Oakspear

I heard Martindale make that stupid comment about anti-Semitism as well. He and Wierwille based their opinions of the non-Jewishness of the Jews on Koestler, who never said that ALL Jews were descended from the Khazars, or that NO descendents of the 12 tribes made up modern Jewry. Moron

Good points HC. The Way Corps is a good example. Don't let TWI define your life...good advice

My computer is not cooperating, so I am unable to do the cut & paste quote thing, but Song asked Catcup if she were involved in any way in a high-profile TWI splinter group that he later identified as CFF. Catcup asked "on what possible grounds" Song would "have reason to believe" that she was involved in this group. A quick check on the CFF web site shows that Research Geek [ Mr. Catcup ; - ) ] is listed as the teacher three times under the section listing "CFF Teachings".

In 1981, Wierwille obtained an invitation to one of the events of Ronald Reagan's inauguration, and word filtered down through the ministry that Wierwille had access to the president himself. Word had it that Reagan was a "believer", and since the word was used exclusively of Way members, some took this to mean that Reagan was catually a follower of The Way. As evidence, the proponents of this theory would say "Have you ever seen Ronald Reagan going to church?" In a Jan. 1981 newsletter to Ohio believers, state leader Bob Mirabito wrote: "Dr. Wierwille has personally been invited by President-Elect Ronald Reagan to the Inauguration Ball this January 20th. It is not one of the sattelite balls. There will be only 1,000 people in attendance". A spokesman for Reagan's Inaugural Committee, speaking to the Empria Gazette, scoffed at rports that Reagan had personally invited Wierwille to anything. "He would not have been invited by President Reagan and ended up in the same computer lists as the 175,000 others" said committee spokesman Bob Billings. Billings said that there was no ball with only 1,000 people, and that with roughly 43,000 people attending about nine balls, the average attendance was closer to 5,000. Noting that invitations were handed out on request, Billings also said his office had extended an ivitation to a man who identified himself as "King of the Gypsies", and claimed to represent a union of practicing Gypsies. On Feb. 9, 1981, Kansas Senator Bob Dole, future Republican presidential nominee, wrote in answer to an inquiry from Herb Diamond: "I realize that there has been a great deal of concern about the participation of Victor Paul Wierwille, leader of THe WAy, in the recent Inaugural activities. I want to assure you that Mr. Wierwille's presence was as a private citizen and not an official guest. It seems that the invitation to Mr. Wierwille came as a result of a routine phone request to a congressional office that a V.P. Wierwille attend an Inaugural event. Whoever took the phone message did not recognize the name, and so it was passed on along with other such requests..His presence in Washington in no way represents any kind of official recognition of him or his organization by the Administration. quoted from The Cult That Snapped by Karl Kahler, p 124-125

I didn't impress ANYBODY with my spelling, it's "spanokopita"

I had a nice birthday/Father's Day weekend: Saturday night Reikilady & I went to visit my son and his girlfriend, and along with another son, played cards (Phase Ten) for a few hours. We went out to eat at a great Greek restaurant on Sunday night (braised lamb shank...mmm) and impressed the help with my pronunciation of "spanakopit" (accent on the "ko") I worked a half day today (nothing to do with my birthday), picked up my future step-daughter from basketball camp, and will be imbibing some adult beverages tonight at the pub. Thanks for the bithday wishes!

Reikilady is really looking for a job so that I can sit at home, eat bon-bons, and in general be a kept man. Oh yeah...watch "Oprah" too.

