Galen

dmiller: "Galen -- while I do not tithe -- I do give as I see the need. Perhaps my first answer to #1 was a bit facetious, but it is also true that (like Shellon), I now have money to spend on myself. On the other hand -- (while I do give regularly to a *famous* off-shoot), I also have money in my pocket to give to those on the street, here in my town. Because I am not "locked in" to a certain percentage, I probably give more away than before, yet feel all the *richer* for it. :)-->" We budget the money into a seperate account. So it is there when we see a need.

#1 nothing, We still tithe either way, so I dont see how being in or out of TWI would have made any difference. We have continued to invest at the same rate that we were when we were active in TWI. #2 perhaps a few hundred on courses.

Abigail: I apologize, as I did not mean to say that bio-children could not have special needs. It seems that among foster-children attachment disorders are far more common. Is what I should have said. :-) "No offense intended, Galen." None taken. "I could not do what you do. I don't have the patience or the energy. But trust me, bio children who have special needs can be equally destructive." I understand, and yes of course you are correct. "I admire anyone who can and will." As do I. I simply will not be among them anymore. As it seems to have come to a matter of Bonnie's health / life, we simply will not be willing to do foster care anymore. :-)

vickles: "Another thing is that there is money to be made to be made in foster care. I made 1200 dollars a month per kid and would sometimes have three kids. I've heard that they pay 1500 now. I don't think its a bad thing, Foster parents do a lot of work. Its the foster parents that just do it for the money that is the problem." I agree that anyone who does it for the money is a problem. I have been told that CT pays the highest level of child-support of any state. We get $600 and change and for teens $800 and change. You get $1200 and $1500 what state?

Radar O'Reilly- "That said, mzimagine has plenty of experience with families, children and children born with severe health issues." YEs, it does appear as such. ". . .Please do not dismiss her insight so quickly. She knows whereof she speaks." I re-read my post. The only part of Mrimagine's post tht I did not concur with was: "A culture that condones and encourages single women to have and rear children?" And I stated at the time that I did not 'openly' concur as such would get me roasted later. I have voiced such previously here on GS, and each time it upset many. I honestly did not think that I dismissed any part of the post. :-)

Rascal, Watered Garden, Krysilis: Thank you. Yes we know that it is not our fault, though it is difficult to avoid thinking ‘What if’s. Mrimagine- “Case workers with unmanageable case loads.” Honesty would help. So long as they agree to lie to every parent, they can not possibly work together with those same parents as a team. If you KNOW that X and Y and Z, have happened to a child and he is likely to need A and B services and he has tendencies toward acting out in W manner; TELL the foster parents. It is not a poor reflection on the state if a child honestly has been through the wringer, or if the child does some thing. So lying to the foster parents is not going to save-face of the case-worker. Why can’t they simply be honest? They feel that no sane adult would willingly knowingly take-on such a child if they only knew what the child has been diagnosed with. Talking with other foster parents, many of us would willingly take these children, if you knew before hand what we were getting. It does seem that more often than not, are at odds with the case-workers. “Foster parents who can make large money tax free.” I have heard of these. In the news. Say you get $400/month for each child, and you have 3 children. Yes that additional $1200 is now in your pocket. But you had a job before getting a license and had to prove that you could support yourself without the foster-children. $1200/month is not getting anyone rich. We supplied bunk-beds which were destroyed within a year. DESTROYED, out of four bunkbeds, two had been punched through, the supports underneath that hold up the mattress were broken such that the mattresses fell through. A third bunkbed’s frame collapsed, the bolts that go through and hold-on to the headboard and footboard had given loose. The bolt heads had popped plumb off. Over the course of 2 ½ years we have had 2 different computers for the children to use. After all EVERYONE agrees that in this day and age children need to be computer aware. But the power cord gets cut, the speaker cords get chewed apart, peanut butter gets jammed into the CD drive, these kids will closed-fist pound the keyboards. Electric blankets have the wires pulled out and chewed. We re-paint the children’s rooms every year, why? Because the pine-sol only removes so much of the feces and urine that have been smeared across those walls. Raising foster children is a high-cost lifestyle. Unless you keep them in a hand-dug pit in your backyard and feed them rice and beans with a funnel; it is going to cost you considerably more to raise a foster-child. Bio-children are attached to you, they are attached to belongings, they do not destroy things just to amuse themselves that way a RAD, or EID, or ODD child will. “But what about a culture that pays anyone biologically able to bear children?” Especially in the cases where each previous child has been removed for abuse or neglect. “A culture that condones and encourages single women to have and rear children?” There is no way that I am going to touch this one. Each time in the past that I have commented on this topic my head has been bitten off and handed back to me. To me it is fairly obvious the logical consequences, but . . . . “Many foster parents are saints. Most begin with high ideals and standards. But to undo the effects of early abuse and neglect seems often to take superhuman ability and patience. Residential treatment is often the dark hole of child welfare.” I agree.

