Dot Matrix

Very cool. I wish you both the very best and many years together.

Groucho, I hope you are taking on Matrix as your middle name!!!

LOL!!!!

Thanks for the song Waysider. Thanks George.

This is the song to which we got married.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1v84WKC6Pg

Groucho Marx Jr.

Mr.Matrix ~ Dot's father

We had a "way" cool minister. (Little humor, he was NOT from TWI) who also took most of the pictures.

The Preacher was a faith filled believer and the woman in the gray pantsuit had been ill. I told him she needed prayer. I thought he would pray later at his home or something. Before anything started, he walked over and prayed for her and she had a healing! God is wonderful!

I am so sorry for the great loss of your "son" Buddy. I know how much you loved that doggie. He could not have had a better home or family than yours. I am so sorry.

Reminder to pray from Christian Breaking News: [/b]

Thanks Kit for this and the other post you made! What an eye opener! Something to think about, thank you!

Happy Birthday my dear! Ya know, I don't mean this (some lyrics) but the song IS funny~

Kit I loved what you said:

When vp insulted these men who spoke for God, he was working to ensure that we would not hear "the originals." Truly, when he said "you should hear it in the original" he was telling the truth. Hearing Billy Graham was so comforting and inspiring because when he spoke he spoke from a trustworthy heart of integrity.

god is love as is christ

that's nice eh?

Very... :)

Socrates ~

So your point is: Other than that did you enjoy the play, Mrs.Lincoln?

I almost had to dial 911 ~ that was so funny...

WW~

I do not think you were mean or angry, I think you just want to know what he means by what he said but instead it has gotten to "men and women throwing stones at each other". Like an A / B story line. We are talking about the "A" Story here ~ Was VPW evil and he is having a completley different discussion on why we should not be men bashing.... However, most posts against VPW have been written by MEN!

Jomiam

So, this is not about VPW as much as it is about you are sick of “men bashing” by women, and to you this is just another example of that. So, you are defending VPW because he is male not because of all the moggie crap. You looked through his “heap” of a life and picked out a few things that look defendable because you are sick of male bashing….

Joniam, did someone bash you out there in life and it was unwarranted? Or a family member to bring up this type of defense of VPW.

Perhaps, you, your friend or family member were "the recipient" of some underserved “meanness” but that does not imply there are salvageable things about VPW.

I am sure he brushed his teeth in the morning and spoke things like “have a nice day” and perhaps even pat his dog on the head. This does not make someone good or bad. It certainly does not dismiss evil behaviors. Jeffrey Dahlmer kept a job, invited a girl to the prom and from all accounts was gregarious. These were “sociopath” in nature to camouflage what was really going on. He did not do “good things” he did “acceptable things” to hide the unacceptable things ~ evil things ~ which were his true agenda.

If VPW were a woman, as you are abhorrent about male bashing, would you accept HER touching her children, or perhaps touching yours? Stealing your money? Cruel demeaning behaviors? Because she taught the BIBLE? Or would it be easier to recognize these things as EVIL and not search for the redemption, of a few things which seemed to be acceptable, for it is now a woman?

I am asking you to neuter the situation. And take another look at the “actions” from a gender-neutered stance and see if VPW looks a little different then. He used the God, you say you love, to serve his own needs. Kind of like having a person (stranger) find your daughter at school and pretend her mother is in the hospital saying she needs to go with “them” to see her "hurt Mommy". The child thinks she is doing the correct thing, the person seems genuine. The actions? The benign actions look fine, perhaps altruistic. What a nice person to go retrieve your daughter and bring her to your injured wife. Only, the stranger takes a self-serving detour. They never arrive at the hospital, because your wife was never really there, instead steals your daughters’ money, removes her clothing, and touches her as she is screaming to see her “Mommy.”

Many of us were screaming to find God and we got in the car…. I think that invalids (any perceived goodness in) VPW’s methods on how he got us in the car ~ it is WHAT he DID after we got in…. (It was evil and began with evil intentions IMHO.)

:D

Maybe the bird bath should be exclusive....

The VPW bird bath ~ for all little peckers...

Maybe instead of a bathtub Mary on the front lawn...there should be a little bust of VPW sticking out of the lawn with an open bible in his hand...

Sorry honey, he was known for liking BIG BUSTS....

Joniam:

I happened to come here to retrieve some old numbers of old friends and saw this and wanted to take a minute to respond.

I am not going to argue with you. For some reason, it seems the PFAL class touched you so deeply that nothing else matters. Perhaps it was life changing. It was for me. It answered many questions (whether those things were called into question later or not). Because of TWI I thought I found stability and a path to my future because what I learned there. And a lot of what I learned was not wrong. The methods taken to bring that information to mewere wrong. It was “work” stolen by one man and presented as “his own.”

