Not as much as some hapless souls, because we always believed in home ownership. I still do. If you are not overloaded with a bunch of debt, car payments, five billion credit cards, what is the difference between renting a home and making a mortgage payment? I know one argument is maintenance, upkeep and improvements, but you still usually have to mow the yard and make minor repairs yourself. When we did rent, we always tried to leave the place a little better than we found it.
And of course we were never WC so didn't have to expect to move every whipstitch.
I was thinking back to when I was still involved with the way and I was under the spell of their no debt policy and renting homes.
I had to move four times within a period of three years!Hence vagabond lifestyle.
I was so sick of not only moving myself,but also helping everyone else in the branch move.It was always interesting to me that the b.o.d. and other leaders who praised and enforced the no debt policy were never around to help move anyone
Nor did they ever have to move themselves. If they ever did, they would have had someone do it for them.
The no debt policy kept me out of home ownership for years...that was after they'd thrown me out. I was so concerned about no debt/no mortgage that I never bought when I could have done. Property prices rose considerably. Finally I got a job with lotsa money and moved to a new (expensive) city. Bought a house...property market collapsed three months later. As it happens, I have a lot of money in the house and the interest payments on the mortgage are much cheaper than rent would be if I were renting.
Otherwise...move on when it suited. Sure it's easier to move to rented acommodation to suit your family's /household's needs, but no telling what sort of property you'll get, what condition it'll be in, and the previous renters may not have been the cleanest, neatest, careful tenants.
Yeah, right, good for stability. For building up your home fellowship. When you might move to another part of the city at the drop of a hat. For kids' schooling, maybe having to move schools.
What would the bl00dy trustees know about frequent moving and the disruption caused? How often did they move? Did they swap houses? [no, only mates, but that's another thread! ]
Those who have been in rez will remember that every few months we had to completely clean our rooms out, then wait for a new room assignment. That might be with people we already knew well, had been roomies with before;..and might even be in the room we'd just moved out of. To teach us to "travel light" and to get on with different sorts of people. Yeah...we all wanted to be nomads, didn't we?
I moved at least 12 times between '76-'87. The no debt policy wasn't the law then, but I knew few in the way who could even dream of owning a house, while working minimum wage jobs. It was a life style of finding myself in 'way home' type situations, that would change with every ROA, unless I got thrown out before then. I'm still amazed that I've been able to cobble together a career, and buy a home after wasting most of my 20's and 30's.
Before I got married I moved around all the time--but I didn't own anything. Then I got married, bought and furnished a home, had kids--moving was far more difficult after that. We listened to leadership, sold our first house and moved to a limb city where the 'word was hot' and of course the house we rented cost more per month than the mortgage. I was not big on moving around after we had kids, so we found a nice little house near a decent grade school and rented--our landlord wanted to sell it to us, but we moved west after leaving TWI. We fell into a great deal and bought a house that had belonged to a family friend who just needed out of the payment fast. We thought a time or two about moving into something larger than our little house, but after several hits from medical bills and then my job layoff we are very happy we stayed in the little house with the small, almost paid off mortgage.
We don't carry much credit card debt and generally pay it off monthly unless we have something big going on like a trip. We don't mind a reasonable car payment. In addition to helping people move all the time in TWI, my mechanic husband also fixed broken down old clunkers--including ours-- every weekend for years! The first thing we did after leaving TWI was get a decent car on a loan and we haven't regretted that once.
The part that I found most disturbing was the fact that people were REQUIRED to
disclose their personal financial situation to twi. Teach what they may, they had no right to stick their noses in people's private business. How many other churches do this? I left before this
"policy" became strict law...but while I was in, I always told twi leadership that my
personal financial situation was none of their business.
The cure for "getting complacent" was to move. If you moved every year or few you started over, renewed and rekindled purpose, resolve and expectations. Kinda drastic medicine looking back, you'd thnk there'd be a better way, no?
The tradeoff is that you won't get the kind of fruit that comes from long term planting and sowing. That requires time and attention. "Seasons".
