Oakspear

uuunnnnnnnggggggghhhh okay...all stretched

Excuse me while I poke my eyes out with a butter knife

On a few of the threads here on the 'My Story' Forum I've noticed posters jumping in to criticize life choices made by those who have posted their story. This is just my opinion, but is this forum the place for that? Posting the story of your life is not the easiest thing to do. I was one of the first to do so, and man, I felt NAKED when I clicked that "Post Now" button. You just finish baring your soul to God and Grease Spot and everybody and some clod jumps in with a comment about how you're "off the Word", or to "get back to God" in one category or another, or that something that is an integral part of you is a "shortcoming". Save your pontificating for the discussion forums, folks! If you think homosexuality is wrong, go to one of the threads that address that subject. Don't criticize someone who didn't have to "come out of the closet" to you. If you think that turning to a mainstream church, or Buddhism or Wicca is devilish, save it for a forum that deals with that. When I first posted my story, the disintegration of my marriage was part of the story. Some "well meaning"...well, I'll refrain from employing an adjectives...posters, saw fit to berate me for not "getting my wife back". Folks who had no real knowledge of why my marriage broke up or how much pain I was in. If you see a sentence like this: then jump in!With few exceptions, the critical ones don't post their stories, I've observed. So, anyway, please exercise a little restraint and forebearance.

hmmm...I must have missed the part where Daryl asked our opinion about anything that he does. Of course some folks feel compelled to offer their opinion, whether asked or not. Daryl, we shared a table at the wedding last weekend, and I found you to be an extremely personable guy and fun to be around. Susie thought you were great too! Thanks for sharing your story here in this forum.

socks: Actually, they changed the set up of the Corps program again about four or five years ago: one "candidate" year, where you get your money and "what-to-brings" together, and whatever (kind of how the "apprentice" year was handled at least since the early eighties). The second is the "apprentice" year. The last I heard you had to be in the Way Disciple program during this year, and live with or near a Limb Coordinator or be on staff for the remainder of the year. Then two straight years in-residence. Regular Corps and Family Corps are lumped together.

dmiller: Maybe pure and altruistic folks like yourself weren't invited to the abuse seminars :D--> Come on man, just because you resisted some of that carp, can you honestly say that you never saw it? You seem like a perseptive and intelligent guy...do you really maintain that the "company line" was to disregard whether people wanted to committ to PFAL or not? You know better.

It doesn't. He takes the fountain connection and spins it out to mean female orgasm. A tenuous connection, but very Martindalean.

From the point of view of someone who wasn't in the Corps: I didn't see that the Way Corps training was consistantly turning out people who lived up to the standards that we were told Corps training taught people to live up to. This is taking into account differences in longsuits and abilities, as well as differences in heart and apparent motivation. Looking at the Corps objectives: 1. Acquire an in-depth spiritual perception and awareness:While I did see some extremely spiritually perspective and aware folks come out of the Corps, I saw just as many who were utterly clueless. I suspect that those who had that ability, went in with it, so what was taught? I'm sure there are some who can tell me that they learned it in the Corps, but if it was an objective, and it was taught, why was it so rare? 2. Receive training in the whole Word, so as to be able to teach others.There were some top-notch teachers out there. Folks who knew the bible and it's application inside out. But there were just as many people who had zero ability to be able to communicate anything from the bible at any level. We were consistantly told that if we had questions, to go to our "leadership", especially the Way Corps. We were lead to believe that the training and teaching that the Corps received gave them the ability to help us "go to the Word" for our answers. In the early nineties, we had two Way Corps in our state, one who was the Limb Coordinator, who were almost functionally illiterate. They were good people, and my heart went out to them as they tried to teach. How could these people have absorbed any of the research principles taught in the Corps, or even simple PFAL basics if they could barely read? I know "training in the whole Word" means more than just "research", but what were some of these guys and gals doing when this stuff was being taught? 3. Physical training, making your physical body, the vehicle of communication of The Word as vital as possible.I know you Corps ran and climbed mountains and threw people in the mud ;)--> when in residence, but I was frequently amazed at the way some leaders would let themselves go physically upon graduation. I'm not talking about some poor schmoe who couldn't stay "disciplined", region coordinators, cabinet members, trustee spouses. 4. Practice believing to bring material abundance to you and the ministry.The most "material abundance" that I saw was when someone was on salary. In my experience, those who had to work were living at a lower level of "material abundance" than the "Joe Believer". 5. Go forth as leaders and workers in areas of concern, interest and need.Hard not to do this one :P--> - just accept your assignment. This is not meant to disparage Way Corps, nor paint you all with the same brush. Nor is it meant as a refection of heart or motivation. My point is that if the Corps training was all that it was advertised to be, then we could expect some consistancy in outcome, couldn't we? In most training programs, if someone cannot do what they are trained to do, they aren't allowed to do it!

