Twinky

Glad you're still around here. Have a great birthday. Many more to come.

Maybe there aren't that many more to "move on"? Whoever is left is there for life and won't move on regardless of what they learn. The "lifers" at HQ. But I don't doubt there are some useful fellowships out there - at basic twig level maybe there is still some genuine heart. And of others - children of lifers - they want out and are ready to flee regardless of GSC. Mind you, some of the younger ones have fled to VPW's grandson's cult...they'll want to move on some day. As to the rest of the old hands around here, we stick around for various reasons. Not sure that for any of us that it's the lack of somewhere else to go - we've mostly been out long enough to want to look around at what else is offered that's not vpw-linked. One reason for sticking around is to help those who might still be looking for a way out. The lurkers. The lost. Someone had the kindness to stick around for us in those difficult days...

Actually WW, there was an announcement just over a year that this site would close. And many people said their goodbyes and left then. Since that time, certainly the number of posters has dropped off. Yep, O&A, I look in often but there can be days without posts. I've started a few to see what interest there is...not much. Steve, the entire Christian community is so diverse that there is always something going on. The different facets of contribution into community life can be fascinating. Some are deep Christian thinkers but they don't spout their knowledge, just act on it; others don't know so much but enthusiastically get involved in outreach in whatever manner - nobody spouts superiority TWI-style. I always enjoy and find thought-provoking the discussions you start in Doctrinal.

I think there's not a 64 bit driver, only 32 bit. Yes, it was that No driver message that has me confused, esp when you found that driver. There's nothing to lose (is there?) by having a go at installing it. Cheaper than a new printer, anyway. A task for the w/e perhaps.

Ah, cool, thanks, Hap. Yes, typo on my part. I had a good old rummage through the actual Epson website so why I couldn't find this is a mystery. The driver is for 32-bit and I think I have 64-bit, will it still work? Maybe because I put in Win8 & 64 bit - but even so, I thought the printer might show. I guess I have to install it from your link, see what works, and uninstall if nothing happens. I'll let you know. Thanks for your help.

Just got myself a new laptop which runs Windows 8 (an interesting (?) and amusing new development for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure). It's definitely nothing like Win7 or XP or anything else. I also have an Epsom DX4050 all-in-one printer/scanner. And wojja know, there doesn't seem to be a Win8 driver, or at least I can't find one online. Any of you computer geek types got any ideas?

I didn't hear that WW but if he ever read his Bible he'd know that "walls have ears" - something in the Bible about what you say in your (bed)chamber the birds will tell outside. Beanie, I wondered about a terminal diagnosis too. But even so, he didn't have to resign, could just have died in office. RC would cover/disguise even prolonged cancer treatment (hence non-appearances).

I think, in the circumstances, it's a brave decision. He watched the previous Pope declining, didn't want that for himself, knew it was all too much. He's an old man. Realistic about his declining health. Recently (3 months ago) had an op to upgrade his pacemaker. No doubt there will always be some controversy about whether he went voluntarily or was pushed. It is said his decision took everyone by surprise. I'm sure he had some confidants though with whom he must have discussed, researched protocols, etc. The divine right of Popes...to die in office? Interestingly, but completely off topic, the queen of the Netherlands has just, at the age of 75, abdicated in favour of her son. And she's not even "past it" mentally or physically. Just ready to let a younger generation deal with the problems of today. While still being around to offer the wisdom of age. And the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Anglican church, retired at the end of last year and a new man has been elected, to take over. (quote)In his opening statement at Lambeth Palace, Bishop Justin said he was “astonished and excited” to be taking over from Dr Rowan Williams, who stands down as Archbishop at the end of December. Acknowledging the many challenges faced by the Church, he said it will be a privilege to provide leadership "at a time of great spiritual hunger".(end quote) New archbishop's statement Time to move on...it seems to me that Pope Ben did the right thing. It might be a useful thing if the cardinals now elect a man in his early 60s to take over and lead for the next 10-20 years (no longer).

The way I read it, too. It's a fine balance between being genuinely helped in one's Christian walk, being corrected and encouraged to a more worthy endeavor where necessary - and being bullied. As we have all found.

So today the Pope has resigned. A surprise, apparently, to everybody. I wondered what any of you who were once (or have returned to, or become) Roman Catholics think of that? Saddened, respecting his decision, think he should have continued unto death, think he should have gone sooner? As one brought up with different denominational background, I don't find it alarming - for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Head of the Anglican church) retired recently and his successor is now in post - but it's not a RC practise.

Never heard of it before, but it sounds all too familiar.

