Posts by Threestars

99

ANYTHING EXCITING EVER HAPPEN AT YOUR KINGDOM HALL?

by anewme in

jw
friends

did anything exciting or alarming ever happen at your hall?

i remember only funny incidents, like one brother getting up there with his zipper down.

(i knew alot of brothers after that felt no shame to actually check down there before going up on the podium!

ANYTHING EXCITING EVER HAPPEN AT YOUR KINGDOM HALL?

by anewme in

jw
friends

did anything exciting or alarming ever happen at your hall?

i remember only funny incidents, like one brother getting up there with his zipper down.

(i knew alot of brothers after that felt no shame to actually check down there before going up on the podium!

Threestars

I have a LOT of memories. Here are the ones that most stand out:

Once at a circuit assembly, between sessions, one of those giant fire extinguishers or oxygen tanks or something, fell off the wall onto its tip which broke off--and the thing shot across the floor all through the crowd like a missle weaving in and out of people and knocking chairs over. It was actually very terrifying. Thankfully no one was injured but everyone was running and screaming.

The recordings for the songs used to have a musical "interlude" between the second and third verse. A deaf elderly brother would always start the third verse and sing through that interlude all by himself. No one ever said anything but once I was standing next to the POs daughter and we got the hysterical giggles and made commotion all through the final prayer.

Right before the first session was going to start at a huge district convention in Phoenix, a gigantic globe that was supposed to represent the earth, I guess, and which was suspended from the ceiling of the Colleseum, broke off its tether and crashed to the floor right behind the speaker's podium. Everbody said it was Jah's spirit that caused it to fall when it did because if it had been ten miuntes later a bunch of people would have been standing in that very spot, waiting to give their "experiences".

When I was ten years old my Mom got upset after the service meeting and started crying because the POs wife had come up to criticize her for something. Then the PO and my Dad came up to find out what was going on and the PO took his wife's side, of course, and told my Dad to "take that spoiled brat home". Well, my Mom flipped out, (she had had three babies and two miscarriages in five years and suffered from depression) stood up and grabbed my Dad's bookbag and started hitting the PO with it and screaming "YOU SON OF A B***H!!!" I can remember Dad's books flying everywhere and that old fart of a PO putting his arms up to protect his head. It seems funny now but at the time I was crying as you can well imagine.

99

ANYTHING EXCITING EVER HAPPEN AT YOUR KINGDOM HALL?

by anewme in

jw
friends

did anything exciting or alarming ever happen at your hall?

i remember only funny incidents, like one brother getting up there with his zipper down.

(i knew alot of brothers after that felt no shame to actually check down there before going up on the podium!

Threestars

I seriously wonder if it was not a true demonic attack, or whatever. she did look possesed. her eyes were bulging out in an impossible way, her voice changed and started yelling nonsense.

What you describe is a fairly typical epileptic seizure. Shouting out nonsensical words, in particular, swear-words or obscene words is Tourette's Syndrome. Unfortunately many JWS are still living in the dark ages when these illnesses were considered demon attack. the victims were often burned at the stake. Today they're just DFed. This happened to the son of our PO whan I was a teen. The PO had to step down.

15

I DIDNT KNOW YOU HAD TO CONFESS..................HONESTLY

by vitty in

jw
friends

i was in the borg for 20 years and didnt realize you had to confess, until my daughter did a dirty deed.. she was hysterical one evening, after seeing her bf and told us that they had been doing a bit of fumbling and now her bf needed to confess to the elders!!!!!!!!!!.

i was really shocked, i asked if she was truly sorry and she said yes, did she think jehovah forgave our sins if we were really sorry.

she said this wasnt enough.

Threestars

I don't know if nowadays there are formal rules about confessing, but the last time I was regularly attending meetings (briefly, thank goodness) it was considered something you had to do. I knew a young divorced woman, a recent convert, who told me that she had developed a "bad masturbation habit" before she had come into the truth and was constantly calling the elders for support when she felt the urge and, I guess, confession if she slipped up. I remember thinking about how ridiculous the whole thing was. One of the elders just happened to be my boss at work (he was a really nice man BTW and good looking too) and I could never look at him without suppressing a giggle after that.

She would probably get one of them on the phone talking and then continue with her, well, nevermind.