JL: Okay...gotcha

The Hebrew word ayin, which means "eye", is used figuratively for the noun "fountain". A fountain was sometimes described as "the eye (center) of the landscape". A homonym is a word that is spelled the same as another, but has a different meaning, often a different etymology. To say that the literal "eye" and the figurative "eye", meaning "fountain" are homonyms would be like saying that "delta", the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, and "delta", as in the mouth of a river are homonyms, when the triangular shape of the network of streams feeding into the ocean or gulf is called a "delta" because it is the same shape as the letter "delta". Martindale was very fond of finding a homonyms, or a figurative use of a word and imputing that meaning to the word that he was defining, often in error. Martindale might define a hypothetical biblical use of "river delta" as "Greek", because it derives from the greek letter.

did they really spell "utilize" as "utelize"?

For a guy as skilled in the use of sarcasm as you seem to be, did younot recognize UH's use of it in his post?

Oh, I almsot forgot, he covers abortion in WayAP also! Without arguing about scientific theories vs. biblical literalism, what Martindale did was usually to ridicule his misunderstanding of a scientific theory, not the theory itself. Sure, God could do whatever he wants, no argument here, but LCM would act like he was informed on these matters, yet wasn't.

Can I redirect? Thanks :D--> For those who were around during the "loyalty letter" days, did you already know that Martindale was "off"? If so, was the letter just the straw that broke the camel's back? Before the letter came out, did you think he was going to change, improve? Leave? From the testimony of those who lived through it, the letter doesn't seem to be a bolt out of the blue, or an isolated bit of ungodliness, but the culmination of much crap.

That's right Hope, where do you begin? For one thing, you almost had to have a grounding in PFAL for it to make even a minimal amount of sense. Another is, as was mentioned, the screaming confrontation starts the first session. Why would a new person want to subject themself to that? For a "foundational" class, it assumes a pretty high level of committment. The pseudo-science in there is pretty wacky: the quick dividing of the continents by frozen methane under the ocean (or something like that), the complete misrepresentation of the Big Bang and the salt water womb around the universe would drive off anyone with a high school education. The whole "Face of the Deep" thing was pretty interesting. Even if you believe that the bible to be literally true in it's physical description of the cosmos, Martindale screws it all up. The most fun I had while an "undercover innie" back in 2001 was when I was asked to teach the "Face of the Deep" segment at fellowship one night. I ignored his syllabus and taught it straight from the bible and came up with a radically different version than Martindale did. What was amazing was that I had several people come up to me and say that they never understood that segment until I explained it!!!! --> I mentioned on another thread about the lesbian devil segment. I worked that section for over a year and proved that Martindale's conclusions were incorrect. The definitions that he gave for words was demonstrably wrong, and his conclusions were not supported by his supposed evidense. When I presented all of this to my region coordinator, who was teaching the class live (i.e. reading the syllabus) he said "You may not be able to document his conclusions, but it has to be right because of what we know about homosexuality".

When I got to the "Devil in a Blue Dress" :D--> segment of WayAP, I thought "what the f***?" I did work it. Backwards and forwards, for a year and a half. The response I got from my region coordinator when I presented my findings to him was "Even if we can't document it, it's got to be true because of what we know about homosexuality"

This sounds like one of those things that didn't make the cut into the book, so we'dhave to depend on one of the few who have the PFAL film or video to check for us. As I recall, he didn't mention Barth by name, but it was implied.

"...where were they going without ever knowing the way?" Is that a line from the song by Fastball, Raf?

Don't do anything illegal or immoral until I get there!