Tried it, yes, Not a thing you do twice with Crypto. She moves like mercury if she senses something amiss. This is a cat that swings from lying on one side of her body to the other side with apparently no intervening positions. She also is an extremely wary cat and once surprised/frightened/alarmed won't quickly re-visit what alarmed her. She has a terrifying hiss and would, I suspect, attack not cower down. I might try again grabbing her by the scruff, though. She loves to be fondled on her neck. I have just never managed to grab a handful of skin. The slightest tensing of my fingers provokes flight. Perhaps sometime when I have sprayed my hand liberally with Feliway.

Johniam genuinely feels that PFAL helped his life. And as such, PFAL was valid and worthwhile. To him. And in fact to many of us, because it showed us things that other church and religious organizations did not. That's in no small measure because more godly men than VPW first worked out the material in PFAL, that VPW subsequently plagiarized. It's by the grace of God that all of us profited to some degree from PFAL - Johniam included. But by the further grace of God that our eyes were opened to the legalism and hypocritical behavior practiced by VPW and others in leadership. And, for some of us, by yet further grace, our eyes were opened to an understanding of what things, what practices, God protected us from while we were subject to TWI. While ever eyes are focused on individuals in leadership, leadership will be found to fail. Our eyes are to be focused on a much better model - that of Jesus Christ. Then we can be forgiving of real, perceived or imagined failures on the part of leadership... ...unless, of course, leadership seeks to insert itself into the place rightfully occupied by Jesus Christ. ("You shall be like God!" or "You shall be like JC!") Now that is nutty!

I thought I'd resurrect this old thread and just re-read my last post on it. I could just about repeat it word for word as to how the girlies are doing now. But there has been progress. Tuxedo is getting more of a fuss-puss - with me, and only with me. She follows me round the house. As I move from room to room, just a few minutes later she will be there. Particularly noticeable in the evenings (I'm in and out a lot during the daytime). She yells at me to be fondled or picked up and then runs off when I reach out to her. She likes to lie on the back of the couch near my "office" chair or to walk across the keyboard. At night she has taken to yelling at me, and for an odd reason - for her. I like to lie with her and fondle her, but if I do this on the couch I fall asleep. So I take her up to bed at night sometimes. A few times now it has got near "bed time" and she yells at me and looks meaningfully at the door at the foot of the stairs, even goes upstairs pausing to glance back at me as if to say, you come too. Sleeps somewhere on the bed with me. If I don't get up when she thinks appropriate in the morning she leaps about on the bed and miaows and pats my face, and leaps off when I try to grab her. Normal cat, you say? Yeah, until someone else comes, then you never see her. Crypto is the Ham glutton - she loves bits of ham (sorry, Mr Squirrel). I give her a little at night, the remaindered stuff from the supermarket; now she yells very persistently at me until I give her some. She has a small thin slice torn into tiny fingernail-sized fragments. I am using this demand to my advantage. Lately, I sit on the couch and make her get up on it to get these treats. Then I fondle her with the hand not holding the treat. She gets her head, ears, neck, chest and flanks lightly fondled. She will only tolerate a little of this but the bribe makes it less scary. The hope is that she becomes used to being touched. Seems to be working. When totally besotted with the ham, she will purr (yep, a real purr) and has been known to put her front feet on my leg - I'm not sure if she realizes quite what she's doing in pursuit of her piece of ham. She's always rubbed up against chairs, furniture, etc, but lately it's also against legs, etc and she demands a nape scratch and lately a back stroke. One stroke, then she's away but back 10 seconds later for another stroke. Better yet, she does this with other people, wants and enjoys a little fondle from people she knows. No closer to picking her up - touching both sides of her body at once will have her away before you register you've touched her. And it doesn't stop her hissing at me if she is startled by movement or I approach the place she sleeps or the table she's under. She often follows Tuxedo about so at night I think sometimes I have both of them in my bedroom. She's such a stealthy mover that it's difficult to know whether she's there or not. It's a loooooooooot of progress compared to the creatures I first acquired.

This is going to be 1h 09m 28sec of what, exactly, TeachYouVP? What has it taught you? What have you learned (and applied) from it?

I haven't looked at this video, but if you are trying to make a point - please make it. Don't just post a video running for 59m14s for no apparent reason.

Thought this was good, too: “My doubts started with a conversation I had with David Abitbol,” she says. Megan met David, an Israeli ...“I would ask him questions about Judaism, and he would ask me questions about church doctrine. One day, he asked a specific question about one of our signs—‘Death Penalty for Fags’—and I was arguing for the church’s position, that it was a Levitical punishment and as completely appropriate now as it was then. He said, ‘But Jesus said’—and I thought it was funny he was quoting Jesus—‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And then he connected it to another member of the church who had done something that, according to the Old Testament, was also punishable by death. I realized that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about.” In OT there are many instances of people through their actions being "worthy of death" - however, there aren't that many (whom we read about) who actually get executed. Mercy and grace attend us all. Thank God.

