waysider

Scripted. For sure. What I'm looking for here are those moments when you may have had a sudden realization you were part of a scripted event. Remember a movie called The Truman Show? It (The TV show within the movie) wasn't really entirely scripted but the idea is similar. Here's a brief overview: "In this movie, Truman is a man whose life is a fake one... The place he lives is in fact a big studio with hidden cameras everywhere, and all his friends and people around him, are actors who play their roles in the most popular TV-series in the world: The Truman Show. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited. Until one day... he finds out everything. Will he react?" (SOURCE) The other day, there was talk on another thread about Jesus Freaks and The Jesus Movement. I looked at a few things on YouTube that caused me to reflect on my own distant past. WARNING! If you look at any of it closely enough, it's almost certain to evoke some type of reaction.

Self delusion...yeah...I think that's it. When you act in a stage play, you practice delusion. But you're only deluding the audience, not yourself. Oh, sure, with method acting you temporarily delude yourself but, deep inside there is still some sort of line of demarcation. With self delusion, you cross that line. And sometimes when you are behaving under self delusion, you have moments of awareness, even if only briefly, that you look back across that line and wonder if you are really "you". I had one of those moments in FellowLaborers. One day I looked in the mirror and wondered how on earth I went from being a young man with a guitar, busking in a public park, to this person who had forsaken his dreams and went to live a completely different lifestyle in a far-away commune. Like looking into the mirror and seeing someone else look back at me. How did I get here? Who have I become? That's what I'm talking about.

Isn't dorkiness really an evolutionary process, moving from one phase into the next?

Aside from repeated reference to the word "perception", this has no bearing on the concept of this thread.

When you were in The Way, did you ever feel like you were a character in some sort of stage production? By that I mean, during the PFAL class (as a grad) there were specific cues you played off of to laugh or feign excitement. It was like acting in a play......"and the sign said,'millions now smoking'..... Hahahahahaha" Is this making any sense? OK, I'll try this.... Suppose I tell you a joke about a guy who walks into a bar and sees a midget on a barstool...You think it's funny...You laugh...Now I tell you the exact same joke, with the exact same delivery, 53 more times...Is it still funny? So, then, if laughter is not a required part of the script, why do you laugh?

I think a lot of students thought PLAF (The Wonder Class) was boring but were afraid to admit it for fear of being the dissenting voice.

I heard this many, many times. In fact, there is a poster that hasn't been here for a while who believes that PFAL replaced the Bible and that when Christ returns he will be holding a PFAL book in his right hand..

Is he JP's kid?

Wasn't Magoo that short-sighted guy who couldn't see reality, though he looked straight at it?

More like the elephant in the parlor. We had to be coached to laugh at jokes that weren't even funny the first time and act "amazed" at the teacher's revelations.

Sounds like a classic case of ."Us, and them And after all, we're only ordinary men. Me, and you. God only knows it's not what we would choose to do."

Yes, there are people who think this. My personal opinion is that the Jesus hippie movement was a cultural reaction to current events and conditions of a turbulent era..

Things in the past seem dorky because we've outgrown them.....most of us, anyway.

Then again, maybe he's hip to the reality and sees it as a chance to ride the gravy train.

Yep. MLM 101 (No student left behind)

It must suck being , having to relive that one high-school-football glory moment over and over and over.....

a pretend world of a pretended world.

HERE A so-called Christian heavy metal band whose frontman was convicted of attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged wife has admitted that it duped fans into believing that they were Christian in order to sell their music. He said that during his tenure with As I Lay Dying, he realized that a number of bands that professed to be Christians were faking their faith just as he was. "We toured with more ‘Christian bands’ who actually aren’t Christians than bands that are,” Lambesis stated. “In 12 years of touring with As I Lay Dying, I would say maybe one in 10 Christian bands we toured with were actually Christian bands.”

HERE 1:09 :o

......sad.

Yes and no If one of them dies, the survivor will (but not always) find a new mate.

Corps or no corps, failure to operate the mystical, magical "law of believing" was always regarded as a sign of spiritual weakness, especially for those in leadership type positions. I've seen people try to "believe away" chronic illness, cancer, severe injuries, volatile domestic situations, toxic (physical and/or psychological) work environments, and more. Because the law of believing is equally as potent as a handful of fairy dust, it usually doesn't have a happy ending.

"Anyway, I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes or hurt anyone's feelings." My toes are just fine and so are my feelings. You make a good point. We all had our reasons for staying. Sometimes I stayed to appease my (then) wife. Sometimes I stayed because I felt my exit would cause familial stress. Sometimes I stayed because it was the "honorable" thing to do. Sometimes I just stayed because it was the easiest route I could take. "The truth is, as broken as VPW was, we were also broken, we were looking for something to fill our own void." I agree to this, as well. That's why we were so vulnerable and made easy targets for the allure of an answer to life's struggles.

I'ts an age old dilemma. When do you cut the apron strings? When do you coax the fledglings out of the nest? For birds, it's pretty straightforward. For humans, not so much. There is no easy answer . Even within a single family, parenting styles may need to vary from child to child.

Twinky I think you're reading too much into my post. I wasn't suggesting that unethical or physically harmful or immoral behavior are appropriate. I'm merely saying that in a complex society, there are multiple opinions on what constitutes proper child rearing technique. Unless there is consensus, the child could be pulled in opposing directions. Ergo, "It takes a village" may be an unrealistic concept in a complex society.