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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/08/2017 in all areas

  1. Took up choral singing about 4 or 5 years ago. Something I always wanted to do, never had the opportunity before. A friend sang in a choir, invited me first to their performance, then to choir night. My first choir practice was terribly difficult. I don't read music and the piece that was mostly being practised that night was very very complex. In Latin too, probably (which also I don't know). Choirmaster provides those who want with a CD with their part highlighted - played by his wife on an oboe - so we can learn our own part. George, the choirmaster is Director of Music at a nearby excellent school and part of his remit is to encourage music into the community. He has also set up a couple of choirs at the school - The Choir Who Don't Sing - boys; and the The Choir Who Won't Sing - girls, who were reluctant until "outed" by their friends who said they sang along to pop songs. George takes the view that everyone can produce music and sing, and if the person makes a mistake, it's his, George's, fault because he hasn't taught them correctly. He's magic at tuning the choir and breaking down even the most complex pieces. Since then I've been invited to join two other casual choirs, inc this weekend's one, and I sing in the worship group at church. The latter is very exposed, very small group with just piano and bass guitar, singers are a bassist and maybe one or two other female singers. People both in the choir and many at church have told me I have a very nice voice. I lost my voice a while back and someone prayed passionately with me (all the passion of a Wayfer, unusual in a church!!) for the return of my voice, my holy instrument. The expression has stuck with me and I try to make sure when I am singing that my voice is worthy of being called a holy instrument. Grace, George could teach even Donald Duck to sing - If DD wanted to, that is! Get out there and give it a go. This is the piece we are singing tomorrow afternoon, with our own live orchestra. It's magnificent. Note, I'm in the choir, not one of the soloists!!!!
    3 points
  2. I think of that poem that went something like..." I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day. I'd rather you show me how than merely tell the way. For the eye's a better pupil and more willing than the ear...I may mistake what you say but what you DO is very clear"
    2 points
  3. What's that old saying? "Preach the gospel to everyone. If necessary, use words." Let our actions speak for the love that God bestows on his people. That is what opens doors, to give a full message.
    2 points
  4. I have been a Church Musician(Organist/Choir Director) since 1980, mostly Lutheran with 2 Episcopal churches intermigled
    2 points
  5. Yeah, Rich, You are supporting Bibliolatry, The Bible should be worshipped above God or Jesus. Rhema relates to grammar/literature which the Bible is, not Logos which is spiritual wisdom/God
    2 points
  6. One of the great joys of life post-twi is the freedom to just ENJOY YOURSELF without the need for official permission. One poster posted once about a great, unplanned get-together at their house that was fun until some coordinator decided to make it a formal event (at their house) and BEGAN PASSING OUT SONGBOOKS- which resulted in the non-twi people all heading for the exit and the fun leaving ahead of them. If anyone still in reads this- we're all having fun whether or not twi would approve. WE approve, and often God Almighty is fine with it whether or not twi is fine with it. Life after twi has room for pleasing God and room to live your life.
    2 points
  7. This essay, written by a Professor of Literature, describes well life in a cult and how ideas break down the walls of isolation build inside the mind of members by cults of many varieties. From Literary Hub July 6, 2017 by Rebecca Stott When my father won the English prize at his grammar school in 1946 his teachers gave him a copy of Arthur Mee’s Book of Everlasting Things. He was seven. Though only certain books were allowed in Exclusive Brethren homes, my preacher grandfather examined the volume and pronounced it acceptable. “This was a serious mistake,” my father told me. “It would have been far safer to let me read Rover and Beano.” “I knew there was a world outside the Brethren,” he said, referring to the closed Puritan sect into which he had been born, “but I’d seen nothing like this. The Brethren line was that literature, sculpture, painting and secular music—even human imagination itself—were all mischievous, frivolous and seductive distractions from the scriptures. The only important thing to God, we were told, was your reborn self in the Spirit.” To my father’s surprise, sin, repentance and being-born-again weren’t mentioned in the Book of Everlasting Things. “A door opened up in the wall that had been built between me and “the world,”’ he said, “and I slipped through it.” I have my father’s copies of Mee’s books on my bookshelves. They smell musty. The pages have yellowed. The Book of Everlasting Things, 352 pages long, contains extracts from great literature and art. The American Declaration of Independence sits next to Matthew Arnold; Henry Vaughan next to George Eliot. Later in the book there’s the best part of The Ancient Mariner, twelve pages of In Memoriam, nine pages of Samson Agonistes, Gray’s Elegy, five pages of Paradise Lost, the whole of Adonais—“in which, at the age of eight, I almost drowned,” my father wrote—a long passage from Robinson Crusoe, Shelley’s To a Skylark and Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale, whole speeches by Demosthenes and Pericles, eight pages from The Odyssey, Cicero’s Essay on Old Age, Plato’s account of the death of Socrates, Edward Fitzgerald’s Rubábaiyát of Omar Khayyám, five pages of the Areopagitica, eleven of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and several passages from his plays. My father, seven years old, was enthralled. He began to memorize the Shakespeare speeches anthologized there, rehearsing them in his bedroom when his parents were out—Julius Caesar’s “That was the noblest Roman of them all,” Twelfth