion.
When I first left the organization I felt there was this deep black hole inside of me. And I confused the idea with the need to belong or worship. I looked around, but because of my background felt uneasy in churches. I thought for a while I should look into more pagan ritual style of worship with other women, but that fell through also. In the end when I came to terms with my athiesm, and say out loud I am an athiest the hole was gone.
I think for me coming to terms with my belief system, athiesm, was the turning point. Now like Riz I listen to my inner self what feels right, and what feels wrong.
I can't say I would never attend a church. There may come a time when I am older that I will be able to trust an organization and may change my belief system, but that would be very far in the future.
Rodnico
my mother is coming to visit me next week.
i haven't seen her for over 4 years.
she thinks that somehow i am a completely different person since leaving the organization.
My mother is coming to visit me next week. I haven't seen her for over 4 years. She thinks that somehow I am a completely different person since leaving the organization. She says things like "you still do that?" "You still like that?". To her maybe I am another (dead) person, but to me I am fundamentally the same. I have the same likes, dislikes, & prejudices. But what has changed is the fact that I no longer wait for the New Order to accomplish goals. Instead of saying I can't wait until the new system to do blah blah blah....Now I say I will do blah blah blah today or tomorrow or next year, but in MY life time.
So this brings me to a thought what did you say you would do in the New System only to realize it was something you wanted to do now? All of us were denied a reasonable education so something more on a personal level.
I love Irises. I would say in the new system I am going to plant a garden of Irises, tend to them, cross pollinate them, and watch them grow in all the beauty of spring. Last fall I planted my first bulbs in my own garden in this wonderful lifetime.
its amazing the extent these circulate in the wt world.
i am not so sure, but it develops a powerful folklore amongst jws....often with a moral at the end!
typically these circulate as experiences given in talks and are then adopted by the masses as truth.. for example, anyone hear the ul about the married couple where the wife had to have a routine blood check.
Mommy-
Nope sorry, I was raised in Utah. That is where I heard the story, but the person come to think of it, that told me the story was just visiting Bethel.
Rodnico
its amazing the extent these circulate in the wt world.
i am not so sure, but it develops a powerful folklore amongst jws....often with a moral at the end!
typically these circulate as experiences given in talks and are then adopted by the masses as truth.. for example, anyone hear the ul about the married couple where the wife had to have a routine blood check.
A man started to study, was baptized and then began to pioneer. He did all of this after meeting a VERY PRETTY pioneer. They began to date, and one day she decided she was going to test this man to see what he was made of. They were walking over a bridge and she threw her book bag into the water and said “I’m tired of all of this, I am going to give it up”. He then said to her I was hoping you would say this, I only did this for you, and this is all crap anyway (Or something like that). And her in her all knowing very pretty wise pioneer ways knew what was really in his heart and broke it off right there.
This Urban Legend irritates me.
in another thread titled why?
in the beliefs and practices forum,.
i have an exchange going on with another woman.
When I was young I used to daydream about being the woman who held the towels for the ones emerging from the baptismal pool. These were the women who were the "wives" of someone important. And the most I had to look forward to in my "spiritual" career was being a regular pioneer or becoming the wife of someone important. My mother who is also a witness, but a real woman at heart trained me to realize that a man is not the answer (which helped me avoid getting married at 17) that I do not need a man or brother to complete my life, but the society made if quite clear that if I wanted to pursue any goals I might have had, I had to be married.
This conflict creates a black puzzle in a little girl or young woman. Thus causing me to ask the elders if the god Jehovah created both male and female and all humans are in god's image then Jehovah must me male and female. Everything masculine and everything feminine. In the bible women were priestess in the patriarchal I'd rather be a pig than a woman Jewish society. Then why are women not allowed any kind of "privileges" in this organization? Why are women subjugated to wear a HEAD COVERING or sit down when ministering about this god who is masculine/feminine?
Right before I left for the inequalities of the way women are treated in this organization I was standing at the baptismal pool when the overseer beckoned me to him, and asked me to hold the towels for the candidates.
P.S. This is a little weird this is my first post.
