The hardest things for my whole family was to get over was the wretched attitude toward cleaning, and the huge emphasis on --ohmygod, you made a mistake, horrors! I am the only one who still gets crazed when the house is messy. Everyone else is alot more relaxed. I'm working on it.
Ain't that the truth!
I still feel like I have to dry out my kitchen sink when I use it - those water droplets are a distraction, don't cha' know! Now that we have 2 kids (and 2 cats and 3 cars and a house and....) I've had to really drop my standards.... I keep telling myself that things will be okay...
The thing that still makes me go into knots is being late or almost late for something - gawd I get nuts if I think I'm going to be late. Drives hubby up the wall - he's more punctual than I am but doesn't get his knickers in a knot about it if he's not...
The question was general to "whomever" you did inspire it though. Same to you ChasU. The stuff you wrote really helps me understand what you're talking about.
When I left things weren't as bad as what you guys mentioned. I think what Bramble wrote was super. All of this should be eye opening for people who are still in and very helpful for 'outies,' if there is such a thing.
quote:
Our first big change was having freetime on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays--wow, that was nice. Then we realized--both of us had good jobs, why were we driving junkers?
I mean, you have the income, you work the jobs, WHY NOT? Why not buy a car that you like?
Wow. Talking to my brother, who has lived in NYC long enough to be a REAL New Yorker, helped me SO much in terms of simply thinking clearly. We didn't really talk about 'way stuff' just 'things & stuff.' I found myself thinking about so much of what he said,
"Oh. Yeah! Why not?" He sees things in a clear, simple way, without all of the, 'pre-thought-thinking' religions, require. I asked him once what he based something he believes on. He said, "...Because I want to..."
No concordances, no Greek, hebrew, etc. No long dissertation in the proper format.
I learned from him, "Because I want to" is really good enough.
One of the beefs I used to have w/twi is that I never saw anywhere in the Bible where God said, "...and be ye scholars of Me."
If you think about it, getting born again ALONE, is enough for GOD. He has placed us each in the body of Christ as HE sees fit. Sure he wants 'everybody' to be saved. He never asked EVERYBODY to be the part of the body that goes running to win souls though.
Twi was, as most churches are, about winning wallets. Wallets (purses too) need bodies to bring them, bodies need souls - - "Let's go WITnessing!"
I'm thinkin' about the "We also quit doing Bible stuff," comment. I just don't get my buns twisted over stuff like that anymore. God knows where you are. He has no trouble finding anyone.
HWC--no longer doing Bible stuff was our decision and we feel it is right for us. I would never presume to say this is what others should do, or that this is the way to health or Nirvana or whatever! I think people need to figure this stuff out for themselves.
When I first exited twi there were gnawing moments but not days as in JT's case. But through therapy and the deliberate decision that I made to never, never be a part of anything that requires me to check my critical thinking at the door those moments have vaporized.
I actually dropped out of my church's over 30 singles group at the first hint of thought control by leadership. For me, everything is subject to scrutiny in the cool light of day.
Ya know though, one thing I have done since leaving The Way has been helpful for me (and us), but maybe even to a "fault".
As a BC, so many many times, the local believers would always "pitch in" to help out the BC (me) when it was time to pack up and move from one house to another in some city, or, when we would move into an area to be the new BC's. It seems that a large number of believers would show up cheerily to help out the new rev and his wife and young family.
And of course, the work would go nice and fast, and with me, I would always supply the beer and pizza at the end. And next would come the "painting party", where the local believer/painter guy (taking precious time from his work schedule which meant taking food from his and his wife and kid's mouths) would head up a crew of "believers now painters", and we would paint the interior of the newly rented home, all for "the Movement of The Word" ya know.
When this would occur, I always felt like I was somehow using God's People, but, "went with it anyway". -->
I finally had an extreme wake up call after I moved from Alaska to a new branch "job" in the Central Region. We originally planned to leave on such and such a date (prior to the Rock), but then ended up having to go two weeks earlier in order to get the cheaper airfare from Alaska. Airfare for which I had to pay of course. And so, all of a sudden, the rush was on to get the boxes packed, sell the car and truck, have the moving sale, have the obligatory "good bye fellowship" to our newly found friends, and with only four days to do it!
