I will never forget the "dedication ceremony" in 1976 (I think :) ),,,when the bod dedicated the new campus at Rome City.
I was a wow at the time and my wow family was invited to this event (as were many other wow families that lived close by)...This was only my second year with twi and I had never seen any of the real formalities yet...
There were probably several hundred of us gathered when Veepee, Don and Howard all came walking out onto the stage, single file, in their CLERGY ROBES!!! Up until that moment, I never knew that twi guys wore robes! At first I thought it was a put-on...I thought they were goofing on everybody and I started laughing...
I suddenly realized that I was the only one laughing...and I was getting some "nasty glares".
That's when I began to see the ritualistic and ceremonial side of twi...
By the time I entered the corps, I was well indoctrinated into the twi culture of protocol, ceremonies, rituals, and human sacrifice (just kidding about the human sacrifice part :) )...
Some of the ceremonies I remember in twi were:
holy communion
salt covenant ceremony
way weddings
...many of the group "ministering services" were very ritualistic. Even the protocols of standing when they enter the room...the repetition of many of these protocols led to ritualistic behavior. Most of the different functions, whether they were twig, branch or limb meetings became formulated and ritualistic.
I read an article once where the author was saying that there were only two legitimate Christian rituals...holy communion and water baptism. I'm not very confident that EITHER of these rituals are legitimate. I tend to believe that the spiritual body of Christ has no need for rituals.
The dedication of the WOW Auditorium in 1985 stands out in my mind. It was my first time back there since I resigned from staff in protest after confronting Donna, Auntie Em, and Bastage Winegarner. I was standing in the lobby of the auditorium, and when I looked up, Don W. was staring down at me like I was a piece of $h!t on his silver platter, like, how the hell did I get through security. I was invited, but unwelcome. I will never forget it.
Welcome to The Way, to the building your hard-earned cash helped pay for. Now what the hell do you think you are doing here?
That kind of treatment was the most common "ritual" at The Way.
I don't have a problem with ritual per se. Formal symbolic gestures can add meaning to an event. For example, I'm thinking most of us went through the ceremony of a wedding -- we didn't just sign a paper and say, "Okay, we're married now," and get on with life. We wanted to have a significant event to memorialize the importance of the commitment.
But memorial becomes empty ritual a few ways. One is by not informing the participants that a ritual is about to be performed. People can't "play" if they don't know the "rules." And since Wierwille had always made fun of the traditions of men, it was difficult to accept him parading around in clerical robes. It made me uncomfortable.
Another way to make ritual meaningless is to put the form over the substance -- to lose the meaning of the gestures in preference to repeating the gestures exactly. Ritualizing communion (hold your hand like this, read this, do it only on this day) was one that I disagreed with. I ran communion when I thought people would be helped by it, and though I tried to be a good little Wayfer and run it like a ceremony, I just couldn't get all twisted into doing it one way only.
I don't think it was an accident that TWI had more and more rituals added as time went on. As the heart went out of it, ritual replaced it, just like any religion.
"Another way to make ritual meaningless is to put the form over the substance -- to lose the meaning of the gestures in preference to repeating the gestures exactly."
Amen. And when you think about it that way, by the late 90's, nearly ever "household fellowship meeting" was a ritual.
Speaking of those robes, I don't remember when I first saw VP, Don and Howard in them, but I remember it shocked me. After the initial shock, I distictly remember thinking that Don and Howard's sleeves looked different...in a homemade sort of way. Really, it looked like they had been ironed on...and that bothered me.
I don't know when they started this, but the ministry had baby dedications. We had our one year old son dedicated to (the Lord? God? the Way?) at a limb meeting. I don't remember much about it, except that I thought it was awfully important to be giving him over to the work of the ministy, or whatever. Thankfully, he's now a non-religious Christian with a quick wit and a mind of his own.
The one ritiual that was there from the git-go and NEVER forgotten was:
Passing the "Horn of Plenty"! Yes, that's right, you're not REALLY giving us your hard-earned (and probably desperately needed) cash to do with as we please with absolutely no accounting for how it's spent WHATSOEVER! NO! You're "tapping into the resources for the more abundant life!"
At least in my hhf, the horn had to be passed a certain way; open end towards the recipient.
...Or, metaphorically speaking...bending over and grabbing your ankles?
...and there goes George again, reminding us all that the horn of plenty was ALWAYS what twi was about. You could make a lot of mistakes running a home fellowship but God help you if you ever forgot to pass the blessed horn...and don't forget to have prayer...just before you pass it.