Night’s “Make me a willow cabin at your gate,” “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” from Macbeth and “Come let’s away to prison” from King Lear. He fell in love with Emily Bronte, he told me on his deathbed, 40 years after he had left the Brethren, his eyes glistening with tears. “The words of remarkable men and women,” he said, “began to swarm inside my head. Other feelings, other judgements, other passionate beliefs opened up to me as I read,” and then he quoted the lines from Keats’ “On First Reading Chapman’s Homer,” as he would do again many years later, often weeping: “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.” “Soon I had a small library of pieces in my head,” he told me. “I could go there at any time, even when I was in a Meeting. I had a secret, non-Brethren compartment inside my head.” By the time I was born in 1964, the fourth-generation of the Stott family to be born into the Brethren, my father had become a preacher. He had been to Cambridge, studied literature under C.S. Lewis, written poetry, watched Ingmar Bergman films, been reprimanded for his worldly ways and prayed over. Then things had changed. The new leader, a New York linen merchant, they called him the Man of God, had begun to turn the Brethren from a strict separatist Puritan sect into a cult. He had introduced hundreds of new rules that governed every aspect of Brethren family life: no pets, no wristwatches, no cinemas, newspapers, television, no eating with non-Brethren, no restaurants, no sports, no trousers for women, no skirts above the knee, no unions, no professional associations. If you didn’t comply you’d be excommunicated and then you’d never see your family again. Thousands of Brethren had left. My large extended family stayed in. There were suicides, breakdowns even, in one tragic case, a whole family murdered because the father wanted to save them from Satan. We lived in a world of fear and surveillance. So there were no books in my house when I was growing up either. The family bookshelves contained ministries in shelves of color-coded volumes and a single set of encyclopaedias. All the books my father had bought in his university years were now long gone, burned on the garden bonfire or delivered to the local charity shop. Though those Shakespeare soliloquies were still echoing in his head, I did not know about them, or know even that such a man as Shakespeare had existed. We were living in Brighton in the 1960s. None of us had ever heard the Beatles or seen the footage of the moon landings. I was compliant—girl children had to be. I was subject. I wore headscarves when I was told to. I kept quiet in meeting. Women were supposed to be seen and not heard, sit at the back, follow orders. But I was not compliant inside. I seethed with rage but also prayed to be delivered from the rage I felt. I was curious but there was no where to get answers to any of the questions I wanted to ask. Fascinated by the man I’d heard my father and grandfather preach about who he said had been sent to earth by Satan to lead men from the Lord by telling them they were descended from monkeys, I went to look Darwin up in the family encyclopaedia volumes. I was six. Where the entry should have been there were only the stumps of two razored-out pages, pages my grandfather had excised as soon as the volumes arrived. We were not supposed to go into the library at the ordinary preparatory school I attended. Our teachers, following my parents’ instructions, sent us out of most lessons so we did worksheets in corridors. When I was seven I crossed the threshold into the school library during school assembly, curious about the walls of books I had glimpsed there. I snatched a copy of Enid Blyton’s The Secret Island, hid the book away and read in stolen moments, about Jack, the young boy drifter who escaped with the three orphaned children to the secret island. Jack was outspoken, brave and bold. He told the children that grown ups were not always right. He taught them to trust their instincts. He persuaded me to trust mine. Over the following years Jack became a secret interloper inside my own head. He lead me to other stolen and secret books. By the time my family left the cult after a sexual scandal involving the cult leader in 1970, and learned to live in the outside world that we had been told was run by Satan, my father and I had much to share: books, stolen, mused over, secret loves. We spent years telling each other about the treasures we had discovered and stored away in our heads. By the time my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer I had become a professor of literature and was beginning to write novels of my own. My father had been to prison for fraud and embezzlement because he had developed a gambling addiction but he had also written four plays, volumes of unpublished poems, made films for the BBC and had performed in many amateur Shakespeare productions. On his deathbed he decided he wanted to watch all Ingmar Bergman’s films through “one last time.” There were fifty-eight. He managed to only eight. A few days before he died he asked me to read him Eliot’s Four Quartets and recited, barely conscious, a series of poems by Yeats and, to my surprise, he asked for a favourite passage from a Salman Rushdie essay I had given him years before. “Literature tells there are no rules,” I read, barely able to speak for tears. “It hands down no commandments. We have to make up our own rules as best we can, make them up as we go along. And it tells us there are no answers; or rather it tells us that answers are easier to come by and less reliable than questions. If religion is an answer, then literature is an enquiry, great literature, by asking extraordinary questions, opens new doors in our minds.” School libraries, school prizes, teachers, Shakespeare, Jack, books. If I am a professor of literature now, if I have the privilege to write books of my own, it is not to question religious truths, or to preach scepticism, it is to make a plea like Rushdie did, for us to find ways to keep those doors open in our minds and those of the children we raise. __________________________________ Rebecca Stott’s Darwin’s Ghosts is available now from Spiegel & Grau.
