Bramble

My kids are attached to facebook and text all the time to update. My space isn't very popular with my kids and their friends. They have laptops through the highschool so all the kids have access. I think they have enough sense to call for an emergency if they have one, but facebook would probably be the next text.

I love my facebook account. I'm on my kids lists, and lots of their friends have friended me, which is odd but I hear lots of stuff. I'm amazed at how clever they are. One of my kids writes a blog that is so humorous. My brother who travels alot communicates mostly through facebook, my sis, neices and nephews, cousins who I rarely see, highschool friends of my own and of my brother and sister, my college roommates and a gal who took PFAL my wow year, my good friend who moved to Scotland--I hear from many of them weekly.. We post recipies, I post crochet patterns, my brother posts photos of his work. It's been very positive. We've been getting our Wyoming cousins(very few live in Wyoming now )on and are planning a cousin reunion. Even some of my cousins that can barely open an email post updates.

Sometimes-SOMETIMES-you engage with someone on the internet only to realize the other person has big issues. Using a net id and email not related to your real life can be a good thing. because you don't know who is on the other side of the online personality or what they are capable of or what they really want.

to add...

strong and immediate rejection of stages is a typical response of a particular stage

and the number of people at this particular stage has been growing rapidly for a few generations now

which is why i think it is perhaps more important than ever that stages are addressed and understood

...in spite of the reactions

...so we can keep growing and keep from going backwards

I have a brother who is mentally ill. His twenties were crazy, but around his thirtieth birthday he was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar and ocd. The bipolar has somewhat evened out with age, but even with medication he can't live a normal life, hold down a job etc. As care takers, I must say the ocd in his case, actually makes things easier, because he follows a strick schedule--excercise, a bath, breakfast etc.

Through the years he has been on and off meds, he has alot of auditory hallucinations, mostly gun fire and bombs. Sometimes a little girl talks to him, about a railroad track near a small town in Montana. Sometimes it is something scary, and sometimes it is a treasure, or Lucky his dog( lost in 1979) down there by the railroad. He has lived 7 hours away from this town for the past 30 years but still hallucinates about it. He did get there once on a bus, but my dad drove down there and brought him home.

Anyway, my point. I have never once seen him act out like a two year old, throw a tantrum, get raving angry or violent. Despite all the crazy stuff, he still has the good manners he was raised with, he took care of my mom and dad's house and yard when they were elderly, mows my sister's huge yard. If you visit him in his little apartment( my sister converted her garage) He'll make a fresh pot of cofffee. He's an adult--mentally ill--but an adult.

His psych says that despite the serious nature of his illness--he is one of the sickest patients this doctor has ever treated-- my brother's quality of life is better than most with similar illness.

I think he internalized values he was raised with by our strict but loving catholic parents, reinforced in the catholic school system, by our relatives and friend's families. He never learned to be a selfish jerk, that was never modeled or seen as acceptable. So despite the mental illness, he is still basically a good man.

I run across sane people that could learn a thing or two from him, individuals who see people as tools for their use. Some of them even spout alot of religious words, and the words mean nothing in their hearts. They are just looking for the con that will work on you.

I start at a very simple place --is obedience to an authority involved? Who and Why? Does someone else benefit at my expense of labor, sweat etc?

They are gonna bring back Acts 5th avenue and encourage folk to buy clothes at yard sales.

Remember being a WOW? Valuable training for hard economic times. I can still remember the loaves of bread we made into pbj for our long trip to the ROA from Montana. PBJ, Water in a plastic jug. MMMM

Kinda depressing, living in your fifties like you did in your twenties when you were working only 20 hours a week.

Wouldn't purposefully shutting down your organs to cause your own death be called suicide?

And if you could do it to yourself by the power of your believeing, couldn't you do it to someone else?

People are not all cookie cut outs from the same dough, you know? Your experiences and what worked for you are yours but not necessarily someone else's.

Obviously you have no need for a site like this, or the interest. Why begrudge and judge those that do?

Likeminded-ness never really made people all the same inside. Some felt and experienced things perhaps quite differrently than you did.

I see similarities in the pagan groups in my area with th unstructured twigs back when I first got involved in TWI.

Lots of the Wiccans, pagans, heathens and various and sundry in my area meet informally in small groups in homes and campgrounds. Twice a year, Halloween and midsummer we have something more grouplike but very casual--potluck or campout, and the annual witches' ball. We know we will see pagan folk if we go to a certain new age store(which has a meeting room in the back) or the occasional New age/Renfaire held around the area. There is also a coffee shop downtown that is a favored meeting place.

The small group I gather with now and then is 4 middle aged ladies. We all have different labels and beliefs, one is a green witch, one is a bruja, all different, but we all have a background in basic Wicca( we met in an Traditional 101 class held at the local store some years ago)and part of the dynamics is to find and agree on what we want to do and why. We don't have a lecture/teacher/audience type of structure.

I have visited another group of pagan folk from my job--a couple open their home to about six Wiccan types. They are all in their twenties, have small children and do quite a bit of socializing together. They also favor very fancy gowns for rituals! We met through pagan jewelry(I don't wear a pentacle at work because some people are afraid, but I do have a charm bracelet with charms that look like leaves but are obvious pagan/Wiccan symbols to pagans and Wiccans.) I enjoy their group but prefer my spangle free middle aged ladies.

