Posts by truman

38

Conjuring Uo Our Own Gods

by startingover in

jw
friends

found this interesting article in the ny times.

i had never heard of a tulpa before.

for those of us that don't buy into certain posters claims, this may be an explanation.. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/opinion/luhrmann-conjuring-up-our-own-gods.html?_r=0.

truman

There's a subreddit for people who want to make their own tulpas

45

Letter From Whitney's Mother

by breakfast of champions in

jw
friends

just saw this on google news.

link to letter here.. .

dear family, i want to tell you that although this has been the worst of my lifes tribulations, that i am still standing.. the obvious reason is that jehovah is the faithful keeper of promises holding to his word that never, would his great love allow his precious children to be tested beyond what we could bear.

truman

The letter written by Whitney's mother is painful to read. But I understand where she is in her reaction to the loss of her child. Perhaps some here may remember that just over six months ago, I, too, lost my adult son, an active JW who was murdered (not by a fellow JW, but that is no consolation for me).

Early on, I felt compelled to write thank you letters and the like to express my gratitude for community support in the aftermath of my son's murder (although I never thought or said that any consequence or response could compensate for or justify what happened to my son and to all of us who love him). The experience of loss and grief is extremely complex and individual, but I see two important elements in understanding the response/letter of Whitney's mother.

First, there is the overwhelming and consuming need to find/create/discover/manufacture meaning in what seems utterly meaningless and indescribably cruel, the murder of one's child. For an active JW, that search for meaning is going to be set in a JW paradigm, which will predictably be cast as a way of saving worldly people for Jehovah. Certainly, it is my feeling that this grieving mother may find such clichéd and cloying sentiments quite hollow once she has time to breathe and begin to orient herself to the new reality in which she now lives.

Secondly, JWs are indoctrinated to see 'worldly people' as lacking human kindness and compassion, and most certainly unable to act on those feelings. I have not been a JW for 10 years, but I was one for over 27, and even for me, there was surprise at the open-hearted community response to my son's tragedy. Not that I still see non-JWs as without compassion, more like I just never thought I would see it directed at me. This mother is probably genuinely surprised, as well. Then, too, there is the urge to grasp at any extended hand of light in a life that has suddenly darkened in the worst way possible. Not to mention that there may be a lot of subtle pressure on her to steer any response to events away from "bringing reproach upon Jehovah's name" with the scandalous fact that Whitney's murderer is also a JW, and a sexually deviant one at that.

I cry every day for my son, sometimes only in my mind and sometimes with hot, desperate tears. Whitney's mother, like me, is now a different person than she was before her child was murdered. She does not yet know who that person is to be (and neither do I for that matter, in my own case), but she is frantically trying to cling to the tattered shreds of who she was when her daughter still smiled and hugged her last. That would be a JW who has been taught that no sacrifice is too great to draw another body into the Kingdom Hall, even the loss of one's child. After all, how many JWs have lost children to the blood doctrine and tried to make child martyrdom look like a hidden miracle?

I am very sad for Whitney's stricken mother, and her letters and statements here and now are only rationalizing cries in a world that for her has gone insane.

26

Jehovah protects Jehovah's Witnesses !!! Have you heard this?

by Balaamsass in

new story on my google alerts today.

one more real life experience to counter what i have heard old jws, assembly parts and c.o.s spout for years.. jws kidnapped and beheaded;.

abu bandit with p6-m bounty nabbed in basilan.

truman

Still thinking, I know there is much wisdom in what you say, and perhaps eventually, I will be able to approach some of these things. It is so true, that I must find a new way of being, but I often have doubts about whether there is one for me that I can feel anything but sadness in. I have not found any local support groups as yet, but I am working with a counselor. That helps, I guess. As is often the case, such a profound loss brings up a lot of other unresolved issues in a person's life, and so we must deal with a whole entanglement of difficult emotional terrain. I don't really know what to expect from myself, so I try to take each day as I can make it through. Some are better than others, but Glendon is dead in all of them. I am not sure if it is fair to others to expose them to the rawness of my emotional state, but neither can I put on the good soldier's face and keep a stiff upper lip. Anyway, in spite of my depressive writing above, I very much appreciate your kind and caring words and good energy. I am trying to keep going.

3rdgen, I have sent a reply. Thank you.