    1 point
  8. Peruser, yes it is!! I can enjoy events, without having to feel guilty about not witnessing to anyone.
    1 point
  9. I saw an announcement today on my Facebook feed for a free concert at a local park tonight. And I thought, "that sounds like fun!". And then I realized that this was an event that my husband and I had been witnessing at when we came back to visit his patents right after we got married. Talk about ruining what could have been a really enjoyable event. Not only did we take time away from visiting my new family to be a sales force for twi, but we also couldn't sit down and even enjoy each other's company and the music as a newly married couple. AND we were ruining other people's enjoyment of the concert by trying to find an "open door" to "speak The Word ™" It makes me not ever want to attend something like that again for fear of being cornered by a fakely enthusiastic Wayfer. So many good times ruined trying to sell the Way.
    1 point
  10. It's nice to enjoy events and living life without ulterior motivations/expectations imposed upon oneself.
    1 point
  11. In the U.S., his fate (for his actions, not his beliefs) would be decided by society and governing entities, not.Christendom. If Christendom became part of the decision making process deciding David's fate, it would mean we have entered a Theocracy. The Constitution warned against this. It would be in conflict with the first amendment. In 1802, Jefferson wrote this in his Letter to the Danbury Baptists: 'Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.'] It was emphasized in The Treaty of Tripoli, Article #11, which, though discussing a specific scenario, set the tone of future dealings. (1796) "Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. On this basis, I propose the aforementioned question raises a moot point. Dave's not here.
    1 point
  12. "Dave's not here, man."
    1 point
  13. The exploitation of a cult on full display...... All the "love, blood, sweat and tears" poured into the Emporia Campus........and then, SOLD. All the work, labor, planting, and harvesting at the Rome City Campus.........and then, SOLD. All the exploitation of corps labor at the L.E.A.D. property in Tinnie, NM.......and then, SOLD. And now, Camp Gunnison is this isolated property with a skeleton crew and few visitors........THUD. And, not only the free/slave labor of in-residence corps during their "work/training" block assignments......but each year, graduating corps worked umpteen hours on a gift/project to enhance the campus. Both the Emporia Campus and Rome City Campus received multiple "gifts" from graduating corps.......thousands of hours of free labor. Really..........wierwille's deception lasted only a 12-years' [1970-1982] span before the cult began spiraling downward. The outward appearance of the cult's properties masquerades its deadness and exploitive past.
