TerryWalstrom

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Posts by TerryWalstrom

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  8

  My Invisible (cat)

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my invisible (cat) .

  when i was a little boy all the way up to when i was a not-so-little boy, i had sort of ...well--an invisible cat as a friend.. .

  i'll let you adjust to that thought before i continue.... .

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  TerryWalstrom

  It will be shortly!
  My third book, my working title (so far) is
  A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME ON MY WAY TO ARMAGEDDON
  (A Memoir)
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  48

  Paradise? Was it?

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

  the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

  the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

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  TerryWalstrom

  Not to be argumentative...

  
  
  How do we read the mind of a writer long since dust and ashes in the mists of time?
  Intentions? Inaccessible.
  Whose hands (and how many) have touched the malleable narratives and with what motives? Toward what end?
  Uknown merely, or unknowable?
  
  Priests are gatekeepers who hands are outstretched for payment of services rendered. On whose behalf? God? Their own spoils of unending doctrinal battles?
  Litigating for pay as all duty bound attorneys to this day, in service of some blind lady holding a set of scales, the Pharisee listens, cogitates, interprets, and adjudicates eternal "truth"--we hope.
  How is a transcendent being so needy of being served or of having 'needs'?
  Why entrust any eternal purpose to a scrofulous finite creature of narrow intelligence such as a priest?
  And yet, all holy writ has the amanuensis (tampering?), blunting, editing, shaping away like a blind sculptor with a chisel in hand and---motives so pure?
  We know not.
  All of which to say, finally, rabbinical traditions (oral Torah) are all we really have like "Homer's" eternal heroes and villains, dancing across history fully imagined as indelible moral touchstones of eras bygone and crumbling.
  Each new generation re-re-re-re interprets this little jot and that pesky tiddle toward some fresh application, accretion by accretion ever onward, (seldom upward)--one size fits all.
  
  How do we know what THEY imagined is not purely human entirely and irrevocably?
  Counterfeit bills are easily "spent" as long as nobody calls the cops.
  
  
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  48

  Paradise? Was it?

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

  the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

  the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

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  TerryWalstrom

  Well, I probably did a poor job of placing proper emphasis on the dehumanizing state of existence which was Adam's existential fate.
  The first few generations (taking the Bible for what it says without critical bias) of humanity were bereft of what makes all the rest of us truly "human."
  Even apes have more filial and community camaraderie and bonding than Eve or Adam had.
  EVE, in a peculiar sense, was 'mothered' by her husband!
  I meant or intended to mean we need an out-sized magnification of contextual IRONY when we read the Adam and Eve in Eden (pleasure garden) to jolt us out of the mythos momentarily.
  A few moments of forensic deconstruction was what I was attempting more than anything else.
  It's like the time I spoke with the fellow on Starbuck's patio who was a self-styled

  exorcist.
  I asked him how big a demon is.
  Simple question.
  If an entire LEGION can infest a man, rationally and logically, they must be infinitesimal, right?
  I observed this man struggling to reject the question to save himself the adjustment of internal objective analysis. Or so I imagined.
  Things, ideas, concepts float about unmoored in our brain UNLESS we have imposed an organizing principle upon them. This calls for measurements, calibrations, comparatives, and extrapolation.
  
  Unless...
  unless we already know we're in fantasyland. Knowing on some subconscious level we are bullshitting ourselves relieves us of the melancholy burden of such evaluations.
  
  Don't mind me...I do tend to wander off the reservation.
  
  (See my post about the invisible cat I had as a child. That explains everything :)
  
  
• 
  8

  My Invisible (cat)

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my invisible (cat) .

  when i was a little boy all the way up to when i was a not-so-little boy, i had sort of ...well--an invisible cat as a friend.. .

  i'll let you adjust to that thought before i continue.... .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  TerryWalstrom

  MY INVISIBLE (cat)

  
  

  When I was a little boy all the way up to when I was a not-so-little boy, I had sort of ...well--an INVISIBLE CAT as a friend.

  
  

  I'll let you adjust to that thought before I continue...

  
  

  Okay. Ready?

  My invisible cat's name was Tommy.

  Tommy only spoke with W's.

  
  

  I'll let you adjust to this also...

  
  

  Welcome back!

  
  

  My Mom was Tommy's interpreter. I know what you're going to say. And I can't say I blame you. But this whole thing was Mom's idea.

  
  

  At bedtime, Tommy would arrive and greet me.

  I was somehow able to understand him over time the way parents adjust to baby talk or speech impediments in their kids.

  
  

  What Tommy said was, "Hi Terry, how are you this evening." However, it sounded exactly like this.

  "Why Werry, Wow war woo wiss weevening?"

  
  

  Get it?

  _____
  
  

  I'm going to assume at this point you are beginning to understand why Terry grew up weird.

  
  

  Tommy would tell me a bedtime story made up right on the spot, ad-libbed through Lillian (my Mom) his interpreter. (He called her 'Willian'.)

  
  

  Mom never read to me from a storybook.

  No no no.