As I recall, we always managed to eat okay, but not sure how. --> Our finanacial problems manifested themselves in crappy furniture and zero decor in the places we lived. It was like we were monks or something. The biggest factor in our lack of financial abundance was the lack of a consistant job by our interim Way Corps WOW Family Coordinator. The rest of us worked continually throughout the year, but our fearless leader went through a number of them with gaps in between. The worst was right after we moved to another city mid-year. He got a "job" putting a lawn and doing some landscaping at the apartment we rented in exchange for a break on the rent. We were on a financial plan where we each contributed our whole paycheck to the family fund, and the treasurer paid the bills and doled out money for incidentals. Our leader, as it turned out, did not do a lick of work on the lawn, but went back to sleep each morning after we all went to our jobs. This went on for several months. Eventually the landlord figured out that he wasn't getting a lawn, and demanded the money that he had deducted from the rent. Since leader-boy didn't immediately get another job, the three of us had to cover the back rent, as well as paying the full monthly rent until our mini-MOG started working. I'm kind of fuzzy about how much longer he went without a job, but it may have been another month. His dad lent us a sum of money so that we could get caught up on our bills. We paid him back out of the family fund before the year ended, but our leader claimed that his dad was giving the money to him as a gift. I'm sure that if we checked with his dad we would have found out differently. So not only did we carry him for 2-3 months while he slept in dreaming about lawns, and while he was out-of-work for another month, but we had to borrow money to cover his butt, and then handed him the money that we had saved up to get us out of debt. Double (maybe triple) screwed. Yup, that was abundance

Even people who have no vested interest in staying with TWI (i.e. not involved in the abuses) will sometimes rationalize staying in despite knowledge of problems. Look at people who stayed in after the April 2000 lawsuit announcement. TWI announced that Martindale was having an "affair" with a married woman, they kicked him out, yet still run his class. And people STILL stick with TWI.

I'm sure I could stump the dj...but my preferred music tends to be tough to dance to...so I'll let the professional do his or her job :D-->

Heck, I wish I could have known then what I know now :D--> When Wierwille died, and the POP was read and the poopoo hit the fan, and the letters went out, and lines were drawn in the sand....I was not involved in TWI. We had a run-in with our Limb Coordinators and just stopped going to stuff for a while. We weren't against TWI, or Wierwille, or PFAL...we just thought that the LC was a jerk. In 1990 we decide that's it's time to go back. Our oldest was old enough to take PFAL, we were kind of missing the fellowship, the Rock of Ages, etc. We knew people on both sides of the fence. Frankly, neither side did a very good job of communicating to me why they came down on the side that they did. I didn't hear any stories like Rascal's or others here at GS, just some vague things about the Trustees "not coming back to the Word", but nothing specific. The LCM loyalists weren't much better. Of course Martindale's "Galatians Tapes" were full of vague generalities. Oh, they were very specific about what devil spirits Martrindale claimed Geer was full of, but short on details. I took a shot and stuck with the "official" TWI, reasoning that Martindale was Wierwille's appointee, and Mrs Wierwille stuck with Martindale... If I'd only known. I wouldn't have thrown in with that adulterous, spitting, delusional, "MOG". I would have spared my family all that grief. Know then what I know now. No question. I'd have never gotten re-involved.

I seriously doubt there is someone in every branch tasked to monitoring GS and other sites. What I do think happens is that if someone arouses suspicion by their words or actions, then the search for incriminating posts begins. Or if someone identifies him- or herself as an "innie", then word is sent out to the "field" to watch for certain things. In my case I loudly broadcast my problems with TWI doctrine and practice. My ex-wife, twig coordinator, region coordinator and a member of the Board of Trustees all knew very specifically what my biggest problems were...because I told them! Although I gave scant personal information, and bounced among three handles, my writing style is recognizable, and that helped them figure out that it was me.

Looks good if you didn't know just how ungodly Martindale himself was. Looks real pious unless you knew how Martindale and his fellow top-dog leaders were more like the prophets of Baal than Elijah. I think that this was a wakeup call to many that The Way wasn't "our" ministry. In the seventies there was an illusion that while Wierwille was "The Teacher", we were all equal partners in "moving the Word". That fantasy was squashed with these letters and the follow-up. In the nineties, no matter how "sweet" a local fellowship may have been, there was no delusion that we had any rights; we were merely tolerated.