Bramble

Kathy, I think you might find, if you talked to such people, that few adults blithely toss out beliefs. It is more a process of questioning, concluding, reaching for different views and experiences. It may be a painful process, as in 'dark night of the soul.' 'Tossing God in the trash' make it seem as though it was a simple process followed by a drunkfest or something. Not everyone has had your experiences with your God. Though, I have to say, as a young person in TWI, I and many others easily tossed away the beliefs we'd been raised with...but I think much of that was a part of the natural rebellion of late adolescence.

Water--the lake or a bubble bath!

Yes, there are some groups out there just as cultish as TWi ever was, but with a different doctrine. Still about conformity, though.

Your post put me in mind with a site I enjoy, a feminine spirituality site http://millionthcircle.org/index.html

Your medicine wheel is gorgeous, Shifra. The visual symbols are very powerful. Seeing life in a circular or spiral progression instead of linear is also a big part of pagan thought. Wiccans cast circles, a bubble of sacred space, protected, not completely earthly, but touching the higher, spiritual realm, when they do their rituals or even meditation. It is a meeting place where our spiritual selves are more free than on the earthly plain, a place where we can more clearly learn, join with the divine, set needed changes in motion... There is ascending and descending in that sense--moving for awhile into the higher plain, then descending back to our world. Trancing, meditation, shamanism...all seek this, but it is a brief journey for us humans.

Birth with out the female, a birth only through a father, no mother involved. After I left TWI, this became a source of questions to me. Some think the feminine presence was deliberately wiped out of the Bible, that God either had a consort or a dual nature, male/female. I don't know if that is so, but there do seem to be a few 'mother traits' scattered throughout the Bible...the hen covering her young, the nursing mother...

I don't think Christian couples who follow the husband as head doctrine are degrading the woman. I think there are many couples with loving and working relationships who believe the head of the household doctrine. I think degrading is in a whole different category. The degradation I saw in TWI came mainly in extra beliefs that were spoken--that women got possessed easier, that women would lead their men away from the truth, that women, being more emotional, could not be trusted and needed a husband to rule over them. And in the nineties, women had about as much maturity as a 12 year old. I had to ask my husband if I could babysit--a short couple hours one week day morning when he was at work. He looked at me like I was crazy!

I wasn't trying to 'fix' Jen & John's relationship. I was just stating how we do things , post TWi. While in TWI we did do the 'tie breaker' thing. We don't automatically do it now, with hubby's plan being the one we always go with.

Even if i felt they had the "truest" doctrine, I wouldn't go back, because they have instituted habits of how they can treat people that I don't agree with--even if they can highlight some Bible verse or other. I have children I won't expose to that.

That sounds very much like how we make decisions, Jean--a compromise, or a trial of something. It is often impossible to know exactly how something is going to work until you act on it. Sometimes all we really know is--this isn't working, we must try something else!

We don't do the tie breaker, husband has two votes thing like in TWI. We work it out until we are in agreement. That way the big decisions are "ours" together for good or bad. Neither of us has to "give in." I can absolutely refuse to do some course of action, so can he--then it's back to the discussion. Lots of times there are no obviously right or wrong decisions...and neither of us can predict the future. We just try to think things through. Or there is just one course of action--replace that water heater, we can spend $xxx. The big decisions we've made since leaving TWI( buying a house etc) have turned out well. I'll add that it probably helps that neither one of us is a control freak or has anger management issues, and we like to do things that make the other happy.

I feel for women who need to work but still do all the house work on top of a 40 hr week, when they have an able bodied spouse who could help but doesn't. That's pretty degrading!

Interesting glimpse of your ex way connections. I'm not surprised at all to hear there are those around you into the hyper critical 'reproof' and boundary jumping we saw so much of in the nineties. Not surprised at all. I suspect there may have been a bit of a pi$$ ng contest going on there, too--I'm the man o god!-- NO ,I'M the man o god! But I'm glad John stuck up for you--makes your life a whole less complicated. No one needs that kind of misery.

Some Wiccans and pagans would call that the sign of the Horned God( no relation to Satan). Maybe Bush is in the broom closet!!

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/ar...ail212.html#RAH You have to scroll down a little ways.

It's hard to consent to unwritten rules that pop up as you go along.

In TWI as I knew it, the wife was subject to her husband...and the husband was subject to the Fellowship coordinator, the branch coordinator, the limb coordinator, the Region coordinator, and any other coordinator that could get their nose in there.

Congratulations! And Broadway themed!--that will be a wonderful memory.

In Pfal there was that little section on VP leaarning how to SIT, the minister that lead him into tongues put his wife in her place--and VP respected him for that. But did the wife really do something terrible? Seems to me she wanted to know how long he would be...Really did she deserve to be smacked down?

Satan's army has waaaay cooler clorthes. I'd wear one of those dresses to a funeral though. Nice and subdued.

Eyes open--when I first got involved in TWI the fact that women appeared to be on the same level as men as far as teaching running fellowships etc was very appealing. Claudette Royal was ordained! Women could run fellowships and wow families, be leadership...that was not what I had seen in any Christian churches in my youth.

Snappy tempo, probably hours of work to get the moves down, all about having power and might etc...and yet so forgetable.

In TWI there was that heirarchy of leadership we dealt with--which few people outside of ex ways understand. Leaders could get away with insults, conclusions about someones personality or spiritual fitness, public humiliations in TWI, unless they were stupid and went after someone with tight connections to a higher leader. There were no safeguards built into the system. In the real world--workplace, real churches, even forums, that kind of behavior is called and noticed. There will be people you don't get along with--but you don't have to stalk, humiliate and attempt to shut them up!

A 'treasure' hunt, just like an egg hunt but with candy in shiny wrappers(I used Brachs which I bought by the scoop, was very well received. Also, a balloon pop--where the balloons have tickets for prizes inside. Kids sit on the balloons to pop them.

Well, think whatever you want Larry. I'm getting the sense you think there is something wrong with someone who is an athiest or non Christian. I personally don't think athiests are bad because they are athiests. If someone doesn't perceive diety that is what they perceive and why would it be wrong? Should they fake it? And since I consider my relationship with diety --who I am not going to name out of respect for her, on a forum like this--to be something special, personal and sacred, I don't see any point in dragging her onto this forum. I'm not trying to win converts. I just posted about prayer in my life.