  Her tales were outlandish on-the-spot concoctions straight from her extraordinary warped imagination. Oh, the strange tales from the cat with the strange tail. (Mom drew a picture of him once. Tommy's tail went on in coils forever like Rapunzel's hair.)

  
  

  I absorbed two things from my invisible friend.

  I can still understand any cat who speaks with W's and I can make up bedtime stories out of thin air.
  
  

  _____

  
  

  From an early age, I craved to become a writer and

  I set about endeavoring to improve my vocabulary.

  I once read how Abraham Lincoln (when he was growing up) would discover and memorize one new vocabulary word each day while reading borrowed books which were too hard for him.

  
  

  Being a kid wound too tight, I overshot Abe’s goal.
  I came up with my own recipe for proficiently rich vocabulary acquisition.
  I would acquire SIXTEEN new words each and every day!

  
  

  Why Sixteen?
  Old Abe Lincoln was the sixteenth President.

  Yeah. I know.

  ____
  
  

  I always carried around a book borrowed from our downtown Carnegie library. It had to be a very difficult book so I could discover extraordinarily weird, wild, and wonderful words.

  
  

  I'd pore through the book as I read and re-read the difficult paragraphs and scoop up a tasty word like a lepidopterist snatches butterflies out of summer sunshine with a net.

  
  

  When I'd acquired sixteen words for the day, I took out my portable dictionary and penciled in the definitions on my list and began writing sentences utilizing the words correctly, colorfully, and colloquially.

  
  

  My teachers in grade school were baffled and distraught by what came out of my mouth and lept off the pages of my homework!

  I could easily tell when my homeroom teacher was grading one of my papers. She'd start shaking her head side to side in puzzlement.

  
  

  "Terry, this isn't even a word!"

  "I'm afraid it is, Miss Allen. Here, let me show you..."

  
  

  I enjoyed this a bit too much I must confess to you.
  (Sidebar: I’ll share with you how I choose from among dictionaries. Any dictionary which does NOT have the word ‘asymptote’ isn’t worth owning!)

  
  

  I digress, however---
  ________

  
  

  Back to my INVISIBLE CAT who speaks in W's!

  
  

  Tommy was very real to my little boy imagination.
  By that I mean, I did understand it was my Mom creating this illusion---except--I let go of that awareness early on. Tommy became quite vividly palpable to me the way Buddha or Jesus takes up residence in the hearts and minds of devotees.
  I LOVED HIM as a dear part of childhood communion with an otherwise difficult parent.

  
  

  The day my mother died of cancer, of all the distraught and mournful thoughts racing through my mind was this extremely distressing (and ABSURD) thought which jolted me.

  
  

  Tommy too was dead.
  ________________
• 
  48

  Paradise? Was it?

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

  the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

  the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

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  TerryWalstrom

  I think our emotions are "informed" by our values. What we involuntarily feel are visceral and palpable signals pointing to what we hold true, valuable, or absolute.

  If I'm walking in the dark and see a coil of rope that looks like a rattlesnake, my spontaneous, instinctive visceral reaction will be a jolt of adrenaline and I'll probably jump away. No time to think about it (which is how instinct works toward survival.)
  The absolute nature of our understanding of "god" is transmitted to us as kids.
  A Buddhist family informs little kids of Buddhist values, a Catholic family inculcates icons, candles, etc. and so on. Our location on Earth is accidental in informing our sensibility and consequently our emotional connection with this "god" of our region and family.
  So, it's not REALLY a choice in any absolute sense.
  I had only the numinous emotional connection of my grandmother's Catholic experiences as related to me by her.
  Then, my best friend (JW) layered on the specifics of JW cult 'data.'
  All the above rather a long-winded preamble to saying this:
  Left to our own devices, I think without specific indoctrinations we'd all end up with a superstitious view of how the universe 'works'.
  My intellect has had to be scoured, and barnacles of Jehovah scraped off.
  The emotional component is surgically bereft of any god-value.
  I have no automatic emotions.
  I see and hear God talk as just so much superstitious/emotional involuntary hocus pocus.
  I neither argue for nor against anybody's idea of god.
  I'm not interested in that.
  I'm interested in people and whether their lives are benefited or crippled by god talk and belief.
  Especially is this true of the JW indoctrination.
  My specific 'talent' is debunking THAT.
  If and when I am able--I am determined to bring a bit of sunshine to those dark prisons and allow some measure of objectivity to an extremely subjective subject.
• 
  48

  Paradise? Was it?

