waysider

Stupid Way Story Cleveland, 1973 or '74 A young lady with a history of drug abuse and mental health problems is "witnessed to". She has no interest in the class but someone offers to pay her "donation". Midway through session 5 (the "Christ In You" session) she gets a disgusted look on her face, stands up, says, " I gotta get out of here" and leaves---never to be seen again. After the session, we worker bees are called together by the class leader, Mr. Spiritual, and informed we have just witnessed a devil spirit being dispelled by the light of "the truth". (You know, the "devil spirit" was doing the speaking.) Now for the stupid part-------------We believed it!

Yes, I'm familiar with it. Your reference of it evoked a memory of consuming a goodly amount of it before riding "shotgun" in one of VP's classic cars. (a red one)

Wild Turkey?

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That middle of the night strategy seemed to be quite popular in TWI. (We had them in FLO, as well.) Why?, I don't really know. Maybe it was to take people off guard. Maybe it was to frame the message in an aura of false urgency. Maybe it was because people are more willing to relinquish control of their logic and reason when they are sleep deprived. Personally, I think it was a method they borrowed from legitimate applications, such as the military, and exploited to their advantage. What I do know, from personal experience, is that it can prove to be very effective at squelching opposition.

I still remember how my Grandmother lamented over the demise of formal letter writing.

Thanks, Nato, for "getting it". Yeah, I've pretty much worked myself past all that stuff, too. GSC played a big part in helping me do that. AND---I never really thought about how Wierdwille used that explanation to hide his slothfulness. LOL.

I probably didn't explain this very well. I'm not talking about the obvious stuff that doesn't relate to TWI. Stuff like someone keeping a hand grenade on their desk or talking about blowing things up. That stuff doesn't require any affiliation with TWI to be a cause of alarm. What I'm talking about is the things that relate directly to TWI teachings. Stuff like someone you've gotten to know fairly well revealing to you they take meds. for bipolar disorder or that they've been a recovering alcoholic for the last ten years or that they have cancer or that they are homosexual but in the closet. That kind of stuff. When I was in TWI, I would find myself in those situations and suddenly feel a sense of paranoia about what I may have revealed to them. What have I said? Was I talking to a devil spirit? yada, yada, yada. Plus, there was always that guilt that I must have missed on the discerning of spirits angle. I worked with a guy for a couple of years who was very normal. Very nice person. One day he revealed to me that he started life as a female but had surgically changed his identity to male. All kinds of TWI thinking goes through your head at times like that. Now, years later, I feel foolish and guilty for allowing my "Waybrain" to ruin what had been a good friendship. That's what I'm talking about.

I guess Willie Dixon must have been a "seed boy".

From what I remember, they used to extract verse 3 out of I Thessalonians, chapter 5 and give it an interpretation that had nothing at all in common with its contextual meaning. "For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape." This verse was used in a way that is so far out of context, it's embarrassingly ridiculous.

Well, the stuff we ate in FLO was mass produced by the food co-op, Manna. Anyhow-----I was kinda thinking about the sort of built-in paranoia that came with some of those old teachings. Some of that thinking lingered in me for decades. (Embarrassing but true.)

According to TWI thinking, anyone who publicly advocated peace and harmony had to be a "seed boy". Oh, the horrors of it all! :P

Why do I feel hungry when I think about "familia" spirits?

I think it was in PFAL that Wierwille talked about how he would work all week on his Sunday sermon a bit each day and then put it in the desk drawer. He couldn't understand why, by Sunday, the congregation had hardened themselves against the topic. And then a little light bulb of understanding went off in his mind. It must be, he reasoned, that the Devil would take his sermon out of the drawer, look at it, and then whisper words of disagreement in the ears of the congregation all week. That's when, he said, he decided to keep his thoughts and teachings locked up in his mind where the Devil had no way to know them. Later, in the Advanced Class, he talked about how "familiar spirits" hung about, gathering whatever information was brought into the open via spoken or written word. He also talked about how, if a person had a spirit, such as one of the many, many listed in the Advanced Class syllabus, that divulging information to said person was the same as divulging information to the Devil. So here's the thing. Were you ever in a conversation with someone who fit the criteria of the Advanced Class for devil possession (ie: alcoholic, suicidal, homosexual, schizophrenic, reincarnation advocate, etc.) and found yourself being very cautious about what you said to them? After all, you could be talking to a devil spirit. Heck, maybe you should even give them some bogus information like a secret agent who thinks he might be getting double crossed! Am I making sense? Suppose there is a person at work who is stereotypical of TWI's definition of "devil possessed". How much can you really reveal about your true thoughts and feelings to them, knowing you could be divulging your secrets to devil spirits? Shhhhh! Careful now---They might hear you.

The supposed purpose of the Twig Hopper was for VP to tour the countryside and visit the twigs. After all, "the life of the ministry is in the twig", remember? Now, I know they did some kind of week long or month long scenic bike ride or something because a poster here went along on that ride. But does anyone here recall VP ever dropping in on their twig? Never dropped in on mine. Hell, for that matter, he never even bothered to drop in on Fellow Laborers, even once, in all the years I was there.

Why, yes, it was, indeed, RA.

OK---Here's a funny one. When I first got in The Word, my twig leader took me witnessing at a local "meat market" type bar. Before you know it, we were sitting at a table with two very attractive young ladies. The twig leader very skillfully steered the conversation into a dissertation on the "law" of believing. At some point in the conversation he declares that "believing is a verb and a verb connotes ACTION." Of course, in those days, everyone knew that ACTION was a euphemism for recreational sex. So now he's red-faced, hemming and hawing, back peddling and trying to save face in front of the newbie (me). I still chuckle at the remembrance of him squirming in his seat as he tried to shrug off the innuendo.

Ahhhhh! The memories of wacky Way days.---------- sigh Midway through my first year of Fellow Laborers, most of us were frazzled from lack of sleep and low protein diets. So, the FLO Coordinator calls a special meeting, chews our butts out for grumbling and proceeds to give us a teaching that "proves" the human body can run on no sleep at all with an appropriate amount of SIT and believing. Even threw in a scripture or two from Habakkuk or Nehemiah or Job or somewhere just to make it official. Guess who overslept for the following morning's 5:30 AM fellowship? Oh, there's more to it, but I'll leave it at that.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck-----------

Strange as it might seem, I remember that very same thing being taught in The Way. It was in a live class called "Reflections" that the Fellow Laborers sat through. It all hinged on the "law of believing". In other words, if you went to the barber, you were supposed to "believe" God had sent you to the best choice. (Same deal for car repair, dentist, etc.) It was at the same time that the "ministry" was promoting the idea of doing all business with believers, if possible. Personally, I think it's a pretty naive approach. Being based on a bogus "law" doesn't do much to bolster my confidence either.

In the rural South, at the turn of the 20th century, there were preachers who would ride, on horseback, from one church-less town to the next. They were called Country Circuit Riding Preachers. (C.C. Riders) Over time, they developed a reputation for doing more than "preaching". Ma Rainey captured the essence of such activity when she penned the now well known tune, "C.C. Rider". -----Not much has changed.

You can say THAT again!

You stand in a muddy cornfield in Ohio EVEN THOUGH you would rather visit your relatives!

Deity---or Devil?