"Oh gracious and merciful heavenly Father, thank you for the priviledge it is to give money that I needed for the electric bill (not to mention, NO BEER tonight)...and to be a part of this wonderful cult. My heart thrills knowing that I have contributed to the financing of this mean spirited, sexually abusive, lying bunch of pharisees...and I know that by the time they are finished with me, I will be a mindless f*** chimp currying for favor and living the life of my worst nightmares....and I pray in the wonderful name of the absent Christ who has been replaced by VeePee Cornfield for the time being...amen."
Ah yes....the ritual of the horn of plenty....just bend over and take the horn...and don't forget, "open end towards the recipient".
Groucho-------When you said " open end toward the recipiant" you were referring to the horn of plenty,yes? I never could keep the nouns and verbs straight. "What a diifferance one little comma can, make.
"Oh gracious and merciful heavenly Father,I want to just thank you for the priviledge it is to just give money that I needed for the electric bill (not to mention, NO BEER tonight)...and to just be a part of this wonderful cult. My heart thrills just knowing that I have contributed to the financing of this mean spirited, sexually abusive, lying bunch of pharisees...and I know that by the time they are finished with me, I will just be just a mindless f*** chimp currying for favor and just living the life of my worst nightmares....and I pray in the wonderful name of the absent Christ who has been replaced by VeePee Cornfield for the time being...amen."
Remember - all those "justs?????"
Once you add even one just, you negate them all....... Geez - and we thought we knew all about prayer.
Speaking of rituals;-----Anyone remember hearing Vee Pee talk about the origin of the horn of plenty? It seems that in the early days they would JUST pass a basket like the type that is used to serve bread. One night the person in charge of such details JUST forgot to bring the basket. Uncle Harry looked around the room and spotted a floral arrangement in a cornucopia. He removed the flowers and the rest is history. Of course later on, the horn had to be a specific color, shape, density of weave, molecular weight,etc. It JUST really blessed me to be able to JUST share that.
Spending an hour in da verd first thing in the morning. My ex was getting up at 4AM to make sure he had his requisite time in. I'd much rather have had a pleasant, well rested husband instead of one who "fulfilled his duty" and was grumpy because of lack of sleep.
Household fellowship followed a formula. I think it is telling that announcements took twice as long as the actual teaching, which was required to be ten minutes on the dot.
I remember starting on staff at hq and learning a whole new huge set of rituals.
There were very specific ways that the BRC had to be set up for SNS, weddings, Sunday morning staff meetings, ritual setups for the teacher's room, meals in the brc basement had lots of rituals, etc, etc...
Even Joe Coulter's office had rituals. Check your shoes carefully for mud before entering, never eat a hamburger in his office, and my favorite, alway set the telephone receiver down in such a way that the cord comes out of the receiver on the same side as it goes into the telephone.
...When you said " open end toward the recipiant" you were referring to the horn of plenty,yes? I never could keep the nouns and verbs straight. "What a diifferance one little comma can, make.
I wonder ... would the comma belong before "," today or after today","?
Toward the end of my time the whole thing was a ritual every bit as predictable as the staunchest ritualistic Church
a typical fellowship
opening prayer
2 songs
announcements ( leader promotes some way class or program)
slow song
prayer and manifestations
brief exclamation of how great manifestations were
Teaching on a subject that youve heard at least 52 million times before
prayer for abundant sharing and abundant sharing
song
closing prayer
'refreshments'
1/2 hour of 'fellowship'
I may be forgetting something(thank God!) but the order of the fellowship usually only varied slightly. of course there were hundreds of rituals within this ritual.
Household fellowship followed a formula. I think it is telling that announcements took twice as long as the actual teaching, which was required to be ten minutes on the dot.
Our "leader" would require that everyone else keep the teaching short, but would usually go one for a 1/2 hour or more, sometimes in excess of 45 minutes, himself. When he wasn't teaching her would drone on and on during announcements
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GrouchoMarxJr
I will never forget the "dedication ceremony" in 1976 (I think :) ),,,when the bod dedicated the new campus at Rome City.
I was a wow at the time and my wow family was invited to this event (as were many other wow families that lived close by)...This was only my second year with twi and I had never seen any of the real formalities yet...