    1 point
  14. Years ago, I got mixed up casually in an offshoot local to where I now live. Some big meeting took place "Rev" Robert Lightfoot came over. He spouted off about something which was incorrect. It included a point of grammar, but I mentioned it kindly to him because, well, I didn't want him to look more ridiculous than he already did. Instead he pontificated at me for a good half-hour, spouting his version of "the Word", not seeking any response from me, just in my face, ignoring my increasingly obvious signs of not wanting to continue the conversation, and not letting me get a word in edgeways. I let him run with it for a little while, to see when he might run out of steam. He didn't. In the end, I just turned round and walked away. It was all "head knowledge" and no personal "relationship knowledge." The Bible says this, the epistle of xx says that, PFAL says... Not, did it meet any part of my need or have anything to do with my (the hearer's) life. Not even how this extensive head knowledge had affected his own life, or about signs, miracles and wonders that he had seen or been a part of. He probably thought I was some copped-out Corpswoman who needed lecturing and who needed to get back into line. That showing off and boasting of head knowledge is so NOT the way to witness. Did you know that "wit" is an old word for knowledge? A witness is one who has actual knowledge. wit (v.) "to know" (archaic), Old English witan (past tense wast, past participle witen) "to know, beware of or conscious of, understand, observe, ascertain, learn," from Proto-Germanic *witan "to have seen," hence "to know" (source also of Old Saxon witan, Old Norse vita, Old Frisian wita, Middle Dutch, Dutch weten, Old High German wizzan, German wissen, Gothic witan "to know"), from PIE root *weid- "to see." The phrase "to wit," almost the only surviving use of the verb, is first recorded 1570s, from earlier "that is to wit" (mid-14c.), probably a loan-translation of Anglo-French cestasavoir, used to render Latin videlicet (see viz.). [Online Etymology Dictionary] Witness = tell what you know. In your heart. Our witnessing trips should have been our opportunity to show how Jesus works in our lives. How God so loves the world. How precious people are, in God's sight. Instead, witnessing was an opportunity to show off, or to try to get one over the "witnessee," to try to show where they were mistaken/wrong. Not to show them how loved they were. No wonder we all hated witnessing session!
    1 point
  15. This worked for me and maybe only because of the uniqueness of my experience, which was not quite the same as the rest of yours. I'm not saying you guys all had the same experience. Just that you have a lot in common with each other but not with me. Namely, you actually were involved with TWI for quite some time and gave that group a significant part of your life. I was with TWI for under a year and was far more influenced by my experience in an offshoot than I was with the mothership. So that said, I want to confess that I never really broke free from TWI and its offshoots until a couple of years ago. This was after figuring out what was right with it and what was wrong with it. This was after documenting actual errors in a hilarious but shockingly failed bid to get a devoted sycophant to recognize that there were real flaws in the work. This was after finding the original works of the robbed authors to document the rampant plagiarism that some people refuse to acknowledge to this day. This was after my last twig, branch, fellowship, home teaching, tape, whatever you want to put as the word there. This was after the Living Epistles Society, after To Wit, after generating and eliminating my own message board, after coming to terms with being ex-Way and ex-JW and an ex-husband to boot. After all this, I finally broke free. And here's how. I threw it all out. I kept a couple of souvenirs, don't get me wrong, but most of the stuff is gone. If you searched my home today, you would find scant evidence that anyone named Wierwille ever existed, or that I ever once counted myself as an admirer of the books that were published in his name. I threw it all out. Every enslaving, insipid, ripped off piece of pseudo-religious propaganda is gone. I threw it all out. Because I never want my son to pick up a weathered copy of Christians Should Be Preposterous and ask, "Daddy, what's this?" I threw it all out. And when someone wrote something defending it, I didn't care anymore. And when someone wrote something exalting it above anything else that has ever been written, I didn't care anymore. I threw it all out. Physically. It's gone. And soon, it was gone mentally as well. Oh sure, I'll never erase certain things. There was plenty of salvageable material in there that transcended its use and abuse, and I have been able to hang on to those things I want to keep. But I do the same with the things I learned in college. In high school. In church. In court. It's not an unusual process. It doesn't consume me. I don't lose sleep over it. I threw it all out. There's a great freedom in that. Just my two cents. Keep the change.
