RHW,
I like your milk, honey!
Posts by larc
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140NEW RELIGION! NEED INPUT!
by TR inthis is sort of a take-off of the "what should the wt do" thread.. i need to get together a board of directors and elect a president and officers.
we need to figure out a doctrine, a manifesto, and a set of disciplinary rules.
we need to figure out a way to fund our new movement.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
Waiting,
Let me tell you about my good friend Jim. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He served in the Air Force in World War II, and worked for General Motors all his life as an engineer. His wife has a teaching degree. They have two daughters. One is in her thirties and has never been marrried. She has advanced degrees and teaches English in Austria. His other daughter is married to a successful businessman and they have two young sons who are the pride of Grandfather Jim's life. The married daughter who lives here in the States, sings at Mass at the Catholic Church in Flint. Jim has asked me to go with him, but I haven't yet, but I will. When I wrote 150 pages of draft material about the JW experience he and his wife both read it and felt great empathy for my situation. Jim treats me like the son he never had. Jim is a very good Catholic.
Where did I get to know Jim? At the local neighborhood bar, where people are treated with respect. If Jim had been your father, your life would have been very different as well.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
Waiting,
I think very bad things can happen in any religion and in any culture. There are good Catholics and their are good JWs. One of my very best friends is a Catholic man who is the same age as my father if my father was still alive. I consider the man to be my adopted step father. I have thought how much better my life would have been if this Catholic man had been my real father. So, goodness or evil is not always a respector of place or religiion. By the way, my father was not a bad man, but Jim the Catholic is one of the finest men I've known, with a disclaimer, at least to me he is.
I do believe, with all that said, that the Witness experience is more difficult for children than the Catholic experience. Your problems where not caused by the Church, but by a father who violated everything that the Church stood for. With Witness children the problems of the Church are a given, and then other problems pile up on the pre-existing problems that are there for all Witness children to endure to begin with.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
Grunt,
I have met the xJw's here and in person at conferences, and I have drawn certain conclusions. As a group the JW experience gave us some good things. One is, we are generaly mild mannered, kind people (however, never piss off a pacifist!). Also, we are articulate through a lot of reading, albeit boring, and speaking, from the platform and from door to door. As a result we are not afraid to speak our mind and can do it very well. In short, the WT has trained their own advesaries. I think, as a group, we are more independent minded and contrary than those who stay. We accept each other's contrariness as a sign of growth, but those inside find it to be abhorrent. So I think we retain the good atributes we gained from the experience and leave the rest behind as best we can.
I have been to several BRCI conventions, and I have the same reaction to the people there as I do here, a feeling of warmth and affection.
Somewhere in all that verbiage, there might be an answer to your question. If not I will reread you comments and try again.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
RWH,
I wanted to repeat the last part of the quote, because I think it is very important. "David and I also share the same reaction when people like us. We find it difficult to believe. People think we are NICE. We are outrageously grateful for small kindnesses. Every kindness comes as a surprise."
David left it as a boy. Barbara left it at the age of 22. Both were affected for a very long time.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
Hey Waiting,
Sounds like you had a pretty good childhood to me, not a real low one. You said you "fit in", you "played sports" and you "dated all the time". Sounds pretty good to me. I don't think that "ranks down there" by any means.
Now as far as Fred's behavior goes, it's not a man thing. It was considered low life behavior even among the worldly.
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39
"What can you do to stop JW control in you...
by LDH infor eyes:.
1. stop referring to yourself as being raised "in the truth.
" call it what is.
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larc
Deacon,
You are a hoot! I bet you've also got a Ph.D. in pizza history. Now as far as material things go, my house is worth 49 dollars and my car is up on blocks.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
RHW,
I forgot to mention, that like you, the author of that book and my wife found comfort in books. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison read them at night at Bethel, where other books should not be read.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
RHW,
I found the quote from Harrison's book:
Many Witness kids were forebidden to play with me because I was judged to be too smart for my own good - for THEIR own good .... I remember once, feeling sophisticated and daring, using a bobby-soxer word --devastating. ("This fudge sundae is devastating"); and a Witness mother pounced - she had been waiting. "Only Jehovah can devastate," she said fiercely, the fire of the Inquisition burning in her eyes. And she forbade her daughter, my best friend, to play with me. I was ten years old. I have never forgotten her cruelty, the tears I shed on her account. She was old and sour; her railrod flat smelled as if a hundred years of poverty had been ground into the walls; she pounded the pavements with her message of life-everlasting, hope-and-joy, her legs bulging with varicose veins, her face perpetually distorted in a grimmace of pain; and her husband was deaf-her life was a hollow shout; but I have never forgiven her. Both David (my brother) and I are unforgiving; David and I also share the same reaction when people like us: We find it difficult to believe. People think we are NICE. We are enormously, outrageously grateful for small kindnesses, every kindness comes as a surprise.
RHW, you are not alone in the grief.
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95
Do Kids Hate Being JW`s?
by Englishman inmy kid brother, tom, was born to witness parents.
he was something of a surprise package and my parents were delighted.
my father said that tom was:.
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larc
Friends,
My experience was somewhat different. I enjoyed my childhood, probably because my mother bent the rules some. We lived in the country and all my friends were "worldly". We are talking 1945, at the age of five, when the religion was tiny and there were no other witness children in sight. My father was a nonbeliever and some years, not all, I went to his parents at Christmas. Other exceptions to the rules, may have made it easier for me as well, but that's a very long story.
RHW,
I was thinking about one of your earlier posts and what you just wrote above, about not only being isolated, but being put aside by those of your own age among the faithful. My wife and I talked about this a lot lately, I reread Harrison's experiences from "Visions of Glory" she had the same kind of experience. We concluded that the ones who where treated badly as children at the Kingdom Hall were those who were bright and precotious (sp?). As a drone you are not supposed to stand out in any way, and if you do, you have to be humbled, and if you don't even know what you are doing wrong because you can't help yourself by saying intelligent things, then you will be crushed socially. RHW, does that make sense? I will find the passage from Harrison's book later, and my wife might choose to relate her own experience, but I do see a comonality there.