Many here can really empathize. :cryhug_1_:/> Been there, got the T-shirt (and the scars) and survived. Not only that, even "live abundantly!" I was struck by this sentence: "This, of course, assumes that the church’s teachings and God’s feelings are one and the same. And this, of course, assumes that the church’s interpretation of the Bible is infallible, that this much-debated document handed down over the centuries has, in 2013, been processed and understood correctly only by a small band of believers in Topeka. “Now?” Megan says. “That sounds crazy to me.”" 1 Cor 14:26 How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying...oh, let's just ignore this bit, too inconvenient. No wait, let's not ignore it...edifying means building. Let's tell 'em they must build the church, our church. They must bring in new recruits. Yep, that'll do it.

This really ought to be in Just Plain Silly but JPS isn't here any more... So who've we got masquerading as an animal at the Cafe? Ham, of course, who thinks he's a squirrel. Waysider, who currently thinks he's a frog, or more precisely, a puppet frog. RottieGrrl, a rottweiler. Wordwolf...a wolf. Me - a cat, Twinkletoes Catcup - another cat You might wonder what it says about the posters and the personality they want to project ...or maybe it's just that they like the animal in point.

:offtopic:/> Umm, Thomas...I know the USA likes to rule the world but since when did "UK, Australia, and NZ" become part of the US and Canada? Back on topic: No idea on numbers, but I know a few people in the UK who adhere to too many of the precepts without still "belonging" to TWI. As to their website: occasionally I take a look to see if anything has changed. All that happens is that its appearance gets more and more dated. There are (or were) a few videos up but even they are old. In today's world of mega-animation and interactive websites, TWI's is so static you'd think it was a statue.

And any horse would have the sense to stay away from an owner/master/trainer that ABUSED it. We were taught that our "horse sense" and all those "red flags" that warned us AWAY from the abuses of TWI were just our "thoughts" getting in the way. Instead of our God-given wisdom telling us to GET THE HECK OUT OF HERE. The only way TWI worked is to steal the good workmanship and words of good Godly men. But the example set - the living way - was so corrupt that THAT was what we should have fled from. Many here will agree that some of the words we were "taught" were helpful or informative. And many here will agree that many of the practices of TWI were destructive. C'm'on, John, you're so smart, help Waysider out and define "wisdom of the world" as you don't accept what you call "horse sense" as wisdom. Maybe you could define horse sense while you're about it.

C'm'on, Johniam. "Disdain the wisdom of the world"? Wisdom of the world might include instruction to look both ways before crossing a busy road. Wanna disdain that on a fast road? What about - say - doctors? Is their wisdom simply "of the world"? Have they not observed, learned, some things about our wonderful God-designed bodies, and have the wisdom to know that (say) eating some things is good, eating other things is bad? That smoking causes a lot of problems and it's wiser not to smoke? That it's good to take a little exercise - for its many benefits on human bodies? Maybe they learned that simply by observation and empirical reflections. Maybe God taught it to them. Does that then change it from "worldly wisdom" to "Godly wisdom"? How do you tell the two apart, when someone tells you to look both ways before crossing a busy road? What about - oh, so many things...John, use your God-given brain!!!!!!!!! Maybe God gave us brains to figure a few things out for ourselves? Maybe God taught a few things to doctors, teachers, parents, police officers, road sweepers, shopkeepers and other people in the area where you live, so that they can teach others? One thing VPW taught us (cough) was that "They'll read you before they read the book." If you read his lifestyle and expect that that represents the book - shoot, you really have been reading the wrong book. You don't read, in glowing terms, that abuse of other people is Godly - rather the opposite. You don't read that God enslaves, takes captive; oppresses so much that mental illness results and hearts are broken, lives lost. You read quite the opposite. And you see, in the life of Jesus, that he came to heal the broken hearted and to set captives free. Not exactly what VPW did - which would you rather believe? Which example is better to follow? Whose lifestyle better represents God? Whose lifestyle misrepresents God? And that's before we even think about any specific other things that VPW said, that misrepresented God.

The way things are going at the Cafe, before too much longer it'll be "Who remembers GSC?"

Ya talking about the snowfest or the legalize cannabis attitude? We had loads of deep snow here recently. I was walking around in a quiet part of the suburbs and was confronted by a larger than lifesize snow woman. I know it was a woman. She had shapely breasts with a necklace (leaf) dangling daintily between them, a lovely waist, a delightful come-hither smile and wide innocent looking eyes. Very counter-culture. Very well made too. (Probably all gone now.)