Xena

Hi Bagpipes! I write this as I listen to Celtic music. Bagpipes, indeed. Someone has already suggested getting a different Bible. This was a big step for me. I didn't want to throw out the Word, but I couldn't read it without re-living so much pain. Same thing with prayer. Here's what I learned. "The Message" Bible is still the Word, but it doesn't bring on the flashbacks. You'll love it. And when you pray, don't pray Way-style (Thank you Father for ............ fill in the blank ........... whatever it is you're praying for). How arrogant ! How manipulative ! How dare anyone thank God for something before they have it - as if they know what God will do next. Do you remember how to work the Word? Well, work it ... study the Lord's prayer, the way Jesus taught folks to pray. It's so different than what we learned. Don't punctuate you prayer with "Thank you Father", but rather "Thy will be done". It's so much more respectful. And besides, eventually you'll start believing it: THY WILL BE DONE !!!!! So nice to put it all in His hands, instead of thinking that your own behavior is what determines your blessings or lack of blessings. Regarding counselors - I've seen plenty. But Greasespot is the best, because you don't have to spend 45 minutes of your one-hour session, explaining the rituals and abuses of TWI. People here already know that stuff, so you can just go right ahead and unload without the pre-explanations. Counselors don't understand what we've been through. However, one counselor gave me some advice that has definitely helped. She said I should remember, remember way back to before I ever heard of TWI. And then remember something that made me happy. And DO THAT THING. Do what made you happy before TWI. For me it was painting. And now, many paintings later, seven years later to be exact, I am approaching happiness. It's been a long strange trip. But I'm getting there. Lots of us are. It's your turn now. Xena

Sorry. I didn't mean to de-rail this topic.

Burn the chaff Day: This isn't a book, but rather a ritual, which was also "plagiarized" or at least copied, by TWI. And the original version is from an unlikely source - the Druids. Interesting how theWay spent so much energy disecting the Paegan origins of Christmas and Easter, but endorsed Uncle Harry's tradition of burning the chaff. Most Wiccan circles perform this ceremony routinely. Check it out -- http://members.tripod.com/~Epona_Seaborn/beltane.html

"It's a lie, straight from hell". -- This is a phrase used by my kids nowadays, sarcasticly of course, in regards to anything absurd, like some TV commercials or certain political promises. This quote has become a joke in our family.

When you go to CNN's main page, there's a section down in the lower right side which says "Watch Video" (in red leters). The video is still there today, January 21. Does somebody out there know how to capture this video for all the Greasespot folks to watch?

It's January 20. If it's still there, go to the CNN website and click on the video called "Alleged Sex for Salvation". Amazing. It sounds just like the LCM lawsuits.

Bliss, Long ago, I got to thinking about the "Renewed Mind" question - WHO does the renewing? My thinking was something like this: If I am able to renew my mind for myself, then I must be using my mind to do that. And if I am using my mind to renew my mind, then it must be my old mind that is renewing my mind to become a new mind. But if it's new, then it couldn't be old, and so the process of renewing couldn't really happen, because the old mind wasn't there any more. Oh brother. Yes, I'm blonde. So I did some looking into it (which I'm not doing tonight, so forgive my lack of chapter and verse), but I found that in the verses that referred to renewing the mind, "renew" was always a passive verb. In other words, the subject is not really identified. It's like this: The ball was thrown - - or -- he threw the ball. In the first sentence, you don't know who threw the ball. That's passive. Get it? It's like that in the verses about renewed mind. It doesn't identify who does the renewing. TWI explained it to mean that WE must do the renewing. I don't think so. I remember many times hearing one believer yell at another believer "Renew your mind !!!" , as a sort of cliche-style confrontation. They could just as reasonably yelled "Rebuild yourself out of dust !!!" Nope. It's God that does the renewing. That said, reconsider TWI's definition of agape - "The love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation in the household". Horse feathers !!! That is soooooo sick. First of all, we were supposed to renew our own minds (impossible) and then it was only to occur in the household. Both of these pre-requisites made agape totally CONDITIONAL. See how twisted it all was?