    1 point
  16. Rhino posted on the roa thread about driving while exhausted putting himself, his passenger and other drivers at serious risk in order to get to roa (wish I knew how to cut and cross post) Here's the post, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood moderator: It got me to thinking about the insane risks that we took, assured from twi teachings that our *believing* would keep us safe no matter how rediculous the choices we made were..... I remember driving for days (way too many times) when we were headed out on the wow field...everyone insisted that we drive round the clock...I almost killed the whole car load of us while trying to pass a semi because of impaired judgement due to lack of sleep. I remember one time that there was a limb meeting in Bismark one weekend...there was a blizzard aproaching from the west, all were warned to stay inside, that the roads were impassable...that it was *white out* conditions....(that is where the snow is blowing like sand and you cannot see where road is). Anyway...do you think our tc was gonna let satan trick us out of attending with a little snow??? Oh HAYAL no...we packed our stupid bu tts in the car and headed into the storm....It was so bad that on the interstate...the only thing that one could do was creep forward watching for the mile reflectors to guide us as there was no discernable difference between the road and the fields that boardered...we finally were stopped by the police and ordered off the road .... I remember being terrified of hitch hiking .. but was told that I needed to build my believing by doing it more...you know confront that fear.... (that and the wow family had better uses for my car) I was picked up by a perv that wanted to pay me to be a model ... for UNDERWEAR! Thank God he let me outta the car....I was so ashamed that I couldn`t overcome my fear after that ...and just chalked it up to me being *weak* The unsafe neighborhoods that we were dropped off to witness in...the dangerous areas of town we lived in... Every time that our 5 senses would kick in and tell us that *hey this is NOT a good idea* .. we were trained to shut that voice down with all critical thinking ...assuming that Satan was trying to trick us into not doing God`s will at our leaders bidding. Same went for seeking medical aid, for taking medication, etc. My point is, that we were taught to believe that we were INVINCIBLE...super conquerers....and so engaged in sometimes downright STUPID behavior many times at leaderships demand...er suggestion....assured that God would simply have to cover. The really sad thing is that when we suffered negative impact from the choices, when our friends and twig mates became ill or died...It was all our faults, our lack of believing......because God almighty certainly couldn`t be held responsible...or God forbid, twi`s *truth* be questioned.
    1 point
  17. And these people thought they could teach us "Greek" etc. They don't understand English. And their errors in understanding the English language (in particular verb construction and tenses) pass all the way down until PFAL grads somehow reinvent themselves as knowing grammar, sentence construction etc...because they heard something in PFAL or copied it from some other person up the Way food chain. Blind leading the blind...and so they all fall into misunderstandings and total ignorance...whilst all the time thinking themselves wise. I don't think there was ever a lack of leadership. It's leadership in an appropriate direction that is lacking.
    1 point
  18. The corps indoctrination camp had many tangents and sub-level diversions......the patton portrayal was one amongst many. From what I remember of my corps experience, the patton stuff came about mid-year when wierwille and his corps coordinators were searching for more material to "stoke the fires" of commitment and enthusiasm. I didn't sign up for the corps "training" to learn about general patton. From my corps experience, wierwille never detailed much more than his 16 "keys" to walking by the spirit and his advanced class material. The corps program was geared towards INDOCTRINATION and OBEDIENCE. Wierwille envisioned a marching throng of followers who would, obediently, carry forth the directive of PFAL CLASSES OVER THE WORLD......er, "word over the world." A class setting where wierwille lectures the student on his version of spiritual truths needed to live abundantly......where students are monitored throughout the class, no questions are to be asked, and a session 12 "seals the deal of knowing that you know." Yet, when the curtain of twi is pulled back.......one finds wierwille's sexual predation, exploitation, plagairism, drunkenness, orgy exploration, bullying, yell-fests, character assassinations, and visions of grandeur that fell flat. Today's twi is swirling around the drain-hole of relevancy. Staffers are scratching their heads wondering where did everyone go. Recruitment and outreach on the field is infinitely dismal. All corps graduates this year could easily fit into my living room. Probably, they could all fit into one of my bathrooms. <_<
    1 point
  19. The first time I saw the movie "Patten" was late in 1970 at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. I was in a for real boot camp, for REAL! I enjoyed the movie, but I knew that it was just a movie. I had an uncle who was in the infantry, but rode on top of one of Patton's tanks when they went to relieve Bastogne. My uncle spent several days in a foxhole with a dead German. All he had to eat was corned beef hash. He could never stomach corned beef hash after that. He was deafened by the artillery fire. He took a piece of shrapnel that was in him till the day he died. He spent the rest of the war folding parachutes (and he had to jump, occasionally, using a random chute that he himself had packed). Leading people through that sort of thing is a little different from sitting at the head table and admonishing the Way Corps that "a general's suggestion is paramount [sic] to a command." Wierwille had NO IDEA of what real combat is like. He had NO IDEA of the quality of character it takes to be an officer like Patton or Eisenhower or Bradley. Wierwille had NO IDEA of the discipline or self-sacrifice it took for my Pop to command an M10 tank destroyer in combat, and he was just a shave-tail lieutenant. Wierwille was all swagger, with NO SUBSTANCE! Love, Steve
    1 point
  20. I remember that one of VPW's great heroes was General Patton. More than once VPW showed us the movie based on his life where he was ordering his men around and shouting profanity. Once VP had us meet in the Way Woods and put up a giant screen so we could watch this modern day "leader" practice principles of intimidation etc., ones that VPW obviously emulated. VP would laugh and laugh at the general's arrogant behavior. In my view, many guys in the Corps loved Patton, too, because VP did. This outrageous model of so-called leadership supported VP's own abusive behavior that many of us had convinced ourselves was the way a real leader should act, after all, VP portrayed the Old Testament prophets yelling and screaming at the Israelites when they worshiped false idols, etc.. VP used Patton's example as a great "leader" as a justification for his often mean and sickening style, and many - not all - of the Way Corps (guys especially) tried to copy it.