By constantly turning the field over for new seed it prevented the Way from becoming a mature plant. Or tree might be a more fitting metaphor.
The current state of the Way Nash perfectly demonstrates this - there's no large scale growth, no huge numbers of anyone new doing anything, only the ones they still have turning it over to their children and a few added as they go along.
Those heavily committed aren't doing anything even close to what The Way was doing 20 30 years ago if they're succeeding and I know at least some who are. They've settled into a place, a home, an area, have connections with family and community and spend ample amounts of time working, as anyone would. Those who live that way are very happy, as you'd expect.
It's more effective to see what's really happening when everyone and everything isn't moving all the time and can be observed and evaluated over a period of time. When The Way had 100's of "WOW" and lots of Corps people moving around, coming and going, etc. etc. it gave the impression of growth in both quality and quantity.
The vagabond lifestyle predates the no debt policy. One time in 1974 or 1975, the limb leader had me quit my job and move to a completely different area of the state. After selling my furniture and large items, I put everything else I owned in my car trunk and took a room in a boarding house. Apparently there were no AC grads in that area to run classes. As if my being an AC grad gave me special insight on stringing chairs and stretching coffee. I've only moved 4 times as a direct part of my TWI involvement. I guess I got off easy compared to many others.
why does it have to be sad? well.. the last line anyway..
Oh, it's not all sad. Lots of good things came with the move. Still, when people ask me if I have any regrets about my life, I'm reminded that I regret leaving home and never going back-----at least not in a permanent sense. I guess there's a certain amount of sadness in that. The song is more of an emotional catharsis than an actual depiction of events.
well.. myself. I prefer a more "psychedelically" charged definition..
heh
the whole problem with this..
one will eventually return to the home from which one came..
well, depending on whatever religion you embrace at the time..
do you really want to return to a state of perfection.. I mean, there has to be some reason (though masked in your consciousness) why one wanted to abandon it (or take a vacation from it) to begin with..
Here's something that maybe a bit of a tangential thought.
In about 1978-1980, there was a big push for believers who owned companies to hire other believers. Now, along with that, the owners were "encouraged" to pay their employees on a "needs" basis. How exactly do you determine those needs without sticking your nose into private financial matters where it doesn't belong?
When I first heard about this, I knew people who were on both sides of the deal. (employer/employee) From the very start, I thought it was a load of cr@p. And, I was not at all reluctant to tell my wife (now ex-wife) exactly how I felt. She, on the other hand, was sure it must be right because it was coming from "on high", so to speak. We had some heated discussions on the matter, which led to heated discussions/disagreements on various other Way doctrine.
Did that lead to our split? Probably not. It surely didn't promote "harmony in the home", though.
I mean, there has to be some reason (though masked in your consciousness) why one wanted to abandon it (or take a vacation from it) to begin with..
:)
Well, that's just it. I never really wanted to leave in the first place. I got conned into leaving under the guise of doing what's best for the greater good.
Sooooo---- Now that I realize there was never really any "greater good", I feel cheated. Thus, I have feelings of regret.
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Watered Garden
Not as much as some hapless souls, because we always believed in home ownership. I still do. If you are not overloaded with a bunch of debt, car payments, five billion credit cards, what is the difference between renting a home and making a mortgage payment? I know one argument is maintenance, upkeep and improvements, but you still usually have to mow the yard and make minor repairs yourself. When we did rent, we always tried to leave the place a little better than we found it.
And of course we were never WC so didn't have to expect to move every whipstitch.
WG
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Broken Arrow
Nor did they ever have to move themselves. If they ever did, they would have had someone do it for them.
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Twinky
The no debt policy kept me out of home ownership for years...that was after they'd thrown me out. I was so concerned about no debt/no mortgage that I never bought when I could have done. Property prices rose considerably. Finally I got a job with lotsa money and moved to a new (expensive) city. Bought a house...property market collapsed three months later. As it happens, I have a lot of money in the house and the interest payments on the mortgage are much cheaper than rent would be if I were renting.