I thought VPW defined agape as "The love of God in the renewed mind in manifestation", and then LCM added "in the Household" to the end of that definition. I have worked so hard to erase this stuff from my mind that I may be confusing this with some other term. Anybody else remember this? And another thing - Love in TWI was absolutely conditional.

My kids are grown now. Looking back, I definitely have some regrets about things that we taught them regarding the "Household of God". Why? Because when my husband and I were Marked and Avoided, the clergy went to our two oldest kids, and told them to Mark and Avoid us too. One of these kids asked the right questions and quickly realized that the leadership had lied about us. This kid then dumped TWI and reunited with us. However, our oldest child, then age 25, did exactly as we had taught her to do, growing up in the Way Ministry - she stayed faithful to the Way - and essentially shunned us, her heart-broken parents. Years passed with no communication. Mail was returned to us. Phone calls were screened by her believer-roommates. Finally, one day she made contact us. We felt like we had been given a child back from the dead. But our relationship has never fully recovered. In your attempt to do the right thing for your children, don't risk losing them. My advice to you, regardless of whether you stay with TWI or leave, PLEASE make sure your kids know that Family is more important than faithfulness to TWI. Of course they must love God above all, but devotion to the family takes precedence over TWI.

How about when GOD himself was not up to Way standards of "decent and in order"? I can think of two examples: Wichita, Kansas - A tornado had just come through the area. Power was out across the city, trees down, folks just beginning to emerge from their basements. The BC was driving across town, checking on the neighborhoods where his TWI people lived. That seemed a decent thing to do. BUT, when he arrived at one of my friend's homes, he got out of his car, found the man of the house assisting a neighbor in removing a tree from his crushed car, and instead of offering to help, he yelled at the twig guy for not having his gutters cleaned out. Apparently the debris in his gutters had caused rain water to back up and during the strom, the weight of the water had broken one of the gutters, so it was hanging from the roof of the house. The BC just got back into his car, and left, never lifting a hand to help anyone with recovery from the tornado damage. Later, of course, we heard about how the homes of all the believers had been spared. Rural Utah - I was traveling with a Corps lady through the rugged red cliffs of Utah one summer, when she commented that the Adversary's work was so evident in that area. I looked around at the gorgeous scenery, and asked what she was talking about. She said, "Everything is so out of order here - God would have never created such an irregular and desolate landscape". Oh, brother. Xena

In residence, I was one of the "back room girls". I know that sounds awful, but basically my responsibilities were to make sure the room (adjacent to the chapel or the auditorium) was in PERFECT condition, and to make tea for the big shots. Yes, we RAKED the carpet. And I'm talking about the early 90's, not the 70's, and the carpets were NOT shag carpets. They were just regular carpets, but the raking removed the tracks that the vacuum cleaner made. Another LAW was that the edges on both sides of a towel had to be folded inward, before you hung the towel on the rack. God forbid that you should just fold a towel in half and then hang it up! Also, we could not spray windex on a window, or furniture polish on the furniture. No. The cleaning solution was to be sprayed on to a rag, and then the rag applied to the window or furniture. I was yelled at viciously for doing this the wrong way. Books on a shelf had to be lined up according to the heigth of the books. Tall ones with tall ones, and shorter ones with shorter ones. Center pieces on a table had to sit directly under the hanging lamp. If it was off-center, heads would roll. The bottom edge of napkins had to be one finger width from the edge of the table. Mints were to be counted, usually just seven in a candy dish, because numbers like six or eleven would invite devil spirits into the "leadership's" environment. Candle wicks had to be trimmed before lighting, and all scented candles had to have their scents approved before using in the back room. And I remember one poor corps sister of mine, who had the painful honor of being the "Corps Buddy" for LCM when he visited the Indiana Campus. This means that she was his hostess, taking care of his personal belongings and his suite. This girl got reamed in front of the whole corps ... because she hung his clothes in the closet without putting shirts all together and pants all together and jackets all together. Instead, she hung them up, mixing shirts with pants, etc. You would have thought she had murdered LCM's kids or something. Talk about Obsessive-Compulsive !!! I'm embarrassed to say that I still find myself doing some of this stuff. But you can be assured that my house is now full of color and music and animals and wicker furniture and Indian rugs. My oldest son advised me, "Whatever they told you to do, do the opposite". I have followed that suggestion in so many categories, INCLUDING DECORATING MY HOME. If you're not in the Way, don't go there. If you're in it ..... ESCAPE NOW before they program you into folding the toilet paper into little triangles !!! -Xena

