i keep hearing how everyone posts and says that no one in the congregation noticed or cared about them..i have the opposite problem.
i can't get sick of miss anything and they are all swarming around me "making sure i'm okay" telling me "how much they missed me" and some of them quite sincere about it.
i just wish they would all leave me the hell alone.
without the constant pressure on you a little time away can make you realize you no longer want to be part of it
As my mom says..."Ain't that the screamen'ist truth!"
Funny, how, if you believe the Bible and the accounts of early Christians, J God's followers used to be able to hold onto their faith in isolation. If Joseph or Paul or John had been a JW they'da been oughta the truth for sure!
my mother told me that her bookstudy overseer asked his group this question---"why do you think a mature brother in the truth would just suddenly leave and stop coming to meetings?
any ideas?
" the group gave different opinions and finally he gave what he thought could be the reasons.
But within the last month, 2 other elders questioned her about my family and she told them that if they wanted to visit HER and give her a shepherding call to ENCOURAGE her that would be appreciated but if they wanted to quizz her about me, they should stay home.
Dang. Go Mom!
Is he one of those elders who likes the attention he gets when he "lets people in on stuff" without actually saying anything specific? Lots of people loooove being "in the know" and feeling special when they know something. That "I know a secret and you don't" feeling...but of course, since he's an elder he has to do it by way of instruction rather than just gossip...
"Let's 'reason'* on why this person is a bad example to follow and you should not let your curiosity lead you to be infected by them"...typical WT 'reasoning on a subject'
*JW love of this word is so bizarre to me, considering how little reasoning the average JW is expected to do on their own.
i keep hearing how everyone posts and says that no one in the congregation noticed or cared about them..i have the opposite problem.
i can't get sick of miss anything and they are all swarming around me "making sure i'm okay" telling me "how much they missed me" and some of them quite sincere about it.
i just wish they would all leave me the hell alone.
some of them quit sincere about it
I think that's your key phrase there. Some. Of course, some people are caring, and as good a friends as you can be in an org where you may have to start shunning each other at a moment's notice. They do care, and don't want you to be sick, etc.
And then there's always those who see people acting concerned and are afraid if they don't trot right over and get their 2 cents in, that people will think they're not being 'loving' enough (brother and sister Up-and-coming are especially good at this...I knew one guy who bragged that he got made MS because he always met the elders at the door of the hall and shook their hands )
But then there are others who are just dying to get a little information that might be the least bit exciting, and looking for any evidence that you're up to something they can add to the gossip mills that add a thrill to their basically dull lives.
And there are others yet who hate to have people miss the meetings because, dammit, they had to be there and everyone should suffer equally...Ever notice how some JWs are incredibly threatened by the suggestion that some people they know might 'leave the trooth'? As if they needed the conviction of everyone around them that this was the right religion, to shore up their own??
last evening i recieved an e-mail from my aunt who is not a jw, and she told me that my mom was taken to the hospital with a serious bowel obstruction.
my aunt knowing our family sitution felt it would be a good time to see what your mom would do.
so i called my sister who lives not to far from me.
((OFC))
She did tell you she loves you. I'm sure that took all the courage she had to be a real person instead of a WT drone for a few minutes. They just don't know how to do that.
Cherish that small token. It was a victory for you. Maybe not as big a victory as you were hoping, but some of us (even us whose moms aren't JWs) just have to be content with the moms we got rather than the moms we were hoping for. My grandma was great, too.
Besides, if she was 'too' nice to you, there's a very real possibility it could be used against her by some in the org - that it was her fault you don't 'return to Jehovah' because she's not tough enough on you!
I used to hear people say this about members of the congregation - that they should just stop whining about family who'd left, because they didn't shun them harshly enough, they didn't have reason to come back ("they'll be bloodguilty at Armageddon" was how they talked about those who didn't shun harshly enough)
obviously, mine is a picture of me.....it was taken at a hockey game at staples center: go kings!
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odrade has a very pretty picture and i was wondering if that was her or a character from a movie?
