satori001

I ran across these user friendly introductions some of you may find enlightening. He has produced several more than the ones here. You can take or leave his style, but it couldn't be much more accessible. ---

Hi Roy - the original video was some kind of interpretive dance based on the song "Puff." I probably should have clarified that the music is not the topic, but the way this team of dancers chose to celebrate the story it tells. I found it kind of funny. mstar seems to agree. I am sure there are similarly earnest yet artistically premature efforts recorded on YouTube or elsewhere, and I hope to see a few more. These folks turned up unexpectedly while blog surfing, and I knew right away I'd struck gold. My reference to Way Productions - I've never been a big fan of Way Productions, but I learned much later, here and on Waydale, that many talented people (some very talented, some much less so) who participated in Way Prod were under the heavy and resentful thumbs of "God's leadership," whose collective, esthetic sensibilities (in effect, casting VPW's long, dark shadow) lay somewhere between those of school yard bullies and Stalinist bureaucrats, while appearing to be more like both. I always enjoy your posts though.

And we thought Athletes of the Spirit sucked...

The link explains it all. http://www.stickk.com/tour.php Stay PO'd, and turn that anger, contempt, disgust and unresolved anguish toward TWI into lost pounds, kicked habits, or all kinds of self-improvements. Stick TWI in the eye! Makes life more meaningful!

A type of atypical

A la Prochaine That was actually Condoleeza Rice with her band, under one of many stage names, and with a lot of makeup. She's become queen of the nightlife at a few of DC's most prestigious and exclusive area hot spots, with a respectable if eclectic following among the congressional staff, lobbyists, and the expat Russian underworld. Everybody knows she plays classical piano from the 60 Minutes interviews featuring Mike Wallace and Dan Fahrfahhllar, but the Secretary of State's sultry siren side is one of Washington's best kept (open) secrets. I'm in love.

"Nothing gets wasted around here." A tribute to Howard Allen.

On a roll.

All of the quotes are interesting or entertaining on their own merit, but not all of them seem to pertain to "public discourse" in any direct way. I would like this thread to allow you to step outside of yourself, and look back at an all too familiar topic from someone else's POV, that might speak to or for your own, and also to look at others' points of view through their own quotations. For my part, I have posted quotations that I agree with, and some that I didn't (at first glance at least), but which added new elements to my own perspectives. You aren't stuck with Vonnegut, but try to stick to the general idea: discourse, in a public/community setting. Public and community aren't necessarily the same thing, but both would apply. You can quote someone from GS, and there is plenty of fertile ground from which to harvest those quotes, but it would be more effective to keep the sources external, for the reasons above. If you'd like discourse to improve, you should select quotes to serve or promote that end, rather than the clever-but-cynical variety. Just a suggestion. I hope there are many more quotations to come. -- Part II - I was going to begin a parallel thread on the quotations, but not on the people who posted them - to discuss or debate the ideas expressed. That is too much work. But if you find one, or several, that are worth expanding upon, that might be a good follow up on a different thread.

“Every man is a fool in some [other] man's opinion” Spanish Proverb - “In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.” Oscar Wilde - “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion” Democritus - “If you don't like my opinion of you, you can always improve” Ashleigh Brilliant “Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story” Ashleigh Brilliant

On villains.

"Having resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die" -- Malachy McCourt

Your opinion doesn't matter.* "Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand." (*only for this thread, if you can bear it) You are welcome to post relevant quotations which speak to your opinion, and a brief description of their originator. Bible quotations are probably unavoidable, but keep them brief - they should be insights, not "teachings." Let your quotes do your speaking, but not your thinking, for you. The proceeding proceed from Kurt Vonnegut. --- On with the quotes: "There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing." "Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'" "There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too." "That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes." "So it goes." -- expansion on this phrase: "Sh1t happens, and it's awful, but it's also okay. We deal with it because we have to." "What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."

Imagine that. An old joke I haven't heard before.

So whom would you silence?

"Physician, heal thyself." johniam, whatever validity your idea might have on its own merits (and it was already tried), coming from you it's a strategy for suppressing the truth. See Rascal's post. I am certain that suppression IS your motive, and not the welfare of the many women (and marriages, and familes) harmed by Vic Wierwille, TWI's "Who's Yer Daddy" in the Word. Maybe you should withhold further helpful ideas for Tex until you've read her book for yourself. I'm unconvinced you really intend to do so. Whatever your intentions, I don't think you could go through with it. Your latest "idea" indicates, once again, your mind is already made up.