What is the time frame that all this happened?

Lindy, You ask "Where is the line?". I think that's the point. The Spirit has no lines. The over-all "test" of whether something is right or wrong / good or bad ... is to see if it fits within Christ's directives of "Love God" and "Love your neighbor". There's a lot of room --- ENDLESS room --- within those parameters. There is also a lot of room outside of those parameters, which is why we still make mistakes. I remember a couple of years when TWI was stomping out the popular concept of "following your heart". They even banished a collection of music with that title. But personally I believe that "following your heart" is contemporary language describing the process of making decisions and living life based on spiritual understanding (assuming the person has the Spirit of God within him or her). Like the folks back in Galatians, we ex-Wayfer people - and others - have trouble with this level of freedom. To use your analogy of "lines" ... it's like the difference between a coloring book and a work of art. We keep looking for the lines. But as genuine Christians, God has given each of us the ability of a great artist, ie Make your own lines, forms, colors, depth. Just keep the paint on the canvas ... and the canvas is very very big. TWI gave us coloring books. Get out of the lines and you're possessed. Lindy, I suggest that you reclaim your identiy as a Spiritual artist, a creative (yes, I used that dirty word !) a creative and powerful human whose abilities are directly plugged in to the Spirit of God. Play with the possibilities. Xena

So . what was the big announcement, for real? Anybody know? -X

Back to the original point of this thread: "Awaiting the Return" is indeed Way-Speak. And, Raf, I actually appreciate what you said about this being nit-picky. You're right. In fact, your comments motivate me to work on not letting mere words make me so angry. You see, Way jargon is a sort of Trigger Point for me, another reminder of TWI, which jolts me out of my relatively peaceful lifestyle, and re-locates my thoughts back to the Way. My counselor calls it PTSD. I'll get over it. Still, I believe so much of TWI doctrine omitted information about Jesus Christ, and the phrase "Awaiting the Return" is one example. The return of whom? I could give so many examples. I was reading in Matthew today, the chapter containing the Lord's Prayer, and in the margins of my Bible I have notes that I wrote years ago, claiming that the prayer no longer applies, because it is Old Testament, that we don't need to "forgive our debtors" in order to be forgiven, because we are already forgiven, and so forth. Leave out Jesus / reject the Lord's prayer. LCM wrote that book about Acts, and VPW focused so much on the epistles. Did any of you ever take a TWI class or read a book about the gospels? JCOPS referred to the gospels a lot, but the flavor of that book seemed to be a condemnation of modern day Christmas, yet another nudge to avoid Christ. Oh well, whatever, lots of directions this thread could go in. But, Mike, try to not talk about yourself, OK? This is the "Doctrinal" section. And Raf, be nice. Love you guys. -X

Thanks. I KNOW the concept of Christ coming back is in the Bible. What I was referring to was the specific word-by-word phrase, "Awaiting the Return". That's Way-Speak. It's like "Power for Abundant Living"; the concept is Biblical, but the cliche, used over and over and over, is not in there. It's no biggee, guys, just a pet peeve. Glad to be out and speaking English again. -X

Sir G. -- Have you been to some of these workshops, etc? Tell us what it's like. When I read about the "Naked" sessions, I thought they were sitting around philosophizing in the nude ... or is it more like the naked truth? If one were to register for one of these conferences, what would we expect to experience? -X