Otherwise...move on when it suited. Sure it's easier to move to rented acommodation to suit your family's /household's needs, but no telling what sort of property you'll get, what condition it'll be in, and the previous renters may not have been the cleanest, neatest, careful tenants.
Yeah, right, good for stability. For building up your home fellowship. When you might move to another part of the city at the drop of a hat. For kids' schooling, maybe having to move schools.
What would the bl00dy trustees know about frequent moving and the disruption caused? How often did they move? Did they swap houses? [no, only mates, but that's another thread!
]
Those who have been in rez will remember that every few months we had to completely clean our rooms out, then wait for a new room assignment. That might be with people we already knew well, had been roomies with before;..and might even be in the room we'd just moved out of. To teach us to "travel light" and to get on with different sorts of people. Yeah...we all wanted to be nomads, didn't we?
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hiway29
I moved at least 12 times between '76-'87. The no debt policy wasn't the law then, but I knew few in the way who could even dream of owning a house, while working minimum wage jobs. It was a life style of finding myself in 'way home' type situations, that would change with every ROA, unless I got thrown out before then. I'm still amazed that I've been able to cobble together a career, and buy a home after wasting most of my 20's and 30's.
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Bramble
Before I got married I moved around all the time--but I didn't own anything. Then I got married, bought and furnished a home, had kids--moving was far more difficult after that. We listened to leadership, sold our first house and moved to a limb city where the 'word was hot' and of course the house we rented cost more per month than the mortgage. I was not big on moving around after we had kids, so we found a nice little house near a decent grade school and rented--our landlord wanted to sell it to us, but we moved west after leaving TWI. We fell into a great deal and bought a house that had belonged to a family friend who just needed out of the payment fast. We thought a time or two about moving into something larger than our little house, but after several hits from medical bills and then my job layoff we are very happy we stayed in the little house with the small, almost paid off mortgage.
We don't carry much credit card debt and generally pay it off monthly unless we have something big going on like a trip. We don't mind a reasonable car payment. In addition to helping people move all the time in TWI, my mechanic husband also fixed broken down old clunkers--including ours-- every weekend for years! The first thing we did after leaving TWI was get a decent car on a loan and we haven't regretted that once.
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GrouchoMarxJr
The part that I found most disturbing was the fact that people were REQUIRED to
disclose their personal financial situation to twi. Teach what they may, they had no right to stick their noses in people's private business. How many other churches do this? I left before this
"policy" became strict law...but while I was in, I always told twi leadership that my
personal financial situation was none of their business.
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socks
"Nor did they ever have to move themselves."
The cure for "getting complacent" was to move. If you moved every year or few you started over, renewed and rekindled purpose, resolve and expectations. Kinda drastic medicine looking back, you'd thnk there'd be a better way, no?
The tradeoff is that you won't get the kind of fruit that comes from long term planting and sowing. That requires time and attention. "Seasons".
By constantly turning the field over for new seed it prevented the Way from becoming a mature plant. Or tree might be a more fitting metaphor.
The current state of the Way Nash perfectly demonstrates this - there's no large scale growth, no huge numbers of anyone new doing anything, only the ones they still have turning it over to their children and a few added as they go along.
Those heavily committed aren't doing anything even close to what The Way was doing 20 30 years ago if they're succeeding and I know at least some who are. They've settled into a place, a home, an area, have connections with family and community and spend ample amounts of time working, as anyone would. Those who live that way are very happy, as you'd expect.
It's more effective to see what's really happening when everyone and everything isn't moving all the time and can be observed and evaluated over a period of time. When The Way had 100's of "WOW" and lots of Corps people moving around, coming and going, etc. etc. it gave the impression of growth in both quality and quantity.
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waysider
The vagabond lifestyle predates the no debt policy. One time in 1974 or 1975, the limb leader had me quit my job and move to a completely different area of the state. After selling my furniture and large items, I put everything else I owned in my car trunk and took a room in a boarding house. Apparently there were no AC grads in that area to run classes. As if my being an AC grad gave me special insight on stringing chairs and stretching coffee. I've only moved 4 times as a direct part of my TWI involvement. I guess I got off easy compared to many others.
