Leaderboard

I think, after all this time, I really don't care any more. What does WAP stand for anyway - Waste of Abundance and Personality? Find a decent church, get to know the people there, and see what they DO, not just what they say.

*** please note in the quote below WordWolf is replying to another post - I just wanted to point that out - so in other words, he is not objecting to any ideas in Excathedra's post that I included above...I quoted both these posts because I felt they emphasized acknowledging the duality of life. Great posts !!!! Not sure if this is off topic but - I think Skyrider started a thread on the duality of life...that’s looking at BOTH sides - a dual sided view.....I believe it’s a mentally healthy way to deal with the good and bad things that happen in life... and as far as dealing with the past - it’s not that certain good memories will cover up or make you forget the bad memories....but maybe the good memories will act as a buffer to some of the pain of the bad ones ....overshadow them ? I dunno... When I was a kid my mom’s prescription for a toothache was to put aspirin on my aching tooth and then let me type on my big sister’s typewriter....maybe the aspirin did something I don’t know...but getting to use my sister’s manual typewriter- wow wee !! I think that more than anything took my mind off the toothache....not sure if that’s how good memories work to give us some relief in times of stress, pain or heartache... Ok....maybe I just wanted to say it’s time we bring back those manual typewriters!!!! ....if anyone else agrees please feel free to call me - just pick up the other end of my tin can and string and tell me how you feel - call now one lonely operator standing by

And whose brillant idea was it for all adults to carry wooden spoons(or ping pong paddles) to spank any misbehaving child? Bet if Wierille, Geer, Martindale, Rivenbark, or Linder were whacked, they would have pressed charges of assault and battery after calling the sheriff to arrest them, but if any other adult did that for rape or physical abuse done by the leaders, the above proably would physical beat to a pulp if not outright murder. Yep, just 1 straw short of Jim Jones and David Koresh.

here comes my obtuse self. sowy. why didn't they require the youngsters to pack something like a 9 mm handgun? I mean.. heck. It's a great equalizer, that is, to balance out the effect of out of control adults.. I mean, they HAD firearm training and all..

'tis true when someone (leader reverend) would go off screaming like a maniac, we were told it was spiritual anger when someone (leader reverend) would molest you, you were told you had a gift from god to minister to him i will think of many more examples, but i hope this helps along with what geisha and ww and sky tell you i'm just trying to calm down and tell you that i see this in many other places besides the way, but i know we are on this forum to talk about the way it deeply hurts me that people were condemned, exposed, trashed, etc., when they were just human and innocent and had done nothing compared the the bastuds running the joint

Everything in TWI is spiritualized (is that even a real word?). Just about everything has some secret meaning ....right down to how you keep your house and the dust under your bed. I think being abusive took on a spiritual meaning, just not the one you would think. Remember, with the TWI mindset you have to play opposite Wednesday. I don't think it was considered abusive.....but admirable. How do you ever understand that?

The "how" is an easy answer. Nobody actually sets up a whiteboard and announces "today we are going to learn proper shouting techniques." (Unless you're a character in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker" series- the Vogons had officer ranks like "Senior Shouting Officer.") They taught BY EXAMPLE. If you're someplace where you are told EVERYTHING is PLANNED to the nth degree and it's ALL spiritual, then there's significance to how the carpets are vacuumed, the lightbulbs are changed, etc. (Yes, they taught how to vacuum the carpets. Really.) So, when leadership spends lots of time SHOUTING about things, then you get the lesson that SHOUTING is part of being a leader. You have a good question as to "why". I think it was laziness. By that I mean, vpw and lcm had poor self-control and shouted all the time. So others absorbed that, and thought it was INTENTIONAL when it was just that leaders were too LAZY to police their own behavior. It's the same with all the CURSING. vpw and lcm cursed a lot in private- lcm did it in LESS private venues. So, people learned to curse. At least one parent said their child LEARNED TO CURSE through sitting through lcm's (MANDATORY) lunchtime tirades. Imagine- there you are with your child, eating lunch. Then some maniac tromps up to a microphone, and spends 20 minutes yelling and cursing on a subject. Then he pauses and changes subjects, yelling and cursing for ANOTHER 20 minutes. How can you tell your child to control himself when the supposed leader of the group is more impulsive than your child? The most hypocritical part? Children on-grounds in twi are frequently BEATEN if they're not behaving PERFECTLY. Adults were REQUIRED to all carry a wooden spoon with them at the family corps so they were prepared to beat ANYONE'S child at any time. Yet the leaders were the ones allowed to be brats and terrors. (Oh, if your parents were big muck-a-mucks, there was always an excuse and you could manage to escape punishment for committing CRIMES and trashing things. Otherwise, children were in terror of adults and sometimes other kids there.)