On the thread called "Mrs. Wierwille, Awaiting the Return, a couple of us were disecting this phrase. It was suggested that we move the derailment to the doctrinal section, so here we are ......... From what I can find in my Concordance, the terminology is absolutely Way-Speak, not used in the Bible - or at least I can't find it there. My personal distaste for this phrase, "Awaiting the Return", is due to: 1. The presumption that everyone speaks Way jargon and understands it, which is a stuck-up presumption. 2. The omission of the end of the phrase, ie it should be "Awaiting the Return of Christ", which is so typical of TWI -- to leave Christ out of everything. 3. The nonsense of how someone who is "asleep" as TWI teaches, could possibly be awaiting anything. They are sleeping, right? It's we who are alive that are able to await. 4. The disrespect to the deceased, whenever TWI attaches this cliche to the person's name (Mrs. Wierwille is Awaiting the Return). If I'm wrong about this, someone teach me better. -X

Fish Boy, Is this the mind-set imprinted upon you by your experience in the Way Ministry? -X

We were taught every possible angle on why we should give our tithe to the Way. But in the Gospels, which TWI seemed to have deleted from the Bible, Jesus (remember Jesus?) said that when we help "the least of these my children" then we're helping him. I continue to tithe - 10%, not 15% as TWI demanded - but nowadays I give to groups and individuals who represent "the least of these" and whether or not I get blessed back is not important. That whole bribe thing about tithing in order to get blessed back .... that's totally wrong. Just think how much money the Way could give to the Red Cross if they sent all the Abundant Sharing from one Sunday. Their numbers may be down, but I still bet it would be a bundle. -X

Were the Way folks in New Orleans out-of-fellowship, and thus lost the protection on their city? Or is it that they were standing so perfectly on the Word that the Adversary made them a target? What is TWI's revelation about Katrina? This should be interesting.

Prayers coming from Montana tonight. You Southerners - we've got room for you up here. Please be careful. -X

I think Rosalie is really LCM. He is wearing one of those truer-than-life masks, like in the movies, --- and we always wondered (after Athletes of the Spirit) about him dressing in drag. Yep. She is actually the MOG in disguise. Just one request, Loy, that voice you're using as Rosalie --- can't you do something better with that? X

I have seen a tendency in ex-Way people to maintain that indignant attitude towards other Christians, even though they have rejected every other habit they learned in TWI. It's like they don't even realize that they are continuing to look down their noses at people who believe differently. Particularly regarding issues such as the Trinity or homosexuality or life after death. These three absolutes which were programmed into us by TWI ... continue to keep us separate from other groups, due to our own arrogance, and effectively isolate many ex-wayfers from participation with decent Bible believing people. Maybe this learned indignation is one of the last holds that TWI has on us. It is toxic. How can we shake it off? -X

Mell, If you are questioning your own value, based on some Way person saying you are possessed ... Don't. From my perspective, if the Way could not possess you, then they would say they you were possessed (by something else). If perhaps you are considering that they might be right, then consider this: they also taught that if a person is wondering whether or not he / she is possessed, then he / she is NOT possessed. They say that those who ARE possessed never think about it. You see, the Way recognized the Spirit realm, and became totally drawn into exploring everything available to disect it, define it, and categorize it. Some of what they teach about this is accurate, but their mistake was putting so MUCH attention on it, that their own outfit became devil-ish. Way people who needed appoval or advancement knew they could get it by claiming they had discerned a spirit on or in someone else. It became honorable to accuse as many as possible of possession. Friends nailed each other, and families did the same. Many hearts were broken, and it was all for nothing. And again, if the leaders sensed that they could not possess you themselves, then the conclusion was that you were already possessed, by Satan. Mell, if they said you were possessed, you must be in fact very strong and independent. Be glad for that. Unless, of course, you can spin your head around several times and foam at the mouth! Xena