So, if you evaluate WHAT you enjoyed rationally, you might need to be indebited (so to speak), to the people who actually worked the scriptures to find those truths…

Joniam, a great lie that I have seen is to have emotional responses to things, which require “logical evaluation.”. I do not know you. But through the years I think I may have seen a little bit of you. And you got into TWI and got answers, found fellowship, got to know God better and left the drug culture for “higher aspirations”. Your life was changed.

Most of us had somewhat similar experiences or we would not have stuck around. I understand the “love” you saw and felt. I “get” the acceptance and the change in your life. Those things are very real. Nobody can or wants to take them away from you.

After, I had an emotional response to what I found in God via PFAL, there was nobody anywhere who could have ever had me leave TWI.

However, you and I were both in the shared experience of “the love of God.” It was great wasn’t it?

But some of us, including me, went further into the programs and commitments TWI had to offer. It was in those programs and those commitments the beautiful “dream” of TWI was exposed as a lie. God was NOT a lie. Those that loved each other with the love of God were real. I am sure you were REAL. So, was I. I believe almost all of us were.

But, your piers have told you repeatedly about the things that occurred deeper in. Things you never saw. And in your shoes, I might be fiercely defending PFAL, VPW and TWI as well. I was fortunate enough to experience VPW’s crap first hand so I was able “to let go.”

I guess it is hard for you because you never saw that TWI. But with your logical mind engaged, past the emotion of PFAL etc. When you read over and over from stellar people who have experienced the “evil” first hand….... It behooves me to understand what must happen in your heart/brain` to seem like you do not get it...

Many men of many generations have had “gifts” of gab, great stage presence, and tremendous leadership ability…. These are very charismatic ~ emotionally charged “gifts”. But they did evil things. If doing evil things, over and over and over again, (and using God’s name to deceive people with your evil deeds) does not MAKE you evil ~ then what does?

Out of the heart comes the issues of life. So, if his “issues of life” were evil what does that say about his heart? The only “good stuff” he presented was STOLEN from other people.

Other than PFAL and twig (~where some people who loved God showed you God’s love~) what, pray tell, did Weirwille DO that makes you think he was a “good” man?

I am to the point, I do not care what anyone thinks here anymore. A beaten dead horse is still dead and this horse is more than a decaying carcass….

I am not trying to be mean, Joniam, I am just curious why you think he was a good man? Instead of defending his bad behaviors by saying that others also had bad behaviors ~ what good behaviors keep you hanging on? And let’s see if they have been addressed. If they have been ~ then it is an exercise in futility for someone like you and someone like me to find ourselves in agreement. It does not mean I do not love you, it just means you will always think like that and I never will….

Proverbs 4:23

Joniam you said...

“God is the one who put the appetite for sexual desire in all of us from creation. Abraham and Sarah were half brother and half sister. Issac and Rebecca were 1st cousins, ditto Jacob and his wives, Leah and Rachel. Amram, Moses' father married his own aunt. But now in the enlightened age we have all these rules. Not one person EVER who lived to be an adolescent has not had desire for someone they couldn't possibly have an open relationship with.

Our culture allows for homosexual relationships, which God condemns. If an older woman wants sex with a younger man she's called a 'cougar' and the spin is always yippee, it's a cougar, aren't they great? But if a man wants sex with younger women, then he's a lecher, a pervert, a dirty old man.”

Jesus Christ obeyed the law of the land incl. paying taxes. In our land, the law is against most of what Weirwille did. Stealing, theft by deception, adultry (ever notice in the 10 commandments adultry is one and divorce is not listed?) incest, rape, and plagerism….

Was he a good man? Or a guy who simply did some good and some evil things? If your answer is yes, I feel bad for you to be locked in "this" and you probably will be for life. But that is your choice... To each his own...

Not one person EVER who lived to be an adolescent has not had desire for someone they couldn't possibly have an open relationship with.

I am not sure what this means, but having a desire and ACTING OUT are two different things.... Weirwille did not merely desire bad things and deal with his desires morally or rationally, he acted on them. For the record, the only one I could not have had an open relationship with was Mick Jaggar and that was only cause he had a thing for Keith Richards.... (kiddin)

Good bye Joniam, good luck in your life. I wish you no harm.... I mean it...

Yes and thank you. :)

Last year my daughter wanted me to take her to a movie called Whip it. Movie is about a 17 year old girl from Texas whose mother was always getting her to enter beauty contests and live that whole lifestyle. The girl, however, had different aspirations. She wanted to do roller derby, although that term was never used. She got herself on a girls only roller skating team called the 'Hurl scouts' and did just fine. These girls would skate around in a circle and kinda rough each other up and at the end of the competition one team would win and the other would lose. She fit in quite well.

