waysider

Fortunate Son....CCR

Addendum verse: Oh, Lord, my God Check out my cushy tushy.......

Interesting... In that old church hymn, , there are references to seeing the stars, hearing the sound of rolling thunder, how we "in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made", how "Thy power throughout the universe (is) displayed". But, curiously, no verse that describes looking at one's own package in the hallway mirror. What's up with that?

I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something very wrong with this scenario. How did a married, supposed pastor happen to find himself engaged in a discussion of naked bodies with a member of the opposite sex?

A little Valentine's Day music....

All this cheapness....from an organization that claimed to have cornered the market on the abundant life. It goes beyond irony.

Let's see...6-8 per living room....divide that into 8 million... Whoa! No wonder we had to stretch the coffee!

What???? TWI had 8 million members???? :B)

Believe it or not, we were told to ask funeral homes to "donate" flowers so we could recycle them at branch meeting and such. Cheap azz byotches!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsW9TmaB81M

Pride has a fall....and rightly so. Because, like The Good Book says, "To everything there is a *season*."

Oh, they were the same cups, alright. Like VPP once said, "You'll just have to trust me on this."

Oh, you can, my friend, you can.

Way cups...2012 style

I was in the right place but it must have been the wrong time.

Learning to listen to that small, still voice.....CLICK

Ya know, the best part is, you only have to make one big purchase. See, with proper stewardship and believing, you can make those suckers last through the next 2,3 spin-off organizations, at least. Hell's bells! Get your believing up big enough and you might even get them to multiply like the loaves and fishes or fall from the sky like manna.

I remember one Saturday night in FellowLaborers, everyone else in the house had gone to do laundry or something. I was there alone, no T.V., no phone, no newspaper, just an empty apartment with no sound or outside stimulus to speak of. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and it was like a surrealistic moment. How did I get here? What am I doing here? How had I deviated so far from where I started that first night I was witnessed to? It was like a feeling of unexplainable and profound depression. Was I possessed? The Advanced Class had taught me that depression is a devil spirit. Eventually, I shook it off, refortified myself by recalling lessons from Dealing With The Adversary, Renewed Mind, and, of course, a remembrance of how we learned in session #7 that bad things happen to those who stop to "consider". So, yes, there was self consent/self delusion involved. But, we made those decisions to consent on a basis of flawed information. It's like buying a car because it has low mileage, only to find out that the odometer has been rolled back. You made the decision to buy the car but, the person who sold it to you purposefully misrepresented its true value. Well, I guess it would be easy to feel dumb about being deceived but you should never feel guilty. The deception wasn't your fault. They own the guilt, not you.

I dunno. For me, it all seems like an ex-con reminiscing about the pick-up hoops he got to play in the yard at exercise time.

So, if I understand you correctly, WW, you are saying that The Way doesn't resemble the first century church at all, despite its insistence that it's patterning itself as such. I'm appalled! Truly, this comes to me as very disturbing news. I thought for sure that the first century "believers" lived in communes, operated food coops, and sponged off the good nature of participants. I mean, that's what we did in FellowLaborers and it was promoted as a being a replication of the first century church. Now I'm just bummed out.

And it ain't "The Red Thread".

Yep. HQ never supplied anything we used for twig meetings, branch meetings, etc. We had to find people who would donate rooms to run classes in, people to donate folding chairs, people who would donate refreshments and so on. We were never allowed to use the ABS or love offerings to fund any of it. That money had to go directly to HQ. We weren't even allowed to use any of it for the postage to mail it. Consequently, it became commonplace for refreshment crews to wash the styro cups (lipstick stains and all) and recycle them. It was always an annoyance when someone would leave teeth marks because that would end their usefulness. Uncle (He wasn't MY uncle.) Harry had the ingenious idea that we could save money by "stretching" coffee. What this involved was putting new grounds on top of yesterday's grounds and adding a bit of salt to cut the bitterness. Ahhh, the abundant life. Wasn't it grand? Edit: Sometimes we actually were allowed to rent a meeting room if no other option existed. It had to be the cheapest room you could find, though, and the practice was frowned on by HQ. Of course, if it was your responsibility to secure the meeting places, it reflected poorly on your ability to "believe" if you couldn't get something for free.

As if they really ever knew what the hell they were talking about in the first place. They just spewed whatever served their agendas and used scriptures to "prove" they were right. Pffffttt!