There were probably several hundred of us gathered when Veepee, Don and Howard all came walking out onto the stage, single file, in their CLERGY ROBES!!! Up until that moment, I never knew that twi guys wore robes! At first I thought it was a put-on...I thought they were goofing on everybody and I started laughing...
I suddenly realized that I was the only one laughing...and I was getting some "nasty glares".
That's when I began to see the ritualistic and ceremonial side of twi...
By the time I entered the corps, I was well indoctrinated into the twi culture of protocol, ceremonies, rituals, and human sacrifice (just kidding about the human sacrifice part :) )...
Some of the ceremonies I remember in twi were:
holy communion
salt covenant ceremony
way weddings
...many of the group "ministering services" were very ritualistic. Even the protocols of standing when they enter the room...the repetition of many of these protocols led to ritualistic behavior. Most of the different functions, whether they were twig, branch or limb meetings became formulated and ritualistic.
I read an article once where the author was saying that there were only two legitimate Christian rituals...holy communion and water baptism. I'm not very confident that EITHER of these rituals are legitimate. I tend to believe that the spiritual body of Christ has no need for rituals.
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Catcup
The dedication of the WOW Auditorium in 1985 stands out in my mind. It was my first time back there since I resigned from staff in protest after confronting Donna, Auntie Em, and Bastage Winegarner. I was standing in the lobby of the auditorium, and when I looked up, Don W. was staring down at me like I was a piece of $h!t on his silver platter, like, how the hell did I get through security. I was invited, but unwelcome. I will never forget it.
Welcome to The Way, to the building your hard-earned cash helped pay for. Now what the hell do you think you are doing here?
That kind of treatment was the most common "ritual" at The Way.
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waysider
WHAT!-------No mention of "THE INNER SANCTUM"?-----Shhhhhhh!
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shazdancer
I don't have a problem with ritual per se. Formal symbolic gestures can add meaning to an event. For example, I'm thinking most of us went through the ceremony of a wedding -- we didn't just sign a paper and say, "Okay, we're married now," and get on with life. We wanted to have a significant event to memorialize the importance of the commitment.
But memorial becomes empty ritual a few ways. One is by not informing the participants that a ritual is about to be performed. People can't "play" if they don't know the "rules." And since Wierwille had always made fun of the traditions of men, it was difficult to accept him parading around in clerical robes. It made me uncomfortable.
Another way to make ritual meaningless is to put the form over the substance -- to lose the meaning of the gestures in preference to repeating the gestures exactly. Ritualizing communion (hold your hand like this, read this, do it only on this day) was one that I disagreed with. I ran communion when I thought people would be helped by it, and though I tried to be a good little Wayfer and run it like a ceremony, I just couldn't get all twisted into doing it one way only.
I don't think it was an accident that TWI had more and more rituals added as time went on. As the heart went out of it, ritual replaced it, just like any religion.
Regards,
Shaz
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Abigail
"Another way to make ritual meaningless is to put the form over the substance -- to lose the meaning of the gestures in preference to repeating the gestures exactly."
Amen. And when you think about it that way, by the late 90's, nearly ever "household fellowship meeting" was a ritual.
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tonto
Speaking of those robes, I don't remember when I first saw VP, Don and Howard in them, but I remember it shocked me. After the initial shock, I distictly remember thinking that Don and Howard's sleeves looked different...in a homemade sort of way. Really, it looked like they had been ironed on...and that bothered me.
I don't know when they started this, but the ministry had baby dedications. We had our one year old son dedicated to (the Lord? God? the Way?) at a limb meeting. I don't remember much about it, except that I thought it was awfully important to be giving him over to the work of the ministy, or whatever. Thankfully, he's now a non-religious Christian with a quick wit and a mind of his own.
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George Aar
The one ritiual that was there from the git-go and NEVER forgotten was:
Passing the "Horn of Plenty"! Yes, that's right, you're not REALLY giving us your hard-earned (and probably desperately needed) cash to do with as we please with absolutely no accounting for how it's spent WHATSOEVER! NO! You're "tapping into the resources for the more abundant life!"
Yeah, how foolish of me not to realize that...
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oldiesman
yes I recall that was worship of the Goddess Abundantia... :D
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outintexas
At least in my hhf, the horn had to be passed a certain way; open end towards the recipient.
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GrouchoMarxJr
...Or, metaphorically speaking...bending over and grabbing your ankles?
...and there goes George again, reminding us all that the horn of plenty was ALWAYS what twi was about. You could make a lot of mistakes running a home fellowship but God help you if you ever forgot to pass the blessed horn...and don't forget to have prayer...just before you pass it.