The task was huge, because the house we lived in had been a Way Home for three years before we moved in, and there was three years of belivers's "left behind stuff" that needed to be dealt with as well as my own "stuff".
While having the garage sale, it became evident that there was not enough time to wrap the thing up properly. And so, two wonderful believer guys, Mark Glazer and Travis Stanley, offered to box up the rest of our stuff, pay off the bills with money I left them, contact the owners of the "left behind stuff", and ship my boxed up stuff down to where we were going to live in the Central Region.
And since for the first time in five years, the house was not going to "roll over" to a new group of Way believers, the house had to be cleaned and ready for the owner to rent out to a new and unrelated family of renters. This meant all bills paid and finalized, cleaned from head to toe, certain repairs done, etc, ad infinitum, ad tedium..
And it all basically fell to this fellow Mark, and to a degree Travis. In the end though, it was Mark who was the stand up guy and who got stuck with it. Yet Mark missed work (therefore a paycheck), worked night and day toward the new renters arrival, tried to fix things he didn't know how to fix, boxed my stuff, shipped my stuff, burned up the eight hundred bucks (a gross miscalculation) I'd left with him for bills and expenses, and his labor of love became one of anger, resentment, disappointment, and frustration.
And in the meantime, My wife, child and I had jetted off to Seattle to buy a car, and then drive our way down to the Central Region, where we could be welcomed and "moved in" by another set of believers, and oblivious to the plight of our dear friend. And not only did Mark get the shaft on that one, but all of the local believers there became aware of what he'd gone through, and became thoroughly angry at me for doing such a thing to a kind hearted guy like him. And so, even if I had done anything good as a BC those two years, it all came to naught by that one ignorant and ultimately selfish act.
Now mind you, I was under pressure from LCM to get on down to that new and much bigger BC job, so, "just get it together and get on down there!" Never mind, that I too was broke after buying that used "piece of .... car" in Seattle, and was actually denied a place to stay at Camp Gunnison as we passed through. My daughter was 1 and a half, and my wife was 7 months pregnant. Damn that was insulting! I helped build that place over a three year period on and off, but there was "no room at the Inn!" I was treated as a stranger. That was so weird...
And so, the whole thing was a major clusterfock, and I am so sorry it happened. Later, someone had convinced Mark (and rightly so) that he had been shafted, and he wrote me and told me so. In turn, instead of apologizing, I wrote him an unfriendly letter back reminding him of his offer to do it, and that he should just "suck it up".
Had I really cared about the people who I had "led" for two years, I would have said to Mama International; " I will stay here and wrap this thing up good and properly until this house is cleaned and returned to the owner and all bills paid. And when this is done correctly, I will then come down and take over that other Branch. And if you me there now so badly, then YOU pay someone to do it so no one gets hurt. But I will stay until it's wrapped up properly..."
But I didn't, and the rest is history...
But after the "big fall" of The Way in '89-90 and my our subsequent departure, I began to look at it in a different light, and concluded that I had indeed hurt my friend.
It seems that it was the "whole machinery and system" of The Way and the "do it in the name of "Moving The Word" that had brought about this sad incident.
I really was oblivious to the stress that I had put my friend under. I honestly did not think I was hurting him. I knew that he was a faithful "doulos/diakonia" kind of guy and just figured he'd get blessed for his efforts. I have yet to look him up and apologize for that. I actually want to send him some money too.
And so, what do I do differently now? I don't let anyone help me to pack up and move if and when I do. And I do all of my own house repairs, or pay someone who does that kind of work. We have moved a few times in the last five years as a matter of fact. I am so conscious of not wanting to use people, that I am probably denying some of our close friends the opportunity to give. But it is something I am adamant about.
Once when I had moved to Charlottesville, Virginia back in 1990, Earl Bu*ton offered to send a "gang of believers" to help me unpack my U-Haul. And so, I made it a point to arrive a day earlier than originally planned, and unloaded it all by myslf with my wife. And then when he called asking if I was ready to receive the helpers, I simply told him that it was done.
For me, this is one of the ways that I have gotten The Way religion "out of me".
I am thankful for God's forgiveness. I know He has forgiven me for this...
Having no desire to participate in a job review (too much like "evaluations").