Yes, King Solomon, that is a glaring case of negligence, if there ever was one. Any parent knows that the inexperience of children calls for extra watchfulness and caution in the face of dangerous temptations. To deliberately create one, leave it unguarded, and then exact severe and permanent punishment when human intellectual curiosity does what comes naturally is tantamount to child abuse.

26

Jehovah protects Jehovah's Witnesses !!! Have you heard this?

by Balaamsass in

new story on my google alerts today.

one more real life experience to counter what i have heard old jws, assembly parts and c.o.s spout for years.. jws kidnapped and beheaded;.

abu bandit with p6-m bounty nabbed in basilan.

truman

Thank you still thinking, Balaamsass, BroMac, and 3rdgen for your hugs and good thoughts. Still thinking, I will make a new thread soon. I appreciate that suggestion, but perhaps I need to wait until I can reach a somewhat less negative place than I seem to be at presently. So many days I feel very hopeless. I try to believe that this will not always be the way.

3rdgen, I am so sorry to learn that you, too, have to bear this terrible misery. I know that it always retains the power to rise up with full emotional force undimmed with time. I have begun to feel that I must reject the language of healing and recovery that so is so often used in connection with grief. The way I see it, healing is not even a relevant term. Healing implies that what has been injured regains its former health, and that can never happen when one’s child is dead. The best I have been able to reach is to think of it in terms simply of movement, or if I am in a better frame of mind, perhaps of growth that accommodates the pain but works to develop functional ways of being along with it.

I am thinking about the ways that JWs deal with the very human need to find explanation and meaning for the random acts of tragedy that come into our lives at various times (and as I write this, the news is breaking about a horrific mass shooting in Aurora, CO where 14 have been shot to death and many others wounded at a premiere of the new Batman movie). JWs are no different than any of us in needing to make some sense of what seems so senseless. The problem with their narratives in which Jehovah gets all credit for any good, minor and major, and no accountability for the pain and suffering that is an unavoidable part of human existence is that it is such threadbare comfort. They are told to “throw their burdens on Jehovah,” but the reply through his surrogate borganization is only “do more”— more meetings, more service, more obedience. They develop a sadly distorted version of the very slave mentality the WT so often touts as the proper mental state for JWs, something like an abused dog, chained to his doghouse and licking his master’s hand for what few casually tossed crumbs he can get.

26

Jehovah protects Jehovah's Witnesses !!! Have you heard this?

by Balaamsass in

new story on my google alerts today.

one more real life experience to counter what i have heard old jws, assembly parts and c.o.s spout for years.. jws kidnapped and beheaded;.

abu bandit with p6-m bounty nabbed in basilan.

truman

Just as with these poor souls in the report above, Jehovah must have been looking the other way when my son was murdered. This whole topic troubles me so much, and always has. The supposed blessings or protection from Jehovah are so capriciously 'distributed' as to be a bigger mystery of God than the trinity. Yet, JWs are quick to attribute to their Jehovah credit for any minor fortuitous happenstance or action from fellow humans that benefits them.

For example, the day after my dear Glendon died, his JW wife had a gaggle of JWs around her assisting with various necessary things (and I do not mean to imply that I am ungrateful for the way they rallied around her; they did help immensely). Arrangements for his body had to be made, and I heard one of the JW women make a comment to the following effect: Jehovah must be watching out for us/his wife since the first funeral home we called on the list of those recommended by the sheriff's department, the one said to be most economical, did not answer the phone. Now the second one we called has offered to pay for all the expenses and charge nothing to the family. While this act of compassion by the funeral home (Franklin and Downs in Modesto, CA--they were absolutely wonderful to us) was certainly a blessing, I could barely contain myself at the stupidity of this JW 'sister's' comment. The obvious question that they never seemed to see was screaming in my mind. Where was Jehovah when Glendon was getting his chest blown apart? Could Jehovah not have seen fit to protect one of his faithful servants by merely deflecting a bullet a fraction of a degree so that Glendon did not die? No, Jehovah failed to do what he as god might have done so easily, leaving the only mercy to come from human agencies like funeral directors who show their compassion freely to our stricken family.