We just got two fondue sets from WallyWorld at $4.77 each. I found the following recipe for sugar-free diabetic chocolate fondue: 1 cp Milk 2/3 cp unsweet Cocoa 1/2 cp Sugar Twin 1/2 tsp Vanilla 1/4 tsp Cinnamon We will also setup a cheese sauce fondue using powdered Cholesterol-free cheese sauce. Both for fairly cheap, anyone else want to try? We have relatives who are diabetic and/or watching their cholesterol, but this may be an option. Galen's Eggnog: 1 qt milk 6 eggs 1/2 cp sugar 1 Tbl powdered milk 1 tsp vanilla 1/2 tsp Nutmeg 1/4 tsp salt 1 cp black rum [bacardi black if you can find it, all navy bases stock it. Or black seal rum is good too. Dont use any kind of spiced rum, dont use white rum, the darker the better]. Limit spiking it with Everclear as it will curdle the milk. Flaming Green Dragon: 1 jigger Bacardi 151 Rum 1/2 jigger Green Creme de Menthe 1 jigger vodka Mix all three in a short wide-mouth glass, ignite and drink. This one is where you learn to drink while exhaling. Also it is a good idea to sneak up on this one from underneath, never ‘look down’ at the glass and if you have facial hair smooth it down first (as stray hairs will first ignite themselves and then they will ignite the rest). If you have everclear, you can bring the Cr?-de-Menthe up to a full jigger so long as you add a ½ jigger of everclear. The additional Cr?-de-menthe will ‘smooth’ the dragon’s bite. But without the additional everclear, it will also extinguish the flame. I was introduced to this, while serving on-board various subs in Holy-Loch Scotland. If you do not use the ‘smooth’ version, then you may require a cold beer on hand to sooth your throat afterward. When challenged to match someone ‘drink-for-drink’ I usually pick ‘Flaming Green Dragons’. They will often desire to stop the challenge soon afterward.

During my career, right before every sub-patrol we had to re-write our wills. So mostly it was done every six months. Recently my wife has began having heart attacks, and in talking with her sister 'Life Gem's were brought up. I did a search asnd found their website. They take a small portion of a cremated person's remains and synthetically turn it into a diamond. These diamonds can be laser labeled with the name and information about the deceased. I think that holding on to an urn with someone's ashes is kind of grotesque. {I certainly apologize to anyone out there who has their dead aunt on a mantel over the living room fireplace. I just dont want anyones ashes around me.] But the idea of a large diamond, that can be mounted into a setting of some sort? Hmm, I dont know. Over the years I have performed ceremonys for the Navy, casting ashes into the sea. Anyone [including non-vets] can request their 'loved one's ashes to be cast into the sea. Just send your request to the Navy's Public Affairs office, and they will jump right on it. We would send back a certificate of when and where we were when it was done, and recording of the service and a photo of the colour guard topside doing it. Maybe even a letter from the Lay-Leader onboard who performed the ceremony. If you specifically wanted a submarine to do the honours, I would send the request to a PAO office on one of the Subases. A year ago, my eldest sister [Judy] fell asleep. She had a little stroke prevously [which only her husband and daughters knew about], so she knew that this was coming. She had written the service, starting with an opening by her favourite minister, a photo-slide show showing her entire life. She was shown with each of her parents, then with each of her syblings, grewing up, graduation from High school, then college, then her RN, then her marriage, each of her children. All this was accompanied by her eldest daughter playing the organ a peice that the two of them had liked. It was very nice. Her photo of me, was wearing Navy blue cracker-jacks. I was glad that I wore my cracker jacks to the funeral. In our home town [Ceres, Ca. a small farming community] many had not seen me since I was a teen. Her brothers were all the pallbearers. If anyone is thinking of a traditional type of service, I would certainly recommend planning it out ahead of time. As my sister's funeral was very nice. While I have never written out my wishes for the funeral, I have often mused that a keg of beer and a dozen exotic dancers at a VFW hall, come one come all, open bar; would be nice. .

