I think the .fi suffix in the URL means that it's a Finnish site... I don't know of any Finnish translators off the top of my head.
-T.
tergiversator
JoinedPosts by tergiversator
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6
Translation needed...
by sf in< http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/jttuki/franz/ch5.html.
can anyone tell me what language this is and possibly translate?.
i tried every language translation at "babelfish" to no avail.. .
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45
ROBOCOP (JanH): PROVE I'M COWBOY
by AcapulcoGold inrobocop i'd hate to see this classic representative gem of your comprehensive stupidity hidden away in some dim dark little recess of this site for you to sneak away from and others not to enjoy:.
"cowboy", a new id here, wrote: .
quote: .
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tergiversator
Sigh... This is a very silly misunderstanding: Cowboy posted something in the McVeigh thread, ending with the words "Thanks Acapulco Gold" (or something like that), with reference to a previous comment AG had made... JanH misread that to be a signature, and assumed that it was another persona of AG's... prior animosities resurface, anger flies, posters jump to conclusions like so many hyperactive ferrets on a trampoline...
Welcome to the board, Cowboy I think most of us here realized that you're just a regular poster... sorry you got caught up in the middle of a flame war.
-T.
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I attended the meeting tonight.....
by silentlambs ini went to the meeting tonight to check out things in the local congregation.
this spiritual paradise is showing a few cracks.
when i arrived about ten minutes before the meeting started, i felt like a ghost.
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tergiversator
Hey Silentlambs,
"Undf" is such a great word... I'm sorry they're treating you so contemptuously. At least you appear to be making the best of it - raising your hand often, playing tag with the attendant (so thoughtful of you to give him something to do other then, uh, count the number of people there five times).
Just wanted to add my voice to those here who support what you're doing.
-T.
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ignorance is bliss
by teejay ini saw kevin yesterday.. we met almost twenty years ago.
he's not overly blessed with a .
he had a life free from the pain of ever knowing that had been played for a .
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tergiversator
It's something I wonder about, when I think about my friends and family still in... if they are happy, who am I to judge that their happiness is inferior because it is based on a sham?
I think however that I must agree with SixofNine: if your friend Kevin is as happy as he appears to be, he is probably very, very rare. Because most witnesses are being hurt by the organization, in very tangible ways: our parents and family and friends still in who suffer because they have little hope for their "dead" loved ones (er... no pun intended), who will not only die at Armageddon, but also should be treated as mostly dead now.
Witness kids suffer. Even those who think they are doing what is right and are happy because of that (like I was) are still aware of the fact that they are postponing doing things that they would like to do because they have to. It doesn't take a very long list of missed educational opportunities or voice lessons or or school trips or hanging out with worldly friends (without the guilt trip) or being in a play or just not always being so darned different from everyone else every second of every day, to see why being a witness can eat away at whatever happiness is derived from "having the truth".
I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is this: there are many unhappinesses that ail good, obedient, loyal witnesses who wouldn't ever dream of doubting their doctrine. I wonder how many people there are who are simple enough that they would be truly happy with a lifetime of a low-skilled job, an insular routine of meetings and "good" association, unquestioning acceptance of every nuance of every dictate that comes out of Brooklyn, the necessity to always "put on a good face for the world", etc. I tend to doubt that many people could naturally be 'perfect' witnesses without chafing at some aspect or another, at some time in their life.
The only thing that separates us from the ones still inside is a matter of degree: they're not unhappy enough to go through the massive upheaval of re-examining their entire life and belief structure and deepest held convictions, just for the promise of finding something happier. (Well, and then there's everyone else who's caught in between loved ones, and no one has yet come up with a way to really solve that problem...) At some level, perhaps unconsciously, I would venture to guess that most witnesses who appear generally satisfied, who are generally happy with life, at some point have made the mental calculation that the short term cost of finding out the truth and acting on it is too much for a little bit of continual wear and drain from a slowly corrosive religion. So they stay.
That doesn't make it any easier for us, though. I heard from my mom today that my best friend called her up (after receiving a post card from me, I'm guessing) to tell her that she couldn't have any contact with me because her conscience wouldn't let her. She tossed in that innocent little zinger that many here have had to face at some point: when my friend was on the verge of leaving, she said, I was the one who encouraged her to stay. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.... she appears happy now. Who am I to judge?
But if the balance ever tips the other way, if "happy enough" ceases to be enough, then I think we owe it to our friends to be there to help them find real happiness.
-T., who is a sucker for living (as opposed to existing)
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20
This hit a little too close to home
by mommy inthe following appeared in the newspaper this morning:.
a 17-year-old highlands school student was in jail thursday on charges that he had developed a hit list, naming several fellow students he supposedly planned to kill.
highlands police say they arrested andrew douglas quintero, a junior, without incident on wednesday and charged him with 10 misdemeanor counts of communicating threats.. in an interview thursday, highlands school principal jack brooks indicated he wasn't sure whether the student intended to carry out the threats, but said he wasn't taking any chances.. "whether this was done out of humor or it was an expression of anger, i had no idea," brooks said.
