has anyone seen the news about jessica lynch's book (which isn't even written yet).
on the news last night the father of one of lynch's company of soldiers was on tv stating that since his son was part of her experience that she should share the profits from her book.
his son was killed in that battle in iraq.
If you have followed this whole news story VERY carefully from the get go, here is what you would know:
1. Jessica's "heroics" were hyped and way overblown from the start
2. It later developed that she basically had an auto accident, blacked out and was taken prisoner
3. She was rescued from an unguarded hospital at zero risk to the soldiers who went in after her
4. Her million dollar book is being written by a reporter who got fired from the NY Times for fabricating stories
hello, just wondering who is going out to the ex jehovah's witness convention in allentown, pa. it is in october (18-20) and should be great.
i am going out there from san diego.
would love to have someone to travel with or meet there.
"Witnesses Now For Jesus," started over 20 years ago by the late Bill Cetnar, and still run by his wife, Joan
...this name rings a bell. Many years ago, perhaps 20 or so, my daughter was visiting family for several days in a nearby state. They went to their local KH on Sunday morning and when they arrived there were several brothers standing around the front entrance wearing work clothes and carrying tools, cans of paint, brushes, and other cleaning materials. The outside of the Hall had been vandalized in the night, red point splashed on the main entrance wooden doors, graffiti sprayed on the exterior wall and sidewalk, including numerous foul obscenities. We were told it took all day to repair the damage and hide the graffiti and clean up the doors -- which had to be refinished and repainted.
The Cetnar connection? There was a church on the same isolated street, about 100 yards away, and according to the local newspaper that church had the previous evening hosted a special meeting for its members to hear the Cetnars talk about their experiences leaving the Watchtower world. They must have had some story to tell, to get their congregants worked up to the point of vandalism.
i knew i had a bright mind, i had been told that my whole life.
she hated going out in service but since i hated it myself we didn't go do the door to door work much.
i look back now and i can't believe how controlling and un-loving that religion had made me.
Jeez, Dave, tell us how you REALLY feel!
Seriously, this tome is filled with excellent points, many of which have or will be commented on by others. Here's just one excellent "truth" that emerges from your latest installment:
The JW's call it incidental witnessing, I called it the elders trick for keeping your hours up. If the JW's used punch in time clocks instead of a time slip based on the honor system the hours they reported to the world every year would be cut by 80%.
As a former secretary who used to compile the time from the publishers in our congo, I can attest that your estimate is very close to the mark. As an young elder, I was once actually assigned by the body to go and talk with an older sister about her time. I took an even younger MS with me on this "shepherding" assignment. Our task was to point out that her method of counting time was much more strict and literal than was necessary. It seems one of the elder's wives had come home from working in service with her and complained to her husband that while everybody else in the car group was out for 2 and a half hours that day, this sister only "counted" 45 minutes. In not keeping that tally to herself, she had apparently made the rest of the car group feel bad (I am not making this up). Therefore, we were to counsel her about expressing strong opinions about a personal matter such as counting time, and in the process give her some things to think about in terms of counting these all important hours.
Picture two young idiots explaining to this woman, who had more time in service than both of us put together would ever have, that she was "righteous overmuch" in the way she kept track of her time and that she should not impose her personal opinion on others in this regard.
I'll never forget the sister pulling a small ringed notebook out of her book bag and walking us through the most recent service day. She started her time only when she actually knocked on her first door and in this case some of the sisters had wanted to make a "few return visits" to "start their time." Since she remained in the car while two others got out and went to these doors, she explained, she didn't feel she could in good conscience start her own time until she herself actually got out of the car. Thus, by the time they got to the territory and door-to-door work, almost an hour had lapsed since their arrival at the hall that morning. Following 45 minutes of doorstep activity, someone announced they had a study to go on and they drove back to the hall to drop off two of their coworkers. She didn't count that time, she said, because she wasn't really "out in service." By the time they left the hall parking lot, her partner needed a cup of coffee. She insisted on little coffee shop she liked that was three or four miles from the hall and it was 15 minutes before they were sipping their cups.
The sister wanted to talk about some family problems involving her teenagers, and they whiled away almost half an hour. Then the sister doing the driving said she just had time for one more call before they quit at noon. They drove to an address a couple of miles away, found the street, cruised slowly past the obviously empty house, and the driver decided there was no sense in stopping and knocking on the door. She turned around and headed back to the hall, arriving at just after 12 noon.
On arriving, the driver, who was also the elder's wife mentioned above, turned off the car, extracted her field service "book" from her bag, clicked open a ballpoint pen and said, "Well, let's see, that's about two and a half hours."
The sister we had gone to visit recalled this whole morning in vivid detail and presented it to us in the most matter of fact way, not appearing to be judgmental at all. At this point in the story, still holding her notebook, just said, "All I said to her was, I'm going to take 45 minutes. That's all I really did."
The young MS with me, who was a pioneer, then launched into a learned rant about the way to count time, a very liberal application of mathematics which he had learned in his "full time work." The phrase "pioneer pace" came up in his monologue, and did the words "it's up to your conscience."
I stare back in wonder as these memories come to mind. It's all because of your heartfelt, beautifully written account, Dave. Thanks.
And dont forget to count your time for this! It takes about an hour to read all five parts, and I suppose in good conscience you could multiply that by the hundreds or thousands of people who read your post. You've got pioneer hours in anyone's book. Keep up the fine work!
i was reading a post on another thread about a 70yr old sister who's husband was a pillar of the circuit in times past now just drowned out most of what she heard from the platform as someones personal oppinion and served jehovah the way she felt was right.
is this typical of someone who has been in the org for that long, the difference being that she felt comfortable enough with the people concerned to actually voice it?
what about the people who joined in the 20s and 30s and have seen all the new light coming in over the years, has any asked them how different it all is now to the religion they joined?.