Another case that I know of personally: A long-time JW couple was traveling to a circuit assembly on a route that included some rural roads. As they drove only a few minutes from the Assembly hall, their car was struck by another vehicle speeding through a stop sign on a cross street. Both JWs were gravely injured and bleeding out at the scene. Another JW came along immediately after the accident and tried to offer first aid at the scene. The couple survived, although with long recovery times and permanent effects. The 'blessing' I heard later was that, thank Jehovah, the JW who helped had some spare Watchtowers in his car which he was able to use as a compress on the victims' wounds so as to stop the bleeding. Once again, Jehovah ignores the obvious blessing of a minute speed difference which would make the accident a non-event, but sure comes through with the power of the Watchtower as a first aid tool. Praise Jah.

31

How an original STAR TREK episode nearly cost me my first JW marriage in its first year...true story I find funny/sad

by oompa in

jw
friends

so i'm 21, just married, and raised in my fathers image and thank god he liked sci-fi...a genre i was able to escape to new worlds in.

he even took me to a trekkie covention when i was albout 12 at the greensboro coliseum and it was packed.

we had watched every episode over and over...i thought.

truman

Not all JWs are hard cases against Star Trek. One of the actually positive experiences I had in that regard occurred when another 'sister' and I had purchased rather expensive and non-refundable tickets to an appearance of Shatner and Nimoy when they were touring during the 90s. We had bought the tickets way in advance, and it turned out that a CO visit had an extra meeting arranged for the same Saturday night set for the ST event. We spoke to the CO about it and he said we should go ahead and go to the Star Trek performance; we could catch his talk at a nearby KH the next week. We were sooo grateful :(. We went to see Shatner and Nimoy, and it was great. We never did catch up on the missed CO meeting.

322

My son was murdered today

by truman in

i have been on this site daily, almost from its beginning, since i left the jws in 2001, but i have been more of a reader than a poster, as you can see from my post count.

i know few here know me, although i know many of you through reading your posts.

maybe it is not right to ask for support, when i generally stay quietly in the background of this forum, but i want only to speak a human misery of the deepest kind.

truman

Quandry, it just makes me ache to hear your experience with the loss of your parents. Hard doesn't even begin to describe dealing with those kinds of feelings.

Thank you for the caring support, rocketman, wolfman85, New Chapter, and SweetBabyCheezits. The positive energy of others on my behalf has been and continues to be a real force to keep me going through these days.

Still thinking, blurt and blurt some more. It just helps to be able to talk about things.

I did go back and do my first class today. I had another person there to assist me, the teacher who had been filling in. It was a fairly easy day, since the students had essay drafts to do peer review (read and comment on one another's papers). Still, it was difficult, with me all teary-eyed at first, but I got through. The semester is over in a couple of weeks, so I think I can get that much done. Mostly, as I walk around campus, I just have this sense of detacchment from everything. It is all familiar, yet distant and strange. This is a time for reexamining things in my life. One thing I am learning is to let go of my perfectionist expectations for myself. I just do what I can do, and that is all I can do. Tomorrow, I am going to lunch with a friend, so that will be good. I sit here tonight in my computer room/library, and look at the stack of condolence cards I need to write 'thank you' cards for, but everything I start, I know I will end up crying, and I let them sit. Gotta do it soon. On the whole, I cry less, but my energy for doing things is not what it used to be.

322

My son was murdered today

by truman in

i have been on this site daily, almost from its beginning, since i left the jws in 2001, but i have been more of a reader than a poster, as you can see from my post count.

i know few here know me, although i know many of you through reading your posts.

maybe it is not right to ask for support, when i generally stay quietly in the background of this forum, but i want only to speak a human misery of the deepest kind.

truman

Thank you Talesin and MMXIV. I hope the work does something positive. I am a bit afraid of collapsing in a heap when I am confronted with a room full of 20-year-olds who think they are invulnerable. I will have help from the person who has been taking the class in my absence. Today was a reasonably even day for me, and if what has been happening is any indication, tomorrow I am due for tears. Perhaps there is instruction in that, too. The students know what happened, and the interim teacher had them do a short in-class writing to me. I am sure that I cannot read these without crying. I am starting to cry just thinking about them. I read a book today written for parents who have lost adult children, and it told me that the phases of grief should not be expected to be a straight line path. It seems like a recursive process, from what I can see; one must keep going back over the same ground of denial, anger, deep sadness, and acceptance, even as working through each new phase, circling back and around in a forwardly oriented spiral. The challenge is not to become stuck in one of those stages. The county and state where I live have victim's services which provide counseling; I am going to take advantage of the opportunity.