"Oh gracious and merciful heavenly Father, thank you for the priviledge it is to give money that I needed for the electric bill (not to mention, NO BEER tonight)...and to be a part of this wonderful cult. My heart thrills knowing that I have contributed to the financing of this mean spirited, sexually abusive, lying bunch of pharisees...and I know that by the time they are finished with me, I will be a mindless f*** chimp currying for favor and living the life of my worst nightmares....and I pray in the wonderful name of the absent Christ who has been replaced by VeePee Cornfield for the time being...amen."
Ah yes....the ritual of the horn of plenty....just bend over and take the horn...and don't forget, "open end towards the recipient".
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SafariVista
The Ritual of Preparedness:
1. Always have your home prepared with the physical items that make your leadership comfortable.
2. Always travel with items in your vehicle to be ready for anything.
3. When visiting TWI Headquarters, be prepared with EXTRA pantyhose and other items, so as NOT to enter the beautiful Auditorium with a blemish
4. Always have paper and writing object to get prospective 'believer's' phone numbers & address.
5. Always be prepared to make time to call those prospects back WITHIN A 24 HOUR PERIOD!
6. Always be teaching those in your fellowship these points, so they too will be prepared.
probably many more... that's all I can handle right now
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waysider
Groucho-------When you said " open end toward the recipiant" you were referring to the horn of plenty,yes? I never could keep the nouns and verbs straight. "What a diifferance one little comma can, make.
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Jim
Extra pantyhose indeed. If I had extra pantyhose in my pocket, it would have been for a different reason than to avoid a blemish...
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doojable
Remember - all those "justs?????"
Once you add even one just, you negate them all....... Geez - and we thought we knew all about prayer.
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waysider
Speaking of rituals;-----Anyone remember hearing Vee Pee talk about the origin of the horn of plenty? It seems that in the early days they would JUST pass a basket like the type that is used to serve bread. One night the person in charge of such details JUST forgot to bring the basket. Uncle Harry looked around the room and spotted a floral arrangement in a cornucopia. He removed the flowers and the rest is history. Of course later on, the horn had to be a specific color, shape, density of weave, molecular weight,etc. It JUST really blessed me to be able to JUST share that.
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SafariVista
then there was that SPANKING ritual...
Wooden spoons with our last name on it...
How about the CHECKING IN ritual
NOTE TAKING ritual...
THANK YOU CARD ritual...
all sorts of correct, automatic ritualistic responses for every occasion
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GrouchoMarxJr
Spankings?...Wooden spoons?
Where was I?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh...you mean the kids!
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Belle
Spending an hour in da verd first thing in the morning.
My ex was getting up at 4AM to make sure he had his requisite time in. I'd much rather have had a pleasant, well rested husband instead of one who "fulfilled his duty" and was grumpy because of lack of sleep. 
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Bramble
Household fellowship followed a formula. I think it is telling that announcements took twice as long as the actual teaching, which was required to be ten minutes on the dot.
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coolchef
i remember going to men's retreats woops advances and they would do the washing of the feet. i hated the men's advance and the washing of the feet
at one of these i was expected to undershepard a new babe in the word who was diddling my upstanding,respected wife!
yeah right frig them
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Jim
I remember starting on staff at hq and learning a whole new huge set of rituals.
There were very specific ways that the BRC had to be set up for SNS, weddings, Sunday morning staff meetings, ritual setups for the teacher's room, meals in the brc basement had lots of rituals, etc, etc...
Even Joe Coulter's office had rituals. Check your shoes carefully for mud before entering, never eat a hamburger in his office, and my favorite, alway set the telephone receiver down in such a way that the cord comes out of the receiver on the same side as it goes into the telephone.
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What The Hey
I wonder ... would the comma belong before "," today or after today","?
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mstar1
Toward the end of my time the whole thing was a ritual every bit as predictable as the staunchest ritualistic Church
a typical fellowship
opening prayer
2 songs
announcements ( leader promotes some way class or program)
slow song
prayer and manifestations
brief exclamation of how great manifestations were
Teaching on a subject that youve heard at least 52 million times before
prayer for abundant sharing and abundant sharing
song
closing prayer
'refreshments'
1/2 hour of 'fellowship'
I may be forgetting something(thank God!) but the order of the fellowship usually only varied slightly. of course there were hundreds of rituals within this ritual.
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Oakspear
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