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Ham
"Vagabond lifestyle"..
I dunno. It is reserved for the "deeply spiritual"..
the same thought troubles me even after close to twenty years after no involvement in da way..
I still don't feel at home in the community in which I live..
why is it.. because they cannot fulfill what a corrupt organization itself could not provide?
just a thought..
so where is "home"..
maybe.. we (*I*) can't go home..
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waysider
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Ham
why does it have to be sad? well.. the last line anyway..
the future always beckons..
all that is present is entropy..
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waysider
Oh, it's not all sad. Lots of good things came with the move. Still, when people ask me if I have any regrets about my life, I'm reminded that I regret leaving home and never going back-----at least not in a permanent sense. I guess there's a certain amount of sadness in that. The song is more of an emotional catharsis than an actual depiction of events.
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Ham
Perhaps..
well.. myself. I prefer a more "psychedelically" charged definition..
heh
the whole problem with this..
one will eventually return to the home from which one came..
well, depending on whatever religion you embrace at the time..
do you really want to return to a state of perfection.. I mean, there has to be some reason (though masked in your consciousness) why one wanted to abandon it (or take a vacation from it) to begin with..
just a thought..
:)
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Ham
Yeah.. everything there is.. what's the word.. perfect.
the sun arises every morning..
and there is no rain there, until after sunset..
yep..
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waysider
Here's something that maybe a bit of a tangential thought.
In about 1978-1980, there was a big push for believers who owned companies to hire other believers. Now, along with that, the owners were "encouraged" to pay their employees on a "needs" basis. How exactly do you determine those needs without sticking your nose into private financial matters where it doesn't belong?
When I first heard about this, I knew people who were on both sides of the deal. (employer/employee) From the very start, I thought it was a load of cr@p. And, I was not at all reluctant to tell my wife (now ex-wife) exactly how I felt. She, on the other hand, was sure it must be right because it was coming from "on high", so to speak. We had some heated discussions on the matter, which led to heated discussions/disagreements on various other Way doctrine.
Did that lead to our split? Probably not. It surely didn't promote "harmony in the home", though.
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Ham
don't get me wrong. I'm not (have been or will yet be) complaining, or anything..
yep.. "believers" were supposed to be da best and all..
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waysider
Well, that's just it. I never really wanted to leave in the first place. I got conned into leaving under the guise of doing what's best for the greater good.
Sooooo---- Now that I realize there was never really any "greater good", I feel cheated. Thus, I have feelings of regret.
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Ham
I dunno..
maybe I took too much acid many years ago..
it all makes sense, but it doesn't..
I can live with that..
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Ham
Cheated? No..
myself.. feelings of regrets and all..
there are a few what's the word..
I can't say "results"..
there are two children, I would not trade for fame or fortune..
one grandchild..
one yet to come..
have to listen to the album Paw hates..
"Let it Be"..
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waysider
Isn't that the album that ends with
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Ham
I hope you can see something that outlives you..
there has to be something..
if not..
if you live in Tucson Arizona..
buy some California Grass..
"go home"..
heh
Sweet Loretta had a few *issues*..
heh
heh..
"and thanks in behalf of the group, and I hope we passed the audition"..
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waysider
Seeing that clip made me think of Billy Preston (The Fifth Beatle)
Maybe he was onto something when he asked Will It Go 'Round In Circles?
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Ham
and it does..
how many (millions of) circles have we gone around..
and the "dead end".. "I me, me mine..." "I me, me mine.."..
I'll spare you the repetition..
but even that ends..
at the moment.. I'd like some thing or entity to stand in front of me and speak some words of wisdom..
heh..
the last dream I had.. maybe I should not say..
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Ham
I planned on listening to white album tonight..
don't know what happened..
heh..
it's every bit as good..
same song, different key..
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