Still anally lining up chairs, pads, and pencils for a meeting-and not understanding people who don't.
Every time I misspell the word "receive" (purchasing and receiving is part of my job).
The habit of checking to see if "it floats" (God bless Grace Bliss).
Hi, Jonny-sorry for the interupt. You're right-part of the experience has resulted in our behaving with others in a manner much different than we did while in the household-rather ironic, when you think about it.
I have Christ in me. And so, The Way is never coming out of me...
Priceless, Johnny. At least the bastards can't touch some things.. but they probably would put up exit signs on the doors, leave new birth here..
I think my big problem, is when I left that organization, I took EVERYTHING with me, good and bad.. but such is life I guess. It just greatly frustrates me at times when I find myself doing the same stupid abusive crap that I sometimes did then, some of the junk I learned by example.
And I'm still sorting through everything. At least people don't have to hit me over the head with a brick to get my attention, at least not very often anymore..
"Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called 'On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual,' points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist ... [He] suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others ... And [he] concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature."
[he] concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature."
Very interesting, Song. Our actions do seem to have further reaching consequences than we might imagine or even know about at times. There was some interesting stuff on the Science Channel about that this week, but I don't know if I could articulate it in any way that would make sense to anyone. :)--> Like we're made up of waves of information and particles of matter and those waves of information have more of an impact than just our immediate surroundings.
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Belle
mzimagine, I started cursing a lot more when I started hearing the wc doing it all the time. Seems like everyone in our limb had potty mouth problems.
I'm trying to get better at that, but I still sound like a sailor sometimes.
:o-->
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ChasUFarley
Ain't that the truth!
I still feel like I have to dry out my kitchen sink when I use it - those water droplets are a distraction, don't cha' know! Now that we have 2 kids (and 2 cats and 3 cars and a house and....) I've had to really drop my standards.... I keep telling myself that things will be okay...
The thing that still makes me go into knots is being late or almost late for something - gawd I get nuts if I think I'm going to be late. Drives hubby up the wall - he's more punctual than I am but doesn't get his knickers in a knot about it if he's not...
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HCW
Thanks JL.
The question was general to "whomever" you did inspire it though.
Same to you ChasU. The stuff you wrote really helps me understand what you're talking about.
When I left things weren't as bad as what you guys mentioned. I think what Bramble wrote was super. All of this should be eye opening for people who are still in and very helpful for 'outies,' if there is such a thing.
I mean, you have the income, you work the jobs, WHY NOT? Why not buy a car that you like?
Wow. Talking to my brother, who has lived in NYC long enough to be a REAL New Yorker, helped me SO much in terms of simply thinking clearly. We didn't really talk about 'way stuff' just 'things & stuff.' I found myself thinking about so much of what he said,
"Oh. Yeah! Why not?" He sees things in a clear, simple way, without all of the, 'pre-thought-thinking' religions, require. I asked him once what he based something he believes on. He said, "...Because I want to..."
No concordances, no Greek, hebrew, etc. No long dissertation in the proper format.
I learned from him, "Because I want to" is really good enough.
One of the beefs I used to have w/twi is that I never saw anywhere in the Bible where God said, "...and be ye scholars of Me."
If you think about it, getting born again ALONE, is enough for GOD. He has placed us each in the body of Christ as HE sees fit. Sure he wants 'everybody' to be saved. He never asked EVERYBODY to be the part of the body that goes running to win souls though.
Twi was, as most churches are, about winning wallets. Wallets (purses too) need bodies to bring them, bodies need souls - - "Let's go WITnessing!"
I'm thinkin' about the "We also quit doing Bible stuff," comment. I just don't get my buns twisted over stuff like that anymore. God knows where you are. He has no trouble finding anyone.
Being free is a good thing, isn't it?
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Bramble
HWC--no longer doing Bible stuff was our decision and we feel it is right for us. I would never presume to say this is what others should do, or that this is the way to health or Nirvana or whatever! I think people need to figure this stuff out for themselves.
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justloafing
Exactly Bramble. Short but a sweeeeeeeeet post.
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J0nny Ling0
Jesus Christ said;
"I am The Way, the Truth, and the Life...
I have Christ in me. And so, The Way is never coming out of me...