Eventually her mom found out and there were hard feelings. Near the end of the movie there was one key scene where the girl was with one of her skating teammates, a thirty something single mom played by Drew Barrymore. Drew's character was explaining to the 17 yr old about how she never went to the parties after the games because she didn't think it would be best for her 8 yr old son. At one point she said, "just because you find a new family doesn't mean you have to throw out the old one".

After this, with give and take from both sides, the 17 yr old reconciled with her family without having to give up roller skating. Good flick, I thought. But that statement about a 'new family' stuck with me.

TWI was definitely a new family for me, but not the first. The drug culture was my first new family. It seemed like such a refreshing change from the scene the adults were always trying to cram down everybody's throat, plus you didn't have to be a jock, an A student, or any of the other prerequisites for participation in a "legitimate" clique; all you had to do was participate and you were accepted in the drug culture. But this did not last. By the time I left the drug culture it seemed like just another way to CONFORM or be cast out. Enter TWI.

I have an older sister who moved to NYC in 1969. She started going to meetings of the 'Women's liberation movement'. She went to all the meetings she could at first It was a safe haven. She could openly discuss her dissatisfaction with being a second class citizen in a male dominated world and receive encouragement and reenforcement. After awhile she stopped going to meetings. During a 1998 phone conversation with her, she told me she still considers herself a feminist, but that it wasn't a safe haven anymore. She saw too many instances where young women would be talking to older more cynical feminists and the attitude was..."oh, you made THOSE mistakes? Well, you must be really stupid; don't even talk to ME". This was disturbing to my sister.

TWI is still a new family to me. I don't go to (THEIR) meetings anymore, but the meetings I do go to are a safe haven like before. I'm also glad that I didn't throw out my "old" family. They're still all liberals and we don't have much contact, but at no time have I not been speaking to anyone in my biological family. I think GSC has been a new family for many of us.

The world doesn't care about people like us. This is poignantly revealed in one comment on the link to the 'Talk soup' clip. If you click on 'What hath God wrought' you can see comments on the E channel's website. The first few comments are about the dancing skills of TWI, or lack of them. Then some GSers get on there, then some TWI people, and comment #27 by 'chris' says, "wow, there's a lot of angry people here. The way s*cks/ the way's great. Get over it. You're all lame". That, IMO, sums up the world's attitude. We were losers for being Christian in the first place, then we were bigger losers for being in a "cult", then even worse for "whining" about stuff.

Despite my often pro twi stance, I feel a strange sense of belonging to this place. What will this new family do?

((((Johniam))))

See you over at Trust and Obey's site... I think that is where a lot of this family is going...

Thanks everyone for your insight, love, laughter and even your protests. I am thankful for all of you. I never “forgave” TWI but I have moved on and it simply does not matter that much to me anymore.

People that wanted to know the truth have heard it and people who do not want to know the truth never will. It is their life just like this is my life.

I wish all of you well and wish all of you health. On a personal note, the greatest thing that ever happened to me here is Tom (Groucho)....

And some of you have asked me about him, so I will tell you, in this is my farewell post to Greasespot.

Thank you Paw for all of your time and love you have put into this place. In my life it is the single biggest step in my being delivered from the lies of TWI. I know it took a lot to keep it going and I appreciate it. And thanks to all of the mods!

And to those who have asked me about Tom (Groucho); This is why I love him:

He is kind, geuine, brilliant, comedic, an abyss of awareness, a political satirist who answers the cry of the human soul, his ethereal beliefs give hope of dance to the crippled, and lend an ear to the unheard. His Christ-like goodness is what is missing in many of the hand-constructed churches; he brings laughter to the face of those who have forgotten to smile.

History will probably not recognize him and someday he will pass an unsung hero... here of earth… but I know he has touched and changed some of us who “get-it” and we will weep with the angels for we will be in the company of those who know “the whom” and “the what” he represented….

And on a lighter note, his humor is the kind which afflicts one with hiccups, his believing in the bedraggled of the world has them readjust their clothes in the gas station mirror ~ seeing themselves successful if only in a glimmer… He can have the street urchin believe in the pumpkin carriage of Cinderella and make the bankrupt, morally dignified, corporate executive ~ glad he did not partake in a policy that would have injured others.

Tom is the guy who has entered my war-torn heart bringing the stability of Christ and the understanding of the ages. He is one of a kind. And, if things continue the way they are going, I will remind him of all of this on a daily basis. Because of what God and Tom bring me ~ I am the most blessed and the wealthiest woman on earth.

I love you Tom…

Good~bye everyone ~ I leave you with love....