Things get done so much more efficiently without the mouth foaming. It helps me on my day job, I don't get intimidated by the tantrum throwers.

I have the happy job of dealing with escalated situations-- 'I have many resources and want to help you. To do that, I need to gather information' 'Here is what I CAN do.' 'I am trying to help you but if you continue to scream/curse I will cease our interaction.'

Many people have such fantasy expectations!

On GSC I once started a thread about bullies. It ended up in soap opera. The major bully eventually got banned. Too bad so sad. That was a long time ago.

You are not familiar with the prosperity doctrine? It is very popular in my area. Our local 'mega' church holds this theology.

God forbid a child who's mom make s $8 an hour and Dad took off goes to bed with food in his stomach. Or meds for an ear infection.

That the poor are unworthy, lazy users and deserve their grinding poverty seems to go hand in hand with those that believe a prosperity doctrine.

In the mid or late nineties LCM declared the word Christian a derogatory term. We were 'believers.' He claimed the term Christian in the bible was what the unbelievers called the believers.

I do believe that a wafer family changed the name of a child--he had been named Christian.

But when I first got involved we called ourselves Christians--but a new, better type of Christian in our long and detailed explanations.

Well, only spiritual spiders crawl out your nose, indicating the evil state of your brain.

I thought the HP references were a very good illustration in the topic. TY WW

The woman was quickly found to be a fraud, she was not an Obama townhall but at another.

She was stupid to think she wouldn't get caught, and there is no evidence she was working for anyone but her misguided self or some wacko group.

I am not aware heath care will be trashed. It's pretty trashed for many people right now!

There is NO public option (like the UK or Canada have) planned.

If health insurance is not reformed, mega rich insurance companies will continue to deny care, deny claims and bankrupt Americans who actually have health insurance, and they will continue to deny coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.

Health insurance companies don't want reform. it will cut into their profits. They have big dollars for lobbying to make their influence known.

You must have great, secure health insurance, Roy.

There's not actually a bill yet, just versions. Universal care like other countries have is not in the plans.

No reform, no change, puts many Americans at risk both financially and health related. I don't get why anyone thinks no reform is a good idea.The insurance companies are not working for the American people as far as I can tell.

I guess I don't see what is so important about Fox News or why Obama needs to read it.There's plenty of news sources out there.

I think that anyone that left TWI in the past few years would still hold TWI beliefs, and I think that would be normal. I don't think they are being stupid, I think it takes people time to start thinking for themselves without the constant rush to renew their minds back to TWI doctrine. Those habits have to drop away.

Honestly not sure what you are posting about Bolshevick, so I'll pass your post, perhaps another will hop right on it.

I was talking about 'branding/marketing' equating a word Christian with "good." Or I could have used neighborly, or decent. or giving. whatever

Branding is about the sound bite, the immediated reference or connotation, not the depth of an issue. Is it really a good idea to take the word Christian, a large, diverse belief sysem, and brand it 'good, neighborly etc until the word Christian would equate to a value like neighborly? We here at GSC already know that not all things labeled Christian are actually good or neighborly, some are destructive to their followers.

Obviously I am not communicating what I was trying to say. I give up. Things to do.

But I did think Billy sounded like a great guy.

I agree, things and words have value.

If all things and organizations labeled Christian are also equally labeled good then how does that help anyone? While all Christian organizations and people SHOULD be good, not all are!

Isn't that pretty much the point of GSC? A group that self labled "Christian, Bible study, The Way etc" was not a good organization--but it used the labeling of organizations that SHOULD be good. It was deceptive.

Why not let Christian be a descriptor word for a belief system, that whole huge system that covers many different groups and people?

Disobeient children were stoned in the old Testament. Lcm taught it more than once and I heard it through out the nineties.

Equating a religious identity with good action/good values looks alot like marketing/branding to me.

We, especially my husband, had a hard time believing this was happening to us. Our HFC was an old friend of hubby's. But as time went on, we saw lots of couple leave, or some divorced with an innie spouse and a M&A ex, huge custody battles.

Our last coule of years in I was aware that I was a target. It finally became clear to hubbyafter the HFC got a little too bold, and it was a big factor in our leave taking.

After we left we had contact with others who ahd been in our fellowship but left--all couples, all with the same story of division.

By the time we left I had a plan to leave my husband--not divorce him, just get out of the area with the kids, and hope he would wise up, but it never came to that. Huh, being so evil and all I hadn't cut all ties to my family and former friends and had a place to go.

There are other fundie groups that abuse, they are in the news all the time for starving their babies etc or forcing young women to be 'wives'.

Abusers love anything thing that can back up and approve their authoritarian stance, and they can find it in the Bible, just like TWI did. All those 'be subject' and 'obey' verses becaome so handy in the wrong hands.

I have a friend who once belonged to a fundy non denominational group called The Chapel, but it only had one, two hundred people. STill she had to divorce to get away, went through their version of M&A, and one of her children did not get treatment for a brain tumor until almost to late. She has had many of the same recovery issues as many of us here at GSC.

Equating generosity or compassion or neighborliness with Christian? There are kind, generous neighbors of all types of religious and nonreligious backgrounds.

I think those that give a great deal somehow know either by experience or by compassion or empathy, what it is like to be alone with no resources or helping hands, and how much better life can be with those things.

It is always heart warming to find a jewel of a human being, no matter what belief system they hold.