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

  the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

  the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

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  TerryWalstrom

  Fisherman: Sounds to me like you never experienced any real intimacy with God. Or maybe you forgot.
  ___________
  
  A fair issue to raise and a fair one to answer...
  An honest assessment leads me to confess that when I got baptized in 1963 (November 23, day after JFK's assassination) I was 16 years old and only partially spiritual in my understanding of things of a spiritual nature.
  I had Jehovah's Witness head knowledge.
  But something would happen to me.
  Something which made intimacy with God extremely important to me.
  At 18 years of age, I registered for the draft and by 1967 I was standing in District Court listening to Judge Leo Brewster bang his gavel after explaining to me I was being sentenced to a Youth Corrections Act "indeterminate" sentence in Federal Prison.
  The shortest to longest span of this was 6 mos. to 6 years.
  I entered prison in 1967 and received parole in 1969.
  IT GOT REAL IN A HURRY!
  As a scrawny, shy, virginal Jehovah's Witness, just being in the Tarrant County Jail (before transfer 10 days later to Seagoville Federal Institution)
  was a horribly terrifying experience.
  I prayed constantly.
  The REALITY of God ramped up one hundred fold.
  I had a copy of the NWT with the cover ripped off (strange regulation for jail) and I read my Bible and memorized verses and went over the "meaning" constantly.
  I was a sponge and all things God were soaking into me for survival and to stave off panic and terror.
  Once I arrived in Federal prison and joined about 40 other Brothers, we had 5 meetings each week and special study sessions on the side.
  I had become a TRUE BELIEVER.
  I was actually a fanatic.
  The letters I wrote read like a wide-eyed cult member in every way.
  There's no doubt in my mind--I was talking to God (inside my head) day and night and my sense of His presence was palpable.
  
  Then I was sexually attacked and I went into a kind of recoil and shock.
  Even though Jehovah had obviously deserted me at the moment I cried out to Him for help--I made excuses. I was stunned and brooding but putting on a happy face. Stoic. Good sport. Look Ma--no hands!
  
  By the time I received parole and returned to my congregation in Fort Worth, Texas, I had split into fractured parts. The public side of me was the brave little Witness, faithful and true. I became a Pioneer.
  And...
  I slowly started losing my mind.
  _____
  So, that's my answer, Fisherman. I have been very intimately involved with God and I got a really good glimpse of Him.
  Because I was there for Him and He wasn't there for me--I slowly turned my anger on myself rather than blame Almighty up above.
  I was a walking, talking case study in cognitive dissonance.
  ____
  Then, one day--I decided to escape.
  I packed my JW wife and 3 little ones in a 1970 Ford Maverick and drove to California to pursue a career in Art.
  It took 7 or 8 years for my separation from Jehovah and his mighty band of Witnesses to come to fruition because I slowly faded (with several relapses).
  Finally, I got my "divorce" from everyone and everything JW.
  There have been many years of healing.
  I never have quite recovered from rape.
  Go figure.
  But--I decided I'd spend the rest of my life trying to help other Dubs get out or at least wake-up.
  
  It was around 1989 when I was lying in bed one night praying that I suddenly myself WOKE UP and realized the painful truth: I was just talking to myself.
  
  
  
  
• 
  48

  Paradise? Was it?

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

  the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

  the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

  1. 
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  TerryWalstrom

  Things we accept as absolute are never thought of analytically again.
  Think of it like currency. We are handed a $20 and pocket it without a care.
  Counterfeit?
  Um, gosh--I never thought to check!
  "Fool me once--shame on you, etc."
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  32

  Interesting conversation with JW friend

  by Jules Saturn in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i was withh a friend of mine who is a jw still and for whatever reason we started talking the bible.

  i asked him about lazarus and how is that when he died he paid the price of sin, but then jesus resurrected him.

  and i asked him "where is lazarus today?

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  TerryWalstrom

  None of the Witnesses are big "thinkers" because it is done on their behalf.
  Jehovah pours "Truth" in one end of the pipe and it comes out the GB pipeline on the other end.
  Except-- it is never exactly the same--because, if it were, it would never need adjusting or brightening.
  The same is true of Bible stories which, by accretions in the retelling, grew ever more miraculous beyond any rational basis. After all, think how much hyperbole is contained in the simple words:
  

  John 21:25New King James Version (NKJV)

  25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.
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  35

  Leah Remini Scientology series might tackle Jehovah's Witnesses in season 3

  by jp1692 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i've seen comments by some on leah's expose on scientology: aftermath.

  she actually won an emmy for this show.

  rumor is that she might take on jehovah's witnesses in season 3. .

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  TerryWalstrom

  From an "insider":
  "A&E has been attacked legally so badly by Scientology that they held off writing the first check for our JW series because of fear of JW litigation..."
  
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  48

  Paradise? Was it?

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  paradisewas it really paradise to be in paradise?adam and eve never were held by a mother, never cuddled and sung to with a lullaby nor nursed or coddled with tenderness or any human familial embrace.

  the first humans (adam and eve) never learned to toddle surrounded by brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents cheering them on.

  the entire experience of childhood was excised surgically like a trauma patient awakening from an accident with amnesia.adam and eve were never in a neighborhood with other kids forming friendship bonds for life and exchanging dreams and hopes for a future they were building in their community.

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  TerryWalstrom

  Once we accept and believe anything, we don't actually THINK about it any longer

  from a critical or analytical aspect. We move the "as is" around this way and that as a "given."
  Taking a step back, as though just presented with information, with fresh eyes as it were, we are likely to astonish ourselves with what suddenly looms menacingly to shake us away from unquestioning acceptance.