Around the same time my Dad had a brief extramarital fling with a totally bonkers, twenty-eight year old, JW woman. She was one of those who had been a Dub since birth. She got DFed and he just got reproof for their dalliance. She had gone to the elders and confessed everything they had done, apparently just some heavy petting (yuckyuckyuckyuck) and at first my Dad denied it but then gave in and boohooed a lot and begged forgiveness. She, on the other hand, got snippy with the elders and told them that they just didn't know what it was like to be horny since they all could go home to their wives in bed ( I got all this info from the ever-present gossip mongers in our cong).

Well, a couple of years later, she was reinstated and my Dad came to me and told me that he felt he needed to go to the elders and tell them that in the past this woman had told him in strictest confidence, of course, that she would never marry until she had conquered her masturbation habit. He said he was certain that she was still "doing it" since she still wasn't married and that the elders didn't know about it, and that they should know so they could help her, etc etc etc. I tried to get him not to--I actually felt sorry for her but he went ahead and told them anyway.

What a bunch of wierdos!

27

When a family member has bi-polar.

by purplesofa in

jw
friends

as some of you know, my daughter has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.

its been years of dealing with it, until a proper diagnosis, plus she has addictions....alcohol and drugs.

she did get approved for disability and just now has medical benefits.

Threestars

My life shattered into a living nightmare six years ago when my youngest child, my only son, was diagnosed with severe early-onset schizo-affective disorder, which is basically all of the symptoms of bipolar illness (he's a rapid cycler--sometimes ten or fifteen times per day) along with schizophrenia. I had left my husband seven months before our youngest child was born because he had become dangerously psychotic, however I had believed it to be caused by drug and alcohol abuse. Then, at age twelve, our son started to act just like the father he had never met.

He had been a beautiful, intelligent, loving child, a straight A student. After his diagnosis his docs and I were able to note that there were signs (called "prodromal") as he was growing up. He was a loner, he had trouble making connections between ideas, he occasionally had OCD, but I never made a big deal of anything since he did so well in school and was so kind and sweet. Within a year after fifth grade his grades dropped to failing and he lapsed into first a severe depression, then violent outbursts, bizarre obsessions about his body,and then I came home from work one day with food for dinner and he met me at the door with the most horrible grin on his face and told me that he knew that I was putting poison into his food. I knew in that instant that my son was schizophrenic and it felt exactly if I had been hit with a sledgehammer in my stomach. I think a big part of me just died right then.

He's been hospitalized eight times in the last six years and had two suicide attempts. They can't seem to find the right combination of meds to keep him stable. He's on clozaril and abilify right now but the clozaril has affected his heart and can cause death without constant monitoring. For the last year and a half it has been so bad that I myself have gone into a terrible depression and I don't even want to share some of the thoughts that go through my head at times. Mental illness takes a terrible toll, not only on the victims, but also on the family members who love them.

Please believe that I know exactly what you are going through. I send my deepest sympathy to you. You have a hard road ahead of you unless you are willing to completely disown your child and I don't think that is your intention. You need to be very strong AND courageous. Mental illness is the "Demon" of all illnesses, and I don't mean that in the JW sense. You will become very sensitive to "crazy people" jokes. No one would ever think of making a TV sitcom about the humorous side of cancer and no one would ever come to a company halloween party costumed as a quadriplegic or a patient suffering the side effects of chemo therapy but it seems that the mentally ill are fair game for insensitivity along those lines. Please take care of yourself--and I hope you are able to have a good support system.

18

Jehovah's Witness Cannibal eats man's thumb

by MinisterAmos in

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_headline=cannibal-munched-pensioner-s-thumb--&method=full&objectid=18860588&siteid=89520-name_page.html

Threestars

but schizophrenia is overrepresented in dubs

This may be true--I've researched the illness extensively since my son became ill and I was curious since even though he was never a JW --I left the borg long before he was born -- I saw plenty of examples of mental problems within its ranks while I was a member. But the cult doesn't cause the illness anymore than it can cause diabetes or cancer. It can cause someone to relapse, though, through idiotic notions and council, and relapse for a schizophrenic can be fatal.

Schizophrenia is NOT caused by emotional turmoil. It's a terrifying brain disorder that is genetic in origin and some researchers also believe that problems during gestation of the fetus can trigger the start of the illness that will develop later in life. It can also be triggered (if the genetic predisposition is already there) by a cerebral accident of some kind, even a minor one such as a slight blow to the head. It's often misdiagnosed as well, going untreated which makes illness worse and harder to treat. Each relapse or decompensation, as the docs call it, steps the disease up a notch.

What I do think is that the JW religion attracts many of these "lost souls" who have become alienated from society and their families and who live with the daily struggle of their illness and of the horrific side effects of the meds they have to take.