I posted this in another thread the other day, but since it's been mentioned above by Gadget, I am including in here because it's pertinent to the thread topic:
Oops! Edited because I just saw the rule that prohibits reposting a comment on another thread. If you want to read the whole thing, here's the link:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/58167/862423/post.ashx#862423
this was inspired by seven006's fascinating series on his consulting trip to bethel.
wonder if anyone else has a story like this to tell?
my first memory of questioning whether the revered bethel experience might be somewhat less than what was advertised was:.
Jim
Almost every Bethelite I have known was one can short of a six-pack before going into Bethel, and two cans short when they came out.
Dude, you're funny! Always enjoyed your many enlightening posts.
There is an update: Someone who knows I posted this told me last night that the exBethelite under discussion recently started going to meetings again, after many years away from the org. Same source tells me the young man's father is no longer an elder and hasn't been to a meeting (nor has his wife) in a couple of years (these people all live far away and I don't get all the news when it happens). It's truly a revolving door for some people.
being raised by a single mom was bad enuff for me, a hard headed boy.
add to that a mom that was in and out of the jw's all my life and you can see where the potential for disaster for me came from.. none of you know me, i just found this site while doing research on the death of someone in california (ex-jw).
i like what i see, for the most part.. i was raised from a young age with the threat of death in 1974-75 if i wasnt a good witness.
Required reading for all JWs who make it to this site.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/tech/space/09/05/asteroid.miss/index.html asteroid update: end of world on hold
by richard stenger.
cnn.
The asteroid ... will be an invisible one
Apparently this is the other half of the same object that collided with Earth in 1975, which was equally invisible...
when i was around the age that many a good young men travel to the earthly hq of jehover, ive had more than a handful of friends/acquaintances that went to bethel as normal and came back like they were put through the ministry of love [aka, torture in 1984]
one guy was reg pio, all the good stuff, went to bethel and was kicked out after less than a year.
came back to the congregation an alcoholic, started missing meetings, and then stopped going altogether.
Win: Didn't realize you had a similar thread going. If somehow we could merge these...
comments you will not hear at the 9-7-03 wt study
what about adam?
what did jesus say about the pharisees?.
Happy:
It's real hard being a Witness these days. We are encouraged to read and meditate on the Bible, the word of truth. But when we see that the Bible condemns us, we shut that truth out, just like the Israelites did.
To quote some old Western movie dialog: Your words have iron!
I liked this, too:
Why can't we handle it when truth exposes our inconsistences, our failed prophecies, our grabbing at spiritually insignificant things to make big deals of them?
this was inspired by seven006's fascinating series on his consulting trip to bethel.
wonder if anyone else has a story like this to tell?
my first memory of questioning whether the revered bethel experience might be somewhat less than what was advertised was:.
This was inspired by Seven006's fascinating series on his consulting trip to Bethel. Wonder if anyone else has a story like this to tell?
My first memory of questioning whether the revered bethel experience might be somewhat less than what was advertised was:
A young man in our congo, son of an elder, not particularly bright, went off to bethel. This was decades ago and I was new in the "truth." We had a going-away for him and were all terribly impressed that one of our own as going to the show, as it were.
Some 6-9 months later, he was back in our congo. He'd been sent home, apparently, but no one knew exactly why. I asked the elder who had studied with me, kind of a big-brother figure to me, and he literally whispered his response: "We really aren't allowed to talk about it. Let's just say, he didn't fit in there. Sometimes that happens and they ask you to leave."
The rumors in the congo suggested some sort of girl trouble, but details were in conflict and it appeared there was a lot of guessing. When asked about it, the young brother's enigmatic response was something like: "It just didn't work out. I really can't say more." In time, we just all stopped asking.
I did notice on his return that he had gone from his clean scrubbed appearance to a look I'd characterize as wordly wise. He had a moustache that probably pushed up against the boundary of what was considered acceptable facial hair by the elders at the time; he wore his hair as long as he could get away with. I really noticed his eyes; they were wary and averted my gaze; looking back, I suspect he had seen or was thinking things he did't want to discuss.
After several months of sporadic meeting attendance, he just dropped out of sight.
A few months after that, we were out in service in really crummy part of town, the kind of place where you instructed all the sisters not to go inside if invited and told the group to stick together and nobody turns a corner at the end of the street unless there are at least two other couples close to you. These were mostly old, run down trailers sitting atop bare dirt lots with no walks, no landscaping. Of course there were cars up on blocks and broken appliances sitting out back gathering dust. You get the picture.
A teenager girl, maybe 16-17, answered the door. Her skimpy tank top revealed a belly that said she was many months pregnant. She had a beer in her hand, probably her breakfast. When she opened the door, the air floated out and reeked of stale cigarette smoke and brewer's yeast.
Undaunted, we launched into our presentation, at which she just stepped back inside as though she didn't want to be in this conversation; as she did so, leaving the door open, she revealed a young man lying on the couch in his underwear. He sat up and it took a minute to recognize him because of the scraggly beard and dirty, matted shoulder length hair. He sat up on the couch, probably only 10 feet from the door in this single wide trailer, and made no effort to stand. Then I realized he was our former bethelite. I'm afraid I wasn't very tactful. I blurted out the first words that popped in my head. "What happened to you?" I said, calling him by his first name.
He just grinned at me. "Do you need some help?" I asked. He shook his head. After a long silence we said our goodbyes and moseyed off to the next door, in search of sheep, I suppose, and filled with wonder.