Stayed- “By the time a child in foster care is even considered for adoption, they have been negelected or abused by their bio parents MULTIPLE times. These negelectful/abusive parents are given many chances to change and turn their lives around.” Consider when a situation has grown to such a level that POLICE are in your home removing the children away from you, it is possible that things are BAD. “When these poor, pitiful children are finally made available for adoption they are physically and mental screwed up for life. Many will require a lifetime of psychological counseling. They have been passed around the foster care system from family to family so many times, they lack the ability to bond into a normal child/parent relationship. Just to get some of these children to function minimually in a family setting is a major ordeal, and some never do. If anyone is considering going this route, these children will never bond to you as a child would, who say his parents died, and was put up for adoption. You need to be a very patient person and willing to give much love and not expect any in return.” This is all very true. We have seen kids so abused by the system, ugh. If you can hold them in your home, and fight the social workers for the child, eventually you can get ‘services’ for that child. Maybe therapy, maybe a solid diagnosis and medication or special needs help in school. But many other times, the state will fight you and IF you can control a child so he does not get into fights, The state says “well gee he has been acting so good lately we canceled all those expensive therapists, since he does not need it anymore”, or You get him on the waiting list for one therapy center, but by the time he finally gets to the top of the list, something else happens, the child is bounced to another home in another county and he loses he slot for that therapy center. New case-worker, new foster parents, and his previous history is sealed, so everyone has to guess what his problems are and he has to re-build an entirely new diagnosis, before anyone will ever start to think about lining up a new therapist. The stress and strain are horrible. Our 10year old foster-son [Tim] was admitted for attempting suicide. The caseworker wanted us to keep him, but we refused on the idea that in residential is the only way he is ever going to get the level of attention that he needs. Later when he is ‘better’ we will gladly discuss bringing him home to us. Then Tim began making allegations against us, one allegation each week. We have been under an incredible microscope. Investigators stop us on the street, they come into our home at any hour, and they pull our children out of their classrooms, every week. I have admitted that when the children fight, when one is hitting and biting another, I have in fact grabbed them by their shoulders and pulled them apart, holding them separate to stop hurting each other and the regain their composure. In so doing, I have physically assaulted them, by the state’s standard. [in that I did physically make contact with them with my physical hand on their shoulders. NO bruising, no marks, no hitting, no abusive language.]. The event of which I am guilty, happened over a year ago, and nobody even reported it. As a result of this one allegation being ‘substantiated’ we are attending another series of courses, as well as being required to under-go psychiatric ‘evaluations’. 10 weeks ago Bonnie had a heart attack and spent a week in Cardiac Ward. I kept things functioning at home and the children were fine. Her cardiologist did lots of testing, and said it is purely stress related: “get rid of the foster-children”. I told the caseworkers that we need some light at the end of the tunnel; some hope that one-day will actually be able to adopt these children. They blew us off for another week, canceled the children’s therapists and canceled the contract we had going to provide us with respite-care once a week [a chance to get out of the house without children]. The first week of December Bonnie had a second heart attack. We have decided to forfeit our foster-license. The children are scheduled to be removed 28 Dec, to another foster home. They have been with us 2 ½ years. We have been a ‘foster-adopt’ home. these children were with us under the assumption that we would be able to adopt them. When they were placed in our home, we were told the children were legally ‘free’. Meaning that all bio-parent’s rights had been terminated. AFTER they were living with us, the caseworkers came and admitted to us that the TPRs had been revoked and the bio-parents’ issue had to be re-done with visitations to the prisons, etc. These children have been through a great deal. It is difficult to estimate who is responsible for the greater abuse; the state case-workers, or the bio-parents. The state is not allowing us to communicate with the next foster family. So there will be no carrying over of information [allergies, diagnoses, food preferences, family medical histories, nothing]. Vickles- “I will say this about the children for adoption within our system...some or I guess a lot of what you say is true but at the same time there are a lot of kids that still can bond with a family. It really depends on the children and what they have been through.” A common theme we have seen at foster support groups, is that many parents want to adopt, but the children can be very exhaustive. The feces fights, fire-starting, sexual-predators, I am telling you some of these 8 and 10 year olds are a real hand full. You want to help, you give all your focus, and your home. The state will fight you every step. When you have finally been burnt-out, they will just rotate the child on to the next home. Many caseworkers just hope to survive each year and eventually the child will ‘age-out’. No matter what happens, another month goes by, which brings that child closer to 18 years old, and he is no longer a ward of the state. Stayed- “I beleive we should return to something like the old orphanage system of days gone by. In this setting the children would return to the same environment, and not have to readapt to a new setting and new people each time they were taken from their bio parents. Some continuity would be very helpful and would be much less expensive.” Right now our Tim, is in a residential home. A staff of 30 adults, a cafeteria, a bunk room, a full time therapist, etc. He is really enjoying it. No attachments to anyone, the staff rotates. He hurts someone and he has to write an essay. Good behavior is done by bribery. They run a in-house store, each child ‘earns’ money by not getting into trouble, and each week they can spend their ‘money’ at the store. They will most likely all be felons when they become adults.