He's my cat (Maine Coon). Littletiger's Sweet William of Imzadis (aka "mama's boo boo"). 18 pounds of snuggle
I think I had that picture taken the day he double granded...but I'm not sure. It's not the best pic of him but he's still cute.
a few days ago, on the thread about ?a new view of the trinity?, rubadub voiced his disappointment as to the lack of any really new view, such as a fourth member who could turn it into a quadrinity or replace any of the members of the trinity in case of emergency.
at the moment i just laughed, but later on i thought the devil could be a very good candidate.
just think: under the influence of persian dualism, shortly after yhwh, the god of ancient israel, became god in the absolute sense (say in the 6th century bc, with second isaiah), satan (from a common hebrew noun meaning ?opposer?
not only is Karl Marx boring...he was also quite wrong
About what? As a social theory (as opposed to a diagram for building a state), Marxist critique of how power and domination is involved in labor relations is very insightful. Sure he was an idealist, but that doesn't detract from his theory...for example, his notion of surplus value as being the difference between the monetary value of the work and the pay of the worker is actually pretty intuitive...once you get past it being Marx most people readily agree it makes sense.
In my experience, most people (especially Americans) can't get past a knee-jerk McCarthy-ist reaction to the mention of Marx, and have difficulty discussing him.
what an audacious question!
" wow, bradley -- how could you stoop to such levels?
do you consider most people as simple sleepwalkers through life not paying much attention to reason, logic, science, history and a desire to understand?
If things work you can prove they work.
I'm not so sure I agree with that. In general it's a pretty good rule of thumb for simple linear causality - in other cases, I would say that if something works, if you are testing the correct root cause, then you can prove it...but proving causality sometimes comes down to being lucky, if you are talking about a complicated system with multiple root causes or emergent properties (complex adaptive systems being the new buzzword), then it's not such a slam dunk.
Sometimes there's a correlation and not causality, sometimes it's a coincidence that you don't see because of your preconceptions (remember the movie Medicine Man?)
The history of science is full of times when we thought we knew why something happened, and it turned out we were wrong.
edited to add: I suppose I should mention that my post is talking about 'science' and 'the scientific' in general, and was critiquing the general (modernist, positivist) notion that "it can be proved!"
(critiques of science are apparently a by-product of having to write an anthro paper on Western "science-based" notions like what is nature, wilderness, and biodiversity...but I digress)...I wasn't specifically referring to "quack" medicine...although I will mention that most anthropologists who study Western medicine (one of my profs included) will point out that a lot of Western medicine has no more basis in "fact" than the stuff we call quackery...but that's a big debate I don't have the time or knowledge to summarize now!!!
if you were given the choice to either be an expert in one specific area and not pursue anything else....or be able to do quite a few different things pretty well but excel in none what would you choose?
this is a question im trying to come to terms with at the moment.
i find joy in a great many activities..... i take care of my family of four meanwhile -im an artist( mostly painting and sculpting)-hot rod and custom bike mechanic/machinist- i write music-am a carpenter for hire- computer building(nerd)-at my job im a chemist and systems mechanic- im also a shade tree inventor-if it breaks i can fix it ...and all of my friends and family know that im there for them when they need me.
Well, I'm in grad school and planning on getting a PhD...so I guess my answer is obvious...neither an expert nor good at several different things!
i see lady lee and yellow lab have already started their own thread, but cj and i thought it would be a good idea to have a one stop shop for everbody's pictures.
lady lee, and yellowlab feel free to repost your pics here.
maybe i'll be able to start a thread that goes beyond 1 page lol
Well, that didn't work. I'll never get this picture thing figured out. (sigh)
read the whole article at: http://www.nypost.com/business/13351.htm.
december 14, 2003 -- another real estate turf war is cooking in brooklyn.
this one squares off dumbo dwellers against jehovah's witnesses, whose plans to build a massive housing complex has the trendy neighborhood residents from down under the manhattan bridge overpass fuming.
Hey, all...since the DUMBO residents expressly said they don't want a "fortress" as the heart of their community, maybe someone (who knows the specifics better than I do) should point out that Bethel went into lockdown on 9/11 to keep 'worldy' people out of their buildings......people in NY should react pretty strongly to that...as they have a right to. I'd hate to have a JW stronghold close to my home