I appreciate your view....

"There are some people who truly do try to "do it right" and I am not knocking their efforts. What I am knocking is "the business of church" "the God business" the making money off of selling people "a hope and a dream" which does not exist outside of the LOVE of God. "Follow me…" "Harken unto my words…" this crap…. "

If someone is operating in the love of God ! Then, that is what it is all about...

Again, I am not knocking their efforts...

Geisha:

It was creepy. But I got to tell you the more I have looked at any “church” organization ~ the more I see crap given by all of it/them.… We have got to get to a point, IMHO, where we understand WE are the church. Not buildings not organizations, not the ordained and the adored. But everyday people as we hold forth “God” as we love him and love his people…

Church is big business.

There are some people who truly do try to “do it right” and I am not knocking their efforts. What I am knocking is “the business of church” “the God business” the making money off of selling people "a hope and a dream" which does not exist outside of the LOVE of God. “Follow me…” “Harken unto my words…” this crap….

When I think of the commandment, thou that shalt not use the Lord the God’s name in vain ~ this BIG church business is a violation of that commandment. For years people cheapened it to mean do not curse or say something as frivolous as “Oh my God!” But that makes no sense to me. God has a shot at giving us 10 commandments and among the towers in them are things like thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, and then this wimpy thing ~ oh and by the way, don’t ever just say, “oh my God.” Unless you mean it… What a wimpy meaning… You’d think God would list arson or something before a wimpy little declaration like that….

So, in giving a look at using his name in vain, what I saw was: using his name to lie, deceive, to bring people to “yourself” leaving people with “empty” in my name…

I think THIS is again that. But John is not alone. There are church buildings filled with carnival barkers offering the same “game.” It is rancid and it saddens me.

In conclusion:

It is a crazy life that makes parts or the whole of us crazy at times, because we live "here", in the disingenuous context of a fallen world.

But if we cleave onto GOD, not a group pretending to speak FOR him, but to GOD, we will be okay....

Groucho stated this several times (I paraphrase):

"Go to GOD to find God. And then, if you find a place to corporately worship that is great. But if you let a group find and define God for you ~ when the group gets distorted in their thinking ~ then your understanding of God can become distorted. Develop a personal relationship with GOD.... Don't ever surrender your personal relationship with God to anyone or anything... Retain your faith ~ unshakable!"

The insanity I allowed in my life? The biggest “open door” was my misunderstanding of “love” and being as God is love it was subsequently my lack of understanding God. So, I have been going to “God” to know “him”. And in my friendship with God, the doors, to the life he wants me to have, have flung open….

I contested the wrong teaching, congested thinking and askew behaviors. I stopped running, hiding, defending and excusing any and all of it. I accepted my own responsibility in any victimization. And when truly a victim, I stopped the course of reaction and instead "try" to always fight back with a logical, loving godly response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0TvoCZJAJI&feature=related

See your life through the eyes of God....

There are things in life you'll learn and

In time you'll see

Cause out there somewhere

It's all waiting

If you keep believing

So don't run, don't hide

It will be all right

You'll see, trust me

I'll be there watching over you

Just take a look through my eyes

There's a better place

somewhere out there

Just take a look through my eyes

Everything changes

You'll be amazed what you'll find

If you look through my eyes

There will be times on this journey

All you'll see is darkness

Out there somewhere daylight finds you

If you keep believing

So don't run, don't hide

It will be all right

You'll see, trust me

I'll be there watching over you

Just take a look through my eyes

There's a better place

somewhere out there

Just take a look through my eyes

Everything changes

You'll be amazed what you'll find

If you look through my eyes

All the things that you can change

There's a meaning in everything

And you will find all you need

There's so much to understand

Just take a look through my eyes

There's a better place

somewhere out there

Just take a look through my eyes

Everything changes

You'll be amazed what you'll find

If you look through my eyes

Take a look through my eyes

I leave you with love...

"At this stage of my life and what I see of this age, it's very simple. The world needs less speak and more do. Don't tell me what God can do if I believe - show me what God can do when you believe. Or shut up and find a seat. "

Thanks Socks!

...and what would an advertisement be without some background music?...

Ha ha ha ~ great theme song!

Twinky:

This is one little video showing one aspect of how life can "fall apart". But the answer in it, is ths answer for all areas that "fall apart". In each of our lives the "need" for resurrection is not in the "once saved always saved" thinking. We have a daily, if not minute by minute "need" for resurrection.... IMHO

After a lot of legal back and forth.

My Dad is off the hook....

However, he did have to pay $10,000 to his atty! What a bunch of crap!

Socks:

Did you make that up? I really like it.

One man's ceiling is another man's sky, if you know what I mean.