parsley: "1)Would you say you were at a major “turning point” in your life when you started attending cult meetings?" YES "2)Did you feel you were in an undesirable state when you became interested in the teachings?" NO "3)Had you tried other avenues to resolve a problem causing you tension in your life before resorting to the cult’s solutions?" N/A "4)Did the cult isolate you from your regular peer group?" NO "5)If you expressed a different point of view from the group, did the group reprimand you and explain the proper way to think?" NO "6)Were you discouraged from analyzing things for yourself, and encouraged to conform?" NO, just the opposite, I was encouraged to study it for myself. "7)Were your decisions about individual actions taken away, and replaced with a strict regimen of group activities including group eating, sleeping, listening, talking, working and playing?" NO, LOL [being active duty in the military what church could ever do such a thing?] "8) Do you think the public teachings were delivered with skill by polished, knowledgeable and dynamic speakers?" Sometimes.

:-)

LornaDoone: ". . . I hope he gave the baby up for adoption, what more child abuse can you give your child than to grow up knowing your dad went to jail for abuse. THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS!" From my experience dealing with the state foster care system; this is not un-common. Our current foster children were molested by one of their bio-fathers. In fact when the state was lining up the paperwork for us to adopt these children, the courts found an 'error' in the documents that had originally terminated parental rights[TPR]. So the courts vacated the 'termination'. Meaning that after 3 years of never seeing their bio-parents, suddenly the state was scheduling monthly visitations with each bio-parent. All while the state was re-doing the processes to terminate the bio-parent's parental rights [again]. Of three syblings, they had one bio-mother and three bio-fathers, all four are institutionalized. The fathers are all in various prisons, while the mother is off and on again a resident of mental facilities [they let her out each time she is close to giving birth, since we have had these syblings, their bio-mother has given birth to two additional children]. Imagine being taken to a prison to be re-introduced to the father who molested you as an infant. Icck. All because he has parental rights and if he were only freed he could take you home with him. It does seem to me [granted my current prospective on this issue is unique, dealing with foster children] that 'families' of sexual abuse are all around us.

excathedra: ". . . it's still a damn hurtful cult, in my humble opinion, okay ?" Okay "i think you're great, by the way" You are pretty cool too, in my book. :-)

Yes there were a few of those as well. How is she doing?