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tergiversator
Hi mommy,
It's very scary when something like this happens in your area. I was a senior when Columbine happened, and it was a bit unnerving realizing how similar our high school was to the much-advertised "profile" of schools at risk. I remember having discussions in the days afterwards with some of my friends and teachers about the distant, unapproachable atmosphere of the administration, and the nastiness of the popular cliques (and high school kids in general), and the general feeling of going nowhere that most students seemed to have (especially those who had lived there all their lives; I live elsewhere before moving there in 9th grade).
Of course, we didn't really think anything would happen...
-T., class of '99, Santana High School
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SAVING SEATS
by Amazing intaking 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.
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tergiversator
Hmmm. Horrible places to be as a kid? I still twitch, seven years after I last set foot in Dodger Stadium, thinking about those stairwells... ten feet by ten feet, oven hot, packed in like concentration camp victims on the trains in, getting jabbed in the face by clumsy people wielding deadly umbrellas. You were never moving, just standing there, up two flights of stairs from the last entrance and still down two flights from the next, wondering what's taking the people ahead of you so long, wondering if you will ever see sunshine and feel the wind on your face again, or if you will just quietly die of asphyxiation in the corner. I remember being stuck in stairwells for 30, 45 minutes or more.
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HEY! 2001 CONVENTION POINTS
by Amazing inthe following is a recent jw advertisement about their upcoming conventions.
it can be found on the jw-media.org site under recent news.
i will quote them in italics and then make my own observations.. jehovah's witnesses office of public information.
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tergiversator
slipnslidemaster,
I have to agree with you about those modern day dramas... ugh! The worst part is how all of the dramas nowadays are framed around a modern setting - there is nothing worse than some Bethelite's conception of how "normal" witness families interact than watching them all sit around their incongruous sofas out on center plate, exaggeratedly mouthing phrases like "Gee, Tim, what do you think about that?" "Golly, I never thought of that before, Dad!". The tie-ins were the worst: "You know, son, your problem with being picked on at school reminds me of the story of Elijah and the bears..."
Am I glad I don't have to see another one ever again.
-T., who spent her last District Convention sketching the seats in the stadium, daydreaming, and enviously watching the birds swooping and diving and generally looking like they were enjoying themselves altogether too much on those beautiful summer days...
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DECEPTIVE JE ELDERS - CASE#4a
by Amazing indeceptive jw elders case#4a .
the following case#4a through case#4 (whatever), are a number of events that personally happened to me where jw elders deceived or deliberately lied to me or members of my family.
they are not necessarily written in order of events nor necessarily connected to one another, but they all had an impact on my decision to leave the organization:.
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tergiversator
Hey Amazing,
Great story. I find it highly ironic that, where I live, things were much the reverse: home schooling was widely practiced to avoid being 'contaminated' by the world, and of course to allow 14 year olds to pioneer. None of the elders made it their own personal crusade one way or the other, though.
-T.
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JWs and odd health practices
by Seeker ini noted a long thread earlier that dealt with the frequency with which jws will accept medical practices that are far out of the mainstream.
kinesiology, and herbs, and the like were all mentioned, and there was much discussion about whether these things should be taken seriously or not.
i do not want to get into such a discussion, but wanted to talk about why i think jws are so frequently involved in such health pursuits.. someone mentioned that jws are trained to be suspicious of the medical establishment, and that's right.
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tergiversator
rem,
Your mention of wheat grass made me twitch, remembering the last eight months that I lived at home, just after my mom got remarried and they started growing wheat grass and drinking it in smoothies. Nasty, nasty smelling stuff. My cat liked eating the grass though...
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How to Leave WT and Intact
by JT inone of the most painful things i continue to see here on this forum as well as all the others is that many who want to leave wt simply don't know how to leave and remain "intact" as it were.. i recall talking with jw who "formally disassociated themselves back in the 70s and it was not till the 90s and the net did they finally feel free.
or many who jump up and write a letter off to mo larry and curly (congregation service committee).
while i feel there is absolutely nothing wrong with writing a letter for many it is a matter of.
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tergiversator
Hi Patio,
Sorry to hear that you feel "caught" as it were with your two sons. I've managed to avoid the worst effects of shunning by not living near anyone I know who's still in; this, obviously, is not something most people can arrange. I haven't really been trying to say that everyone should officialy DA themselves, of course; merely that for some people, formal action is better than inaction. And vice versa... Good luck on finding a working solution. (So nice to be able to say that now... )
It's amusing that you mention evolution as the thing that brought you out, because that was one of the first things that got me really wondering about the doctrines (not just disfellowshipping and "headship") - it made me seriously consider the notion that perhaps they were wrong about a lot of things. The last witness-apologetic essay I wrote was on evolution, and my teacher told me what a good job I had done of "reconciling my rational and religious sides", and I felt very embarrassed, because I knew that I hadn't.
Oh, and my screen name: I wrote a poem a couple of months ago (linked off of my webpage, if anyone cares to read it) about leaving the witnesses, and I was playing around with a thesaurus looking up synonyms for "apostate". I came across "tergiversator", which means deserter or someone who runs away from a previous affiliation. Totally inappropriate for my poem, of course, but I thought it was a good screen name.
-T., of the Run Away! class