Thanks for your reply, johniam. I found it both frank and honest. I have never thought that VPW could do what he did, had we NOT believed he was "the" man of God, regardless of the roles we played in TWI. So of course Tex should have been no exception, as far as we could guess. And it is a guess. In the late 70's, I did hear about the sexual society thing (not in those terms exactly) from a Family Corps woman on her interim assignment as a Twig/Area Leader (or something like that), who said she had been passed from VPW to Howard to someone else, and finally pretty much dumped. I had expressed interest in entering the Corps, and there were no other Corps around, so she confided in me somewhat. She STILL believed in VPW-the-MOG, but her entire perspective of Christianity reminded me of a Masonic thing, with progressive levels of initiation. By the time you approached the top, the "walk" was nothing like that of the average Twig Leader. How could this be? Easy. Milk for "babes." Meat for the initiates. The "meat of the Word," according to her, was not apparent to the senses. It had to be revealed, by a "gift ministry," a "teacher" for example. She was a very high initiate, she thought, or had been informed -- what she actually said was the equivalent of a "high priestess." Very impressive to me at the time, though I remained skeptical. She told me to "work Hebrews," with this ominous air of mystery and promise in her voice. It was "heavy" stuff. She also "shared" with me some very explicit details about sex and sexuality, when we were alone together, but all from a "spiritual" standpoint, of course. These details concerned the spiritual dynamics underlying the sexual act between a man and woman "of God." I was all ears, but that's as far as it went. In one way or another, I knew I was over my head. Whatever her spiritual condition was, it was plain that she was otherwise a very troubled soul, and nobody to get involved with. So why weren't you privy to this? I don't know. I think it was just a matter of who you knew, and whether or not the opportunity was there. Also, I believe males were kept in the dark more than females, for pretty obvious reasons. Females needed to be recruited. Males would only need to be restrained. I am glad you are willing to consider what Tex has to say, and that your obvious respect for her may allow you to connect with her story. Regards, satori

Why? I dunno. I don't know why YOU don't know. What's my usual MO though? For some reason, I read the first post by Tex. Then I read her blog entries. Then I read what you had to say. The rest, johniam, is history (history repeating itself). Whenever I've had the time of day, johniam, to spend on your behalf, it has been to register my usual opinion about your usual opinion about TWI's many victims' usual opinions. Their opinions are not very high, and yours is not very high, and mine, likewise, not so very high (respectively). I'm as surprised at your surprise as you're surprised by my "desperate, uncharacteristic" (neither of which true) "attacks" (not attacks), since that has been my "MO" consistently, if not constantly, for as long as I can recall. Neither of us are as surprised, I would surmise, as Tex could be - by your surprising position on Vic's unsurprising sexual and psychological abuse of another female believer. I'll bet SHE was surprised, that first time on the lust bus. I wish, johniam, you had a shred of compassion, an ounce of empathy, for these women, many of them still girls when they so loved God, and when Vic Wierwille, that dirty dog, so used their love. Maybe that's why I bother. I am bothered, brother. I take that back. You're no brother of mine. Vic was neither brother nor father either. Vic was a dog. Vic was Tic. Is that why he treated women the way some dogs treat dogs? Could be. Tic, wherever you are, no offense. It's just a figger. You were a BETTER dog than Vic was, Gunga Din.

So you finally admit that it's you who are trying to shut ME up? You act like any accusation against TWI is absolute truth. No johniam. I'm saying that tortured equivocation renders your position nearly impossible to discern. Drop the innuendo and just say what you mean. jeaniam might even have more respect for you. As for accusations against TWI, I will settle for mostly true, as long as they fit the "ministry's" well-established history of behavior and the facts are internally and externally consistent. On the other hand, you choose to see each "accusation" as if in a vacuum, a random, baseless and unfounded allegation. This is only possible if you consider everything we already KNOW to be false. If this is so, you are living in a delusion of your own making. Christians frequently comment on the writing style of the bible writers. Both TWI and non TWI. Of course they do, johniam, and each to their own ends. Most are endeavoring to get at the truth, although some are like yourself, endeavoring to twist the truth into something that resembles the world as they wish we would all see it, rather than as it is. Cults do that. It's what you do. Coincidence? People DO believe lies. You must find that greatly encouraging. Otherwise, why would you bother? There was a time when we wouldn't have seen through it.

johniam, nobody would accuse you of being forthright. With evasion and equivocation you persist in defying common knowledge and experience about Wierwille the deviate, and The Way International, the cult. Let's look at the quoted question. First, you discount the historical component of Kahler's book, by misrepresenting it as his (isolated) "experience." Next, you suggest Losing the Way is in one of two categories: isolated experience (like Kahler's), or a journal of recovery. For this second category ("...or more about recovery, using TWI as just the primary 'villain?'"): 1. "using" implies that the author employs a literary device, which implies artificiality 2. "just the primary" implies the author's TWI "experience" is one of several (dysfunctional) issues from which the author was suffering -- and this in turn suggests the fault is not necessarily with TWI, but with the author 3. you reinforce, by placing "villain" in quotes, your position that the author's TWI experience is defective and isolated, therefore contrived and artificial, therefore irrelevant. *** johniam, if you're going to be so evasive that it requires all this parsing to get what you're actually trying to say, why bother to say anything at all? I think I know the answer to that. Your purpose is not to argue a position you can't win, but to insinuate bias, subjectivity and unreliability. This is not based on any facts, since no one has yet read the book, but upon your own compelling obsession, to keep the truth about Wierwille and TWI in the darkness. Whether you hope new people will be deceived or simply hope to justify your own misbegotten loyalty is unimportant. It's what you do.