Belle: "Yep, Galen. The rest of us should be as good as you. ;)-->" Please forgive me. I did not mean to imply that. I am a sinner. I have issues. I did not mean to imply that I was / am any better than anyone else. :-)

jsamuel: "Socks or anyone, did you know him in The Way Corps? Did you know him before Dr. Wierwille died? Nobody who comes here receives his journal I take it." I knew him breifly 1987-1991, meaning that I saw him at Gartmore House teaching a few Sunday services. I never spoke with him personally [or if I did I dont recall]. We took our twig there a few times, on Sundays. Again the teachings were 'cloudy' and a little difficult to understand his points. It always took a long time to go over it all and explain each teaching to the guys on our twig. We only went there a few times, as it took so long after each visit to explain everything to the 'babes'. They were just not geered on the level where a new-person could walk in and understand anything they said. "Way-Speak" was the norm, and new people just could not understand their vocabulary. We did recieve his monthly bulletin while I was stationed in Scotland and functioning as the 'CC-of Americans living in Scotland'. He kind of seemed like most other corpse that I had seen around up to that point in time. I had more dealings with Chris Kent actually, meaning I actually spoke with him a dozen times. I think that by mid 1992 we had let our subscription lapse. "I've read The Passing of a Patriarch many times." I never saw POP until sometime in 1993, long after I had left Scotland and was again running a twig stateside.

Great Oak- never mind. It just seems that as long as I have been hanging around GS, everyone [most GS'ers] was at HQ, or sucking up to corporate-leadership, or at least knew all of the corporation's leadership and were following everything they did and said. Was I the only one who ignored their stupidness and focused on those in my fellowship? I thought they were the ones in need of my help. Was everyone else focused on the corporate-leadership, thinking that they could help the corporation?

Mrs. Wierwille, Martindale, Geer, Lynn, Dubofsky, the Georges, the Trustees, the Green*'s, the Moynih*ns, John Schoenheit, Bo Reahxxd, HOWARD, DON, ROSALIE, DONNA. So many names, wow. I was in from 1978 - 1997, my wife from 1976-1997. Neither one of us could name-drop so many names from TWI's upper crust. I did not know, who was screwing who, or who 'followed' who, or even who was a$$-ki$$ing who. From that list I have only met one of them, and that was in 2000. It does seem to me that many people were deeply sucked into the inner workings of TWI [as if it were Harper Valley's PTA]. If so many who drinking from the trough of the Sunday Night Tapes each week, who was do word-studies and teaching each other from what we had learned? If so many were so closely drawn to the 'trunk' of TWI's tree, who was left to minister to the Joe Beleivers out there?

Abi- Point taken. Stayed too long- The examples you give run a full gambit for both sexes. Which I believe to be fairly accurate. CW- I do not believe that my ‘fantasy’s are anything unusual. Giving pleasure to the woman that I love.

Coolness- “Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that 50 something males are no different from 20 something males...except it just takes a little longer. It seems that 50 something men think about, want, try to get and complain when they don't get sex just as much as a 20 something male.” Apparently so. “Also, it seems that if a woman 40-50 something wants more out of life than sex, she's got some sort of problem.” I was in error to have given that impression. Please do not take such a message from me. To my knowledge each of us are individual and as such we can each have entirely different appetites. As we age, many medical conditions can effect both our appetites as well as our ability to partake in such. I have no knowledge that would imply that men are any different from women in this matter. I apologize for having given the impression that women must have anything wrong with them. “Straighten me out if I'm misunderstanding here.” Again I was in error, please accept my humble apology.

Oenphile- “What I wrote was an honest answer to what CW was asking. If you don't wish to participate in her request for information, that is all well and good. But don't cast your lame epithets at me such as being a crackhead because I choose to do so.” I apologize. I was reading . . . . “Gee, I feel so "out there" now. Please won't a few other guys talk about their sexual interests and fantasies. It's like the recurring dream like we all have...naked in a room of clothed people for me.” And I did not feel like sharing, thus the comment. I meant it as a minor, kidding, but it was taken otherwise, for which I apologize. Generally among circles wherein I fly open discussion of such topics as not done. My comment obviously was un-needed and possibly hurtful. I am sorry.