    1 point
  21. Or, is it?......Ash Heap of TWIST-ory? Whichever way (no pun intended) you want to look at it.....the "ash heap of history" is catching up with twi. The paltry numbers of twi's class enrollments, sunday service attendance, way disciples and corps programs, etc. tell the story of twi's relevance, and lack thereof. While rosalie's cabinet meetings discuss motivational techniques to attract new staffers, critique policies and monitoring procedures, curtail damage control of corps exitees, or the camera angles of sunday services......don't they realize how foolish they look? The way religion, wierwille's grand scheme to escape the traditional church and "tap the resources for the more abundant life," has BECOME the very image of what they proclaim to disdain. In vain, do they pontificate. In vain, do they whitewash the outside while the inside is deceptive and mean-spirited. The mask is off. Do they not realize that Mrs. Wierwille's book, Born Again to Serve, gives damaging insight to her husband's claims? In chronicling wierwille's life and ministry (from 1916-1961 -- and "20 years of vp's ministry").....she expounds on men and women who taught vpw. Radio broadcasts, India itineraries, Leonard's "Gifts of the Spirit" foundational class, seminars, speakers, etc....and young wierwille incorporated plagairism, deception, isolation and exploitation to frame his greatness. Yet, why isn't anyone at twi writing THE LAST 20 YEARS OF WIERWILLE'S MINISTRY? Those years, 1962-1982, is a big chunk of a man's life......what happened? Perhaps, twi is realizing that the more information they expose, the more vulnerable they are. For many.......the mystique of wierwille is over. While some still cling to the nostalgia of the early days of twi.....that's just a component of human nature. Sure, when youthful spontaneity was coursing thru our bloodcells and no responsibility in sight, a rock of ages festival seems all-emcompassing, right? I mean, you just had to be there! The annual reunion of "friends" was a major driving force to the pilgrimage, wasn't it? But today....not so much. When martindale got that hair-brained revelation to employ all corps full-time......rock of ages was cancelled. Twi could not afford roa WITHOUT SLAVE LABOR FROM THE CORPS. When reality meets nostalgia.........economic reality wins. In the end, it becomes apparent that wierwille's ministry was built on bleeding the resources of youth.......their enthusiasm, labor, and network of friends. With loss of opportunities and educational advancement, the multitude becomes trapped in a world of dependency, conflict, abuse and despair. The internet has been a formidable warning tool and twi's policies, of course, is to stay away from devil-possessed sites like GS. Surprise, surprise. hahaha I don't miss the smell of wet canvas in a rain-drenched morning in Ohio. The smell of independence and coffee always starts my day. :)
    1 point
  22. A skim of the articles shows lots of Bible verses with descriptive words beneath, usual TWI style. No particular examples of what "kindness" might look or sound or feel like. Leader article concludes as follows: This sounds like such a wonderful thing to be doing. Except that having been on the receiving end of so much "kindness" from TWI, I'd rather be anywhere else ... like being in one of many of the churches in this city, which do know what kindness really is. On the plus side, this Kindness section of their website does look quite well done. Beautifully whitewashed, you might say. :nono5: tsk, tssk,.. tsk... Now you as a PIFFLE grad should be able to understand this using the keys to working the word. If what you are reading doesn't feel right, you must look at it within the overall context. Now, the overall context represented here is the way international and it's SOP's. (Standard Operating Proceedures.) So here I will give you a clarified version of the statement: It's God's kindness that encourages people to have a change of heart; (staff & followers) therefore, we show forth kindness even in the face of ingratitude.(RosyLie & leadership, so advanced, they don't need nor do they show grace) Often the unthankful (Those evolved above such needs) have the greatest need for kindness, and we are equipped to show them this good and gentle nature of God. (Send your tithes & offerings, spare change, wedding & birthday gifts to Box 328.... ) Kindness can be the convincing evidence of God's love. (Send your tithes &....) So let's freely show His kindness! (WE SAID!!.. SEND your tithes & offerings... ) This message has been approved by RosyLie the Fox, Queen of the LeavenLies and paid for by the Demoncorrupt Party. Disclaimer: The Democratic Party disavows any connection, past present or future with the demoncorrupt party, or do we.