Still thinking, I am so sorry to learn of your miscarriage. I have not experienced this and can only imagine the pain it has brought you. Lost futures are so heartbreakingly sad, at whatever age our children die. I don't think mothers ever "get over it." I hope your ceremony at the beach will help you and the rest of your family move toward some peace. I appreciate your comments in response to my own about the tendency to judge oneself in progress through grief--or through any of life's challenges. At one point a few days ago, I read something that said that after a child's death, you are changed permanently, a different person. I value and strive for personal growth, but that idea made me recoil. I did not want to be a different person at this cost. But I have no choice. I am different now, and it seems to be the project to discover who I am anew with this change. I hope I can be someone who brings something beautiful into the world to honor the memory of my son and the future he does not have with us. Time will tell, I guess. Right now, the sadness is too strong. I am working hard not to judge this new person I am by the standards of my old self. Maybe they needed to be changed, but gods, what a price for that.

Anne

13

A death in my family (JW funeral)

by fade_away in

for the first time in my life i have lost someone close to me that i loved very much.

my brother died last week of an asthma attack.

i just got back from the funeral that was held yesterday.

truman

fade_away, I am so sorry for your loss. Having only 2 weeks ago lost my gentle, humble, sweet 35-year-old son to murder, I can feel the freshness of your pain resonate with my own. My son's brother is in your position. We are struggling to cope, too. Although I left the Jws a decade or so ago, my son was still a JW and had a JW memorial. It is difficult to see the loved one get short shrift, while the WTS message gets a full-on infomercial. In our case, the circumstances of my son's death were so shocking that the individual JWs had barely anything to say. I heard many say, "there are no words for this." Still, the local JWs did the best they could to memorialize my son, but they have little to draw upon. Their grief was real, but their belief system is hollow and their memorial format is dictated by the Watchtower Society; in times of deep pain, JWs have only platitudes at hand. In order to find some comfort for ourselves that we did not get at the JW memorial and to honor my son more fully, we did our own family ceremony a week later. It was peaceful and beautiful. It has not made the pain go away, but it did help us make some forward progress through our grief. As the mother of a dead son who died senselessly in the middle of his young adulthood, let me say that your mother is in deep pain and will be for a long time. What an additional burden she must carry because she is a JW who must "not mourn as the world does," but must only repeat the JW resurrection mantra to express her loss.

As for the conclusions you have reached, or wish you had not reached, about the nature of life and death (and G/god), I cannot say much. Death is painful,whether one has religious faith or not. In the decade since I left the JWs, I have come to realize that rational understanding of the world may seem to preclude any real life of the spirit , but for me that does not have to be the only way to view things. I am a thinker and a skeptic at heart. I am also a believer in something that goes beyond what we can see and touch and measure with our scientific instruments. At this point in my life I can allow these two aspects of understanding to co-exist in myself. Each serves me, and they mutually balance the tendency to invest in either blindly. None of this is making my pain go away.

I hope that you will be able to reach a point in your grief that will allow you to appreciate the good things of your brother's life without the pain of his loss obscuring them. That is what I am trying to reach for in my circumstances. It is a long road to journey, I am seeing. As a fellow traveler, I offer my sorrow along with yours for our lost son and brother.

Anne

322

My son was murdered today

by truman in

i have been on this site daily, almost from its beginning, since i left the jws in 2001, but i have been more of a reader than a poster, as you can see from my post count.

i know few here know me, although i know many of you through reading your posts.

maybe it is not right to ask for support, when i generally stay quietly in the background of this forum, but i want only to speak a human misery of the deepest kind.

truman

Thank you so much for your continuing encouragement, still thinking. It is a daily struggle. One day, I feel that I may be on the upward path, but the next, I am teary and a mess all day. On Saturday, I, my husband, and my younger son and his wife held our own private family memorial for Glendon. It was beautiful and we all felt better for having done it. Today, I have dissolved into sadness again. I am going to try to return to my teaching duties (I am a TA with a college-level first-year-composition class that meets 2 days a week) this week, with some help. I am not sure how it's going to go, but sitting home feeling sad is not going very well, I know that. I have some good friends, both online and off, both old and new, who are helping me greatly with encouragement and support and generous amounts of their time. I tend to be quick to judge myself for not making the progress through my sadness that I somehow think I should, and I think that maybe one of the lessons I will learn here is to give myself time without judgment, along with continued work to move forward. It's a tough lesson.