They are welcomed and love-bombed and then, as often happens with schizophrenics, they stop their meds. At that point they are usually DFed or marked/shunned due to their "satanic" and "demonized" behavior and many of them commit suicide.

I once knew a young man in the early 1970's, a recent convert, who was almost certainly a schizophrenic. He was quiet and shy and acted strange. He took a lot of pills (my brother was his roommate) and some of the local sisters convinced him that he could throw away his meds if he just drank their vitamin concoctions and went to a chiropracter every week. Well, he wound up DFed and a few months later dead in a hotel room on skid row.

18

Jehovah's Witness Cannibal eats man's thumb

by MinisterAmos in

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/tm_headline=cannibal-munched-pensioner-s-thumb--&method=full&objectid=18860588&siteid=89520-name_page.html

Threestars

In all fairness, a person with schizophrenia can be a member of any religion. Approximately 2% of the general population suffers from this devastating illness. Left untreated the victim usually harms him or herself but sadly sometimes others are injured, most often close family members or their caretaker. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/JeremyPerkins/

In the past people with untreatable schizophrenia were placed into state hospitals but in the 1970's Ronreagan closed them all down so now they are mostly left to fend for themselves and part of the problem is med compliance. I don't know how it is in the UK but in America most of the homeless people are schizophrenics who have no one to watch out for them.

In the above link the young man who murdered his mother/caregiver had not been treated because his religion thought it could be controlled through the power of prayer or some such other bull$. It used to be that the dubs didn't believe in psychiatrists either but I don't know for sure how it is now. (anybody have any of the latest on that?)

I'm sure if the fellow who ate that poor guy's thumb is really and truly a JW and not just claiming to be --he will have everyone in his local cong saying that he was demon possessed but he may not be one at all. My son who is NOT a JW but who has been around them all his life is a schizophrenic and every so often he gets all crazy-religious and goes out on the street preaching and claiming to be a JW, and scaring people,much to my Mom's and the local elders horror. (I always find it somewhat amusing and tease my Mom by telling her that her grandson is going to start attending meetings--I would even go to a couple just to see the looks on some of their faces when the poor kid starts his carrying-on)

I would venture to say that depression and suicide are the more common mental disorders suffered by dubs.

69

Final Thought About Atheism

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

final thought about atheismafter having reviewed the last thread about atheism, i have decided there.

exists a common theme among the postings.

the themes surrounding the .

Threestars

Atheism does not preclude there being a realm outside that which we can sense. (Duh!! I cant see the UV spectrum so it doesnt exist) It just precludes superstition about that which we cant see.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

HEAR! HEAR! You said it!!!

(Does anyone remenber the old Star Trek where, I think, Kirk and Spock had travelled back in time to medieval Europe and they were accused of witchcraft because of their transponder, or, was it their ballpoint pens? Either one back then would have caused that problem. Oh, that's right, teleportation doesn't exist yet--but BALLPOINT PENS DO, and so do radios, TVs, computers, cellphones...)

8

The Lord is Risen!

by UnDisfellowshipped in

jw
friends

happy resurrection day ("easter") everyone!.

today, i just want everyone to think about the reason why this day was originally celebrated by the early christians.

it had nothing to do with rabbits or eggs or chickens or baskets.. it was all about the risen lord, jesus christ, who conquered death so that we could have life in him.

Threestars

I read Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces and it was somewhat of a shock to discover (after my JW upbringing) that the story of Jesus is older than time, in one form or another. For the faithful "Christian" it is a reality, the only story that matters--but that doesn't alter the fact that the Hero Archetype has been described over and over, since the beginnings of history. The Christians will argue that Christ was the final archetype, the fulfillment, if you will, of all previous stories. The bottom line is that none of us were there to witness Jesus' miracles and resurrection; it is by FAITH alone that one believes. If one practices the true sayings of Jesus as written in the Beattitudes, then he or she would never, ever proseletize to the point of becoming obnoxious, or worse yet, decide to take up arms to defend that faith.

http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist2/hero.htm

24

Story I've been waiting to hurl everybody's way...

by IsaacJS2 in

story time!

this is what renewed my wt ire a little while back.. we were flooded .

we stayed with her jw aunt .

Threestars

Those dub pictures remind me of a song by the Talking Heads, "Nothing but Flowers" that was reorded a few years back.

Here are some excerps from the lyrics.

Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden

From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers

We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner

There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers

If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower

This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries

This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield

Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle