by Crumpet 25 Replies latest jw friends
I hated Sunday mornings back then. I had to get my 4 younger siblings ready. Usually a fight would always break out before, if not during the meeting between my parents. Which would lead to mom going back into her cave the bedroom. Then there was the rush for field service.
Now it's NASCAR baby!!
This is a cool topic.
Before I faded, I had been one of the 'responsible ones'.
I conducted the WT lessons for a while &
was a regular reader since everyone else had the sense to avoid it.
Looking back it is simply amazing to see how no matter what you did,
each meeting was designed to make you feel guilty for not doing more.
Once I visited a church with a friend.
They did not have to dress up in 'meeting clothes',
did not have to prepare their 'lessons',
did not carry a sh*tload of books to each meeting,
did not get coerced into post meeting 'field service',
did not have to report their monthly activity,
on, and on, and on.
No wonder my entire week was so stressed out.
I never got any downtime to focus on myself.
I used to draw a grid in my watchtower and mark the blocks with random paragraph numbers. When we'd finish reading it and commenting on it, I'd hunt the number down and scribble it out. When we turned the page, I'd remake the grid and scribble out all the paragraphs we'd already finished. It got me thru a sickening number of stupidly boring meetings.
Our meeting started at 1030, I think, or maybe 10. So the Watchtower would've just started. Ugh...
So instead, I spent the morning with my kids, playing and having fun. And now I need to figure out what to do with myself for the rest of the day. *looks around cluttered house* Maybe a little cleaning? A spot of laundry, perhaps? Either of which is preferable to the slow lobotomy that is the Sunday meeting!
Dave
I hated Sunday..Sit in a stuffy Kingdom Hall and listen to the same old crap..Over and over and over and over..LOL!!...OUTLAW
My husband and I almost never went out in service on Sundays. We frequently missed Saturdays, too.
I studied my Botchtower the day before or not at all. Toward the end of my servitude, it was usually "not at all."
Being at the Kingdumb Hell was bad enough toward the end – our last congregation was so stand-offish we had no idea why or even if they actually disapproved of us – but getting ready for meetings was always the worst. Who wanted to get up on a beautiful weekend morning and put on office drag?
When I was studying I enjoyed meetings – the whole panorama of Bible prophecy, sage moral counsel for daily life, fellowship with veteran Christians, and all that. While it was still new, it was no problem to get up early, put on a cute outfit, and skip on down to the bus stop to attend the Hall in the next town.
Maybe it was when they ran out of new ideas – maybe that was when the ennui set in.
Today I might attend the local Religious Science church for the down-home preaching and the kick-ass gospel choir, or I might stay home and make up some parcels-o-fun for the swapsI'm involved in.
gently feral
Gently Feral - I love that swaps idea!
meeting was designed to make you feel guilty for not doing more.
Hi Amnesty Vendor (waves) havent seen you before! What you said about the guilt factor is spot on. And whoever mentioned the guilt of not going on the service in the afternoon too - I just dragged around my guilt all day an night and it was like a snowball - it just got bigger and bigger, until it got so big I knew that I could never be forgiven all I had done and more importantly all I hadnt done, which is why I gave up and went to the dark side. I did take some guilt with me but with time the guilt ball got smaller and smaller and now I can fit it in my pocket with my "small" change!
(Linda I got lamb in the end - the ASDA special, but I'm going to make my own mint sauce so it should be scrummy.)
And whoever mentioned the guilt of not going on the service in the afternoon
I used to prefer Sunday afternoon meetings in some ways, because I could avoid the service on Sunday mornings without much, if anything being said. Very few people knew I hadn't been out anyway. But with Sunday mornings, everyone knew if you didn't go on service, and I went unwillingly a few times, rather that be made to feel guilty for not going.
Enjoy you lamb, Crumpet, I certainly enjoyed the chicken
Does anyone remember the 1950's when EVERYONE'S Sundays meeting times was 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon?...........what a great time to screw up your whole day. Believe in or not it was 2 hours of field srevice in the morning, then lunch and then an hour of "back calls" before the 2 hour and 15 min. meeting. Back then they had a 15 min. intermission, after the public talk.Us kids would run around the KH parking lot..........Then it was chinese take out and watching DisneyLand in our P.J.s
Now if I'm lucky like Crumpet said it a "great" time in bed for a couple of hours, walk down to Whole Foods for some hot baked pastrys.............and then as the Beatles said in Abby road........."Oh ....that magic feeling.......No were to go!"
NewBoy..Your description of life back then,is spot on..That does bring back some memories...OUTLAW
How I hated Sundays as a kid!
No matter whether the meeting was morning, afternoon or evening, it always messed up the entire day for me. Two hours of utter nonsense, and then the humiliation of going knocking on doors, hoping that I wouldn't meet any kids from my school. That's no way for a kid to live, now is it?
These days I can please myself exactly what I do, and the current craze is to go and spend a couple of hours helping to restore vintage aircraft at a local aviation museum.
tim