Let me see; 1983 - 1987 we were in California running twigs. Never heard about POP. Only time we had interface with Corpse was during the annual limb recruitment meeting. We purchased and owned a 3 family property, during this time period. We had fellowship in our home and rented 2 other homes out to other believers. I don’t really know for sure if any corpse person actually put 2 and 2 together to realize that we had bought the property with a mortgage. We were never confronted on that issue. But again being faithful twig coordinators [TC] rarely ever saw corpse. We were kind of focused on running PFAL classes and tending the needs of those in our fellowship. It was during this period of time that we often had huge terrible issues just getting copies of PFAL to run. There seemed to be a shortage of good copies of cassette tapes and shortages of the flip-charts. When we did get the video [bonnie had gotten into TWI in 1976, and I in 1978] neither of us had ever seen the video previously. Since the ‘local’ branch would routinely give us grief over rotating each video tape [you can have segment 4, but it needs to run up to Sacramento the next day, and then you will need to get segment 5 from Barstow and take it to San Jose when you are done with it. Etc] It seemed that most TCs and BCs at the time were becoming very controlling and before they handed over the next tape they wanted to know, why was a mere ‘Joe Beleiver’ handling such a tape. It was becoming a popular idea that only corpse should be able to run PFAL classes, and how dare I run a twig, and where was my corpse-overseer. A couple of times I had to drop off at the Limb office to either pick up or drop off tapes. Which was when I was told to just copy them and hold onto the copies. Since I was legitimately running the PFAL class, there was no need to be ‘proving’ myself to every other TC or BC just to borrow the next segment. I was also told that it was a good idea to just store them away for the future as PFAL would become ever more scarce. We were stationed in Scotland from 1987 – 1990, where we again bought an apartment building. Ran twig out of our home and rented apartments to believers. We attended Gartmore House a number of times. The people there were friendly, but the teachings were not on a ‘beginner’ level. Each time we took people to a Sunday Service at Gartmore, we spent two days explaining what happened. It was fairly wearing on us. When we did get ready to run PFAL we asked them for it. But were told that we were not ‘European” believers and we would have to run under New Knoxville, as “Country Coordinators: for Americans living in Scotland”. HQ was not obliging to send us PFAL either, and referred us to the ‘Military Outreach dude’ [Paul Norcross]. Finally we were able to get ‘approval’ to run PFAL, but the tapes had to be supplied to us via Gartmore. We were told that PFAL was coming and Chris Kent would deliver it to us. So we scheduled the class, and he showed up but he was empty handed. He was like inspecting our fellowship and he sat in on a dinner with us. The following week he came again and that time he delivered their copy of PFAL to our twig. [During all this time, we did hold our own copy of PFAL, but we were concerned about letting anyone know that we had been told to maintain a copy of it]. While living in Scotland we were receiving the weekly Gartmore tapes. In 1991 we returned stateside, and bought another apartment building, started a twig in it, in Connecticut. I don’t recall anyone saying anything about us buying apartment buildings to live in, or to rent to other believers. There were 2 twigs on our end of the state and Limb was on the other end, so it was convenient to never see them. The LC did put pressure on us to attend TC meetings each month. So we went a few times. Our neighboring TC was corpse and they filled us in on much of what had been happening. We were sent a corpse-couple who had been put on ‘suspended’ status. But being the TC over them was horrible, and they made life miserable. The LC at the time was Wilson Whitehead, he was pretty cool and even allowed us to go through everything he had in his bookstore library. We copied his “how to perform a wedding” class, among other things. And he encouraged us to remain as independent as possible. I don’t think that we ever did start getting the SNT tapes, since returning stateside in 1991. And I know that we never got the Way magazine, as I was still waiting for my complimentary subscription to start from when I took PFAL in 1979. In 1993, we got a different set of LCs who were very much marching a different tune, and wanted to control things. But again they did not have the time to travel to our end of the state, so we saw them rarely. Finally they wigged out over the fact that I had been performing weddings’ both within the fellowship and at work. We were ‘thrown out’, about the same time that I had orders in hand to transfer. I was then stationed on the USS Pulaski, where I was appointed the Ship’s Lay-Leader [in charge of all Protestant Services]. So I ran PFAL on-board [and just mailed the paperwork to HQ] as we moved to Washington State, where we again bought more property. I was stationed onboard the USS Alaska, where I was made their Protestant Lay-Leader and we ran a Twig out of the home I bought there. We stayed out of the path of most Corpse, ran our twig and PFAL classes until we were ‘thrown out’ again in 1996. This time, we were thrown out because we owned books written by Cummins, and one by Lynn; and we refused to burn those books. Mosquedo probably did not like us performing weddings, but at least he did not say anything about it. We were ousted purely because we refused to burn books. During that time, we did many more weddings for TWI believers as well as for sailors who attended my services onboard the sub. In 1997 I was stationed overseas again [italy] where we finally did things without contacting HQ at all. And as us 2001, we returned stateside and setup a twig here in Connecticut again. Generally we attended those annoying annual Limb Meetings [if I was available], and sometimes a TC meeting, but I found that the more corpse got to know you, the more ugly things became. “I think after POP people were pretty much isolated everywhere. The few corpses that I knew that left pretty much kept their mouths shut about what they knew and heard, at least to the regular Joe believer. We just never heard from them again.” I would agree with this observation. .