Waybrain appears and rears it's sometimes ugly (and sometimes not so ugly) head all the time, and in different guises. At times, like Catcup's example, it is a reaction against TWI-like words or actions. For example, I get VERY perturbed when someone makes pronouncements as if they were the "all-truth". A friend of Reikilady's that I interact with on a regular basis talks about her beliefs as if those who don't agree are blind idiots. My mind flashes back to TWI's teachings about "the only place that the word is taught" and brsistle. For a long time my management style was very similar to the worst Way Corps' leadership style. Acting like that has negatively affected my rate of advancement. It took a lot of time and effort to change those habit patterns. Another aspect of Waybrain is vocabulary. This is something that I have to work on all the time. I've got a large enough vocabulary (in fact I get the evil eye from time to time from a few folks for occassionally using "big words"), but sometimes the "wayspeak", or a TWI greek word, offers the easiest way to make a point. Especially when posting here amongst all you ex-wayfers! For example, for most of you, the word "ginosko" would be an understandable substitute for "know by experience". Every once in a while I get stuck and can't think of a non-wayspeak word for a concept. Just the other day I was trying to explain something and could not find a more concise explanation than "sunesis", but had to give a long explanation about two rivers flowing together because the listener wouldn't have known what "sunesis" meant!

"I Love The Lord", by one of our own here at GS, was in the songbook toward the end of my time "in". When I led songs I sang it as much as possible, just because I KNEW that Hope was out and posting on the evil internet!

So, does McF's assignment mean that he's the new Corps Director? I believe Harve had the title after LCM was booted.

So why, if Wierwille really wasn't documenting this stuff from the bible, did we believe it? Because he SAID he was documenting it from the bible, most of us didn't know jack about the bible, and he was dazzling us with b.s.!

I was in during both. Although I was a Waydale psoter at the time of RFR's ascension.

When LCM took over it was a big deal (within the TWI conext). A revered founder was cermoniously passing on the mantle to the next generation. Images of Elijah & Elisha, Paul & Timothy were invoked. It was a happy time in TWI-land. In contrast RFR took over amidst a scandal and lawsuit. Drawing attention to the transition with a big ceremony annointing her with oil and placing a mantle on her shoulders would have been ludicrous. They were smart to keep it low-key

From what I can tell, a region is equivalent to what a limb used to be. Back in the days when there was actually growth, a limb usually had multiple branches in the larger cities, sometimes grouped into "areas" that included the suburbs and neighboring smaller cities. There were "twig areas" (3-6 twigs) in medium sized cities and single twigs scattered all over the state. A limb coordinator in many states oversaw thousnads of people. In the late seventies, early eighties, I saw TWI go from seven to eight and later twelve regions. It made sense, because the limbs were growing, and the region coordinators were more or less there to make communication easier. In the late nineties and early 00's, a region might consist of Minnesota, North & South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin, with no limb coordinators in the Dakotas and "branches" with only 2 or three twigs in the major cities in each of the other states. Few enough people to have made up a large branch or an area in the eighties. So they now has an average of 3 1/3 states per region. As I recall from tapes that came out in 2001, there were TEN states with no limb coordinators or Way Corps presence, and about half of the ten with no organized fellowship at all. The people that they are calling limb coordinators sometimes are barely overseeing more than one twig. Back in the 90's we split our anemic little fellowship just so the incoming branch coordinator would have a branch to coordinate. After he left we merged again. It's title inflation. Give people exalted titles, like calling the busboy the servicewear recycling field coordinator. And what are they calling Harve? Any recognition of his time as a Director? Other than Loy, who was ousted, all others either died, or retired (emeritus status according to wayspeak) when leave the Board. WayferNot!: Grace M was from Nigeria. She attended the University of Nebraska before moving on to Country Coordinator by marriage.

While I'm on a roll... Why, oh why, did we even bother with leading songs by waving our hands around? Most of us didn't even look at the song leader, and most song leaders couldn't find the downbeat if their lives depended on it.