    1 point
  23. Ya, I can just feel the exhortation to rise up oozing out of every pithy statement. Someone better get them to God's kindness to they can learn what the heck it is. Knowing them they will start charging registration fees to get it though.
    1 point
  24. Yes, whenever I run into the remaining local TWI sycophants in the community, it's an interesting experience. It's kind of like I'm a celebrity, except for they have a much more retarded look on their face. I hope I didn't used to look like that to ex-TWI members - now that would be downright embaressing. :) One thing I refuse to do, though, and that's to give up my city and the control of it to these retards. Now, that I'm not in TWI, I actually have roots in this city. This is my city. It's not TWI's city, or any of their itinerant migrant workers or residents who happen to live there. They don't really have roots in the community, thus they don't belong there anywhere as much as I do. This goes double for the leadership. They'll be gone anyway in a couple of years, and probably not in favor any more. That's just statistics. With how TWI bites and devours their own, no leader now will probably have any impact 10 years from now. Just look at the survival rate at the top, like for instance, the VP position, and the turnover rate there, and that gives you a great indication of the corporate culture of the rest of the org. No, this is my city, including the community events there. The reason there are community events is due to people with roots in the community, that own homes, vote locally, and pay taxes. And no, TWI members, renters don't pay taxes. The schools your kids attend are paid for by everyone elses property taxes. So my answer to some TWI newb who would witness to me at a local community event would likely be something like "why don't you do something of real value to the community before you ask for participants for your little group from the community. there are givers and takers, and you guys are takers that are brainwashed into thinking you are doing others a favor. even the LDS missionaries offer to do service for you when they come to your door when you're not interested". And giving people "the greatest thing you could give them - the Word" is simply a lie that you are believing. What you are giving them is 3 meetings a week and a teachers schedule for topics to teach on, a boring teaching tape and hookup, and a vanilla magazine. Oh and I forgot, a class that will teach you to look down on other Christians and replace your family and friends with fake ones. And pay for it while you're doing it. And, after all that - excie's option of punching them in the nose is a perfectly viable alternative
    1 point
  25. I just want to thank you, Raf, for all the effort you put into the Actual Errors thread! It was instrumental for many of us in reaching some kind of agreement on what specifically was wrong with PFAL, and in re-adjusting our thinking accordingly. We recognize how frustrating it was to deal with certain parties participating in that thread, and we admire your persistence. Time to move on? Yes, indeed! But we can move on more surely thanks to the contributions you have made. Thanks, again! Love, Steve
    1 point
  26. Wierwille's false ideal premise was the military like West Point and boot camp where DI's, Mst. Sgt. were bullies to destroy individualism and create group think robots/androids. If any upper classmen or officer physically assaults a pleb or private, they not only get court martialed with discharge with dishonor but can and most like be charged in civil/criminal court and sent to prison. Wierwille, Martindale, Geer, Sommerville, and Linder would have likely murdered the drill instructors, sargents, and officers and to hell with anyone else. They would have drugged every human being and bullied every one. Wierwille had no bussiness background nor training to be a credible religion professor or administrator of higher education.
    1 point
  27. I had to answer that question for myself back when I walked away from TWI. I decided that, for myself, I needed to witness AGAINST The Way International, with just as much vigor and integrity as I had previously witnessed FOR the organization. To "witness" means simply to speak the things that we have seen and heard. Why does that matter to me? My Pop was a newspaperman. He had a plaque on the wall of his office that read "It's a newspaper's job to print the truth and raise hell!" There was a time when I was a kid, sitting in that office, when I heard people come in and threaten to fire bomb our house if Pop printed a story they didn't like. Pop stood up and said "You go ahead and do that! Every person in this room heard what you just said. When my house burns down, YOU'RE gonna be the FIRST people the cops come after!" And he printed the story. I thought, "Wow, Pop must think the truth is a valuable thing!" Speaking the truth matters, whether or not anybody ever believes it. Love, Steve
    1 point
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