def59: "Oak is right when he says we disagree often, but we respect each other. The same goes (respect, I hope) with Raf, Sudo and Grizzy, even Galen, to name a few." Really EVEN 'Galen'? Wow, no not him. :-) And here I was hoping that this particular discussion could go right on without mention of me. Personally I do see that Our Heavenly Father does treat different peoples differently. To me, when I see Him acting one way in one era, and then acting oppositely in a different era; it must be due to different X---X. Whether those differences happened in an hour, or gradually over a decade. Some people's knew the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to have been a fierce mean vengefull and jealous G-d. In the New Testament, we see Our Creator as our Father. A loving benevolent Dad, to those who worship Him. Whether we wish to call these eras: dispensations, or administrations, or eras, or whatever. Was there 6, or 10, or 20? I dont care. It does make for good reading though. "I can respect your beliefs and disagree with your conclusions. How about giving some of that back?" With all due respect, of course.

David- "Hello Krys. Sorry to have taken so long to respond, but since my last post I was informed that my mother had passed away. She was a month away from her 96th birthday and died alone in a nursing home in God-forsaken West Virginia." We are sorry to hear of your mother's passing. ". . . a tombstone already in place that reads, "Because Christ has Risen, we also will Rise"" That is a very nice quote to put onto a tombstone. "It wouldn't have happened on a site that required real names for people to post. But here I can't assume people are telling the truth if they won't even give their real name. And hurt feelings or anger, etc. is hard to get serious about when I might be talking to Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse." Even here you will see that many of us do in fact use our real names when we post. ". . . I couldn't get past the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck routine that so often happens with annonomous posters. I never met a soul in my tenure with twi back in the sixties and early seventies that refused to give me their name." I understand and I also find it frustrating at times. "But it seems I have done worse than that by relying on your information and then questioning it." No, you did what you thought best at the time. No matter what I hear, and what 'sounds' interesting; I must do research if I am going to act on such a hint. I am certainly glad when someone suggests to me something that they feel is good. But are they a 'doctor'? Are they 'qualified' to make a proper assessment of my health and conditions? I must take the end responsibility for what I do. I learn a great deal here as well as on other boards. Ever since I first began visiting BBS's in the mid 1980's, I feel that many have had things to offer, for our growth and learning. But it all must be taken with a dose of salt also. Can colon cleansing help some people? Sometimes? Possibly. Is it the end of that will help everyone? Probably not. But I can still learn from reading the posts of those on that band-wagon. [filtering through the flames, and jokes, and distractors]. Again our thoughts and prayers are with you in this time of sorrow. ET1 (SS) Galen Young USN retired .

parsley: "This is a very tricky issue. . . . there is a difference between mentally sound adults wanting to end their lives, and babies not having the mental capabilities to make that decision or voice it." Many in our society would argue that "mentally sound adult" and "wanting to end their lives", are not possible to co-exist. The idea that anyone who attempts suicide is by default mentally-ill, means that under no circumstances could you maintain mental soundness and contamplate suicide. hmm.