Right on, Lindy. I always tried to make the same old, same old "Sing Along The Way" songs a little bit more exciting: call & response, hallelujahs, "Oh Glory" (and even "Oh Baby") in "I Saw The Light"; singing 4/4 songs in 3/4 time, or in different tempos. Nope. Gotta sing 'em the way the chorus choir sings 'em --> We had a Way Corps bc who wanted to sing a Children's Fellowship song, but he didn't know the tune. I can't remember the title, but it had"...clap your hands *clap*clap*clap*clap*...'cause we're a fam-i-ly, the Word is the will of G-O-D..." in it. Well, Mr. Dumass announces that we will sing this song, that he isn't sure how it goes, and despite the fact that EVERYONE ELSE in the fellowship knows the song, declares that if anyone else knows a different version than the one he will "teach" us, too bad, anything else will just confuse him! So here we go, with the guy leading the song the ONLY ONE in the room who doesn't know it, and everyone else just busting to sing it the way we've been taught. Same guy would rip us new excretory orifices if we deviated from TWI approved song leading.

I believe that the BSA rule is that no leaders be homosexuals. As far as I know the exclusion does not apply to the scouts themselves. BSA also has a rule that there must always be at least two leaders present. No adult may be alone with scouts for any reason. On camping trips adults are prohibited from sharing the same tents with scouts.

Pedophiles are not exclusively homosexual. What group should lobby to come down hard on the heterosexual pedophiles?

Problem? -->

I have no problem with the Boy Scouts. In fact, I was a Cub Scout leader for six years, and a Boy Scout volunteer for some of that time. Three of my five sons were in scouting. On my computer desk is a picture of me with my son on the Oregon Trail on one of our trips. That being said, scouting is only as strong or weak as the individuals that make it up. I've encountered many fine men and women who were leaders, and many fine young men in the program. I've also come across some first-class jerks...in short, just like everywhere else. The point has been made that the Boy Scouts are a private organization, and that they have the right to exclude anyone that they want from their private organization. I agree. What they don't have the right to do is to expect a public organization like a school to be required to support them through the use of the facilities and access to their students for recruiting. When I was a Cub Scout, our church sponsored our Pack and the Boy Scout Troop. In many places this is still the rule. Every Pack and Troop must have a sponsoring organization, sometimes a church, sometimes a community organization. When the sponsoring organization does not own a meeting place, the public schools are often used. Not a thing. Which of those excludes homosexuality? Objectively, none of them. If you hold certain religious beliefs, you might believe differently, but are all Boy Scouts and their families adherants to those beliefs? I guess not.

David: Your words and the implied attitude behind them cause me to liken you to a male external reproductive organ.

When Martindale declared that the "Word" was "Over the world" in the mid nineties, he said it was because God told him that it was, and then had John Reynolds give supposed statistics and evidence to "prove" it. Many of us just couldn't see it, considering that Martindale's own yardsticks of expansion, outlined in his book, were numerical and geographic growth, and sphere of influence. Numbers were down considerably, and were shrinking further, there were nine or ten states without an official TWI presence, and about half the number of foreign outposts compared to the eighties. Any influence that TWI ever had was squandered. Martindale also said that "Word Over the World" wasn't some vague unattainable vision, but was a goal that could, and had been achieved. World Over the World was, in my opinion, just that: vague and unattainable, because it was never clearly and consistantly defined. It was a slogan, nothing more, nothing less. I do have a vague recollection of hearing it defined as "a twig within walking distance of every person in the world", but never saw it it writing. With Martindale's proclamation, whole regions of the world had no TWI presence; one lonely fellowship made "the Word available" to millions of people. This was a clear indication that he had lost touch: heck, one fellowship in a medium-sized city like Lincoln couldn't even begin to "make available" TWI doctrine to the whole city, let alone the state or a country. So, what was "Word Over the World"? What did you think it meant? Did you ever hear it defined? How off was Martindale's sorry excuse for it?

It wasn't so much that Wierwille shouldn't have been proud of his heritage, but that in general we were all encouraged to not dwell on our own heritage. Reject your parents and grandparents, but have to see that stupid Wierwille family tree all over at Gunnison.

Man...that just...sits there...like a duck

Jess was the first Way Corps Director, Ermal Owens may be who you're thinking of