grappling with conscience .
a must read, i wept by the rivers of babylon,a prisoner of conscience in a time of war, is an important self-portrait of a naive young man, terry walstrom, who in 1967 thought he was obeying his conscience when he refused to take up arms and kill.
inasmuch as he was a conscientious objector, walstrom could have availed himself of noncombatant service in the military, but he was opposed to that arrangement.
Thank you Terry, you are one of my favort posters here, I will ordering you book soon. Looking forward to reading it. All of your writting is so great here on JWN and I know you have helped many to learn the TATT, thank you for all of you you do.
LITS
marilyn manned the helpline for many years, and touched the lives of so many effected by the wt.
she will be missed.. coffee .
I am also so sorry to hear of this though I did not know her I also heard such great things about her, my thoughts are now with her husband, I hope he has support.
LITS
i just finished reading this book, by our terry, and i thorougly enjoyed it.
terry has an amazing gift for words and expression - as most of you already know - and he lured me in from the very start.
reading this book is an actual experience... and i don't want to say much more than that, because i don't want to color your experience as you read for yourself.. .
Marked
did you ever volunteer/visit bethel back when you were in the borg?
at the time, it opended my eyes as i saw a lot of red flags.
for instance, volunteers were kept so busy without reasonable accomodations that everyone became in a robotic-zombie state of compliance with an unreasonably strict fast pased schedule.
I was at Bethel as a married sister. It beat the heck out of serving where the need was great as my husband and Iwere doing piror to Bethel. Even though the schedule was very busy at Bethel I still had way more free time then pioneering where the need was great. With pioneering I was never home, I was always either out in service or working or sitting in the car waiting for my husband to come out of one of his endless elder meetings.
In fact at Bethel it was the first time ever in our than four year marriage that we even had time together as a couple, before my husband was always gone doing some Congo thing. We were just ships that passed in the night. I talked to the CO when we were serving where the need was great and told him I was really loosing it. The CO berated me and told me I was being selfish and the Jehovah needed my husband, I knew that when I married him that I was marrying the only elder in the hall and I had no right to take my husbands time away from Jehovah. I could have a marriage in the new system.
Now looking back I realize that the hall was a hall from HELL and that the CO did not want to deal with the problems and he was dumping on my husband.
So to me Bethel was wonderful in many, many ways, at least I could go home in the eveings on non meeting nights instead of sitting in the car or working untill one or two in the moring to support pioneering, I at least had somewhat more of a life and even more money as the little bit we got at Bethel did not have to go for gas in field service, every cent we had pioneering went to car gas and car reparis as none of the other pioneers gave a dime to us to help out. So as crazy as Bethel might have been pioneering to me was way worse.
LITS
this thread was inspired because of 3rdgn, and her asking, on behalf of her destitute elderly widowed mom,.
for the return of her mother's "conditional loan" to the society of $20,000.00.. (this was stated today, under my thread of, "what was the effect on you of knowing hypocritical jw's?").
the society more or less yes, no, it is now our money, and you can't have it back.
When I was a dumb kid of 18 years in the hall and working part time on minium wage there was a couple in the hall who had two kids. They decided they needed new carpet. Now I was living on my own and struggling to make it with no family to help me. I was always so afraid of not having enough moeny and no one to fall back on that I saved 10% of the little I made (an emergency fund) in case I lost my low paying job. Now I had $500.00 in my saving it was all I had to my name. For some reason this couple could not get a loan from the bank and stupid me I told them I had this savings. I let them borrow the money with no interest.
When it came time to pay me back the wife was so rude and threw the money at me. I was just a kid of 18 she was pusing 40. Finally she told me it was not fare that I had money in savings. I was blown away and I said I work hard for it she said and to quote her "I do not care how you got the money it is just not fair that you have it."
I have so many stories of the greed of ones in the religion but I am finding it is also outside. People are people good and bad, some will help you when you need it and other will take when you are down. You just need to be careful who you trust. The thing is in the JW's we are taught that we are all brothers and sisters and should trust without question. That is so dangerous.
LITS
http://www.circuitvehicles.com/home/.
.
Tech49
When I was at Bethel the rumor had it that Judah Ben's father-in-law was a Buick car dealer and thats why then went with them as he got them a huge cut in price. He apparantly had has a ton of money. When Judah Ben got married her dad chartered the Circle Line cruse around Manhattan and only the GB and the big wigs were invited. None of the low caste at Bethel had a prayer of going. This was told to me by my overseer who was very bitter at it. I was blowen away at his bitterness at the time as I was new to Bethel and thought the GB walked on water. Now I know why he was bitter.
LITS
http://jehovahstrumpet.com.
i read the cat baptisim article and i doubled over laughing.
one time when i was a kid i asked why my kitty couldn't go to the kh with us and my mom told me that animals were perfect and didn't need to go to the kh.. .
I loved it thanks.
LITS
after two months of terribly abusive emails from my mother telling me that i "am not capable of appreciating true love" and her weird delusions that i have no friends and my life is a mess, i finally cut her off.
i blocked her email address, and i told her to stop contacting me.
yes, the jehovah?s witnesses.
LoisLane
I am fairly sure Kyria is the one who wrote "I'm perfect your doomed". If you have not read it yet I recommend it. You can get it from Amazon. I do not know if anyone else knows for sure if this is the same Kyria but I think it is. She is a great writer.
LITS
we had to go off grid for a time, time and half a time as we thought we had been outed.
fortunately it was a false alarm, but it was a stressful time.
i asked for my original diary thread to be deleted in case there could be anything on there to identlfy mrs smith and i. i am always very careful when posting, and am sure there was nothing on there, but felt it best to have it removed in order to be as cautious as a dove.
marked
a few of my pet peeves were:.
the po/cobe knowing that he needed to have an elders meeting after the meeting but not telling any other elders.
humm, but his wife knew.
As an elders wife I hated the way it was just expected that I would wait in the car for hours and hours on end for a surprise elders meeting knowing I had to get up at 5:00 in the morning to go to work. They way it was just expected that I had to use our car in field service and put in more people in it then the law allowed because no one else wanted to use their cars. Never having my husband home when I needed him because he was out doing some elder thing to help some one else.
Listening to other sisters going on about the fun date nights they had with their husband and when I planed a date night with my husband it was always canceled because of some elder thing coming up. Being told by the CO that I was selfish because I wanted time with my husband when I was newly married, the CO told me 'I could have my husband in the new system as Jehovah needed him now.
Never having a family life, being told by others that my husband owed it to them to be at their home to help them when I was dying inside because I had no one, no friends and no family. Having ones ask for money, and rides to meeting and help to pioneer while they were on welfare and I worked. Having to have everyone in the book study over when it was our turn to feed the speaker, with no one else ever offering to help.
The list goes on and on.
LITS