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dmiller
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oenophile
When I first exited twi there were gnawing moments but not days as in JT's case. But through therapy and the deliberate decision that I made to never, never be a part of anything that requires me to check my critical thinking at the door those moments have vaporized.
I actually dropped out of my church's over 30 singles group at the first hint of thought control by leadership. For me, everything is subject to scrutiny in the cool light of day.
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J0nny Ling0
Ya know though, one thing I have done since leaving The Way has been helpful for me (and us), but maybe even to a "fault".
As a BC, so many many times, the local believers would always "pitch in" to help out the BC (me) when it was time to pack up and move from one house to another in some city, or, when we would move into an area to be the new BC's. It seems that a large number of believers would show up cheerily to help out the new rev and his wife and young family.
And of course, the work would go nice and fast, and with me, I would always supply the beer and pizza at the end. And next would come the "painting party", where the local believer/painter guy (taking precious time from his work schedule which meant taking food from his and his wife and kid's mouths) would head up a crew of "believers now painters", and we would paint the interior of the newly rented home, all for "the Movement of The Word" ya know.
When this would occur, I always felt like I was somehow using God's People, but, "went with it anyway".
-->
I finally had an extreme wake up call after I moved from Alaska to a new branch "job" in the Central Region. We originally planned to leave on such and such a date (prior to the Rock), but then ended up having to go two weeks earlier in order to get the cheaper airfare from Alaska. Airfare for which I had to pay of course. And so, all of a sudden, the rush was on to get the boxes packed, sell the car and truck, have the moving sale, have the obligatory "good bye fellowship" to our newly found friends, and with only four days to do it!
The task was huge, because the house we lived in had been a Way Home for three years before we moved in, and there was three years of belivers's "left behind stuff" that needed to be dealt with as well as my own "stuff".
While having the garage sale, it became evident that there was not enough time to wrap the thing up properly. And so, two wonderful believer guys, Mark Glazer and Travis Stanley, offered to box up the rest of our stuff, pay off the bills with money I left them, contact the owners of the "left behind stuff", and ship my boxed up stuff down to where we were going to live in the Central Region.
And since for the first time in five years, the house was not going to "roll over" to a new group of Way believers, the house had to be cleaned and ready for the owner to rent out to a new and unrelated family of renters. This meant all bills paid and finalized, cleaned from head to toe, certain repairs done, etc, ad infinitum, ad tedium..
And it all basically fell to this fellow Mark, and to a degree Travis. In the end though, it was Mark who was the stand up guy and who got stuck with it. Yet Mark missed work (therefore a paycheck), worked night and day toward the new renters arrival, tried to fix things he didn't know how to fix, boxed my stuff, shipped my stuff, burned up the eight hundred bucks (a gross miscalculation) I'd left with him for bills and expenses, and his labor of love became one of anger, resentment, disappointment, and frustration.
And in the meantime, My wife, child and I had jetted off to Seattle to buy a car, and then drive our way down to the Central Region, where we could be welcomed and "moved in" by another set of believers, and oblivious to the plight of our dear friend. And not only did Mark get the shaft on that one, but all of the local believers there became aware of what he'd gone through, and became thoroughly angry at me for doing such a thing to a kind hearted guy like him. And so, even if I had done anything good as a BC those two years, it all came to naught by that one ignorant and ultimately selfish act.
Now mind you, I was under pressure from LCM to get on down to that new and much bigger BC job, so, "just get it together and get on down there!" Never mind, that I too was broke after buying that used "piece of .... car" in Seattle, and was actually denied a place to stay at Camp Gunnison as we passed through. My daughter was 1 and a half, and my wife was 7 months pregnant. Damn that was insulting! I helped build that place over a three year period on and off, but there was "no room at the Inn!" I was treated as a stranger. That was so weird...
And so, the whole thing was a major clusterfock, and I am so sorry it happened. Later, someone had convinced Mark (and rightly so) that he had been shafted, and he wrote me and told me so. In turn, instead of apologizing, I wrote him an unfriendly letter back reminding him of his offer to do it, and that he should just "suck it up".
Had I really cared about the people who I had "led" for two years, I would have said to Mama International; " I will stay here and wrap this thing up good and properly until this house is cleaned and returned to the owner and all bills paid. And when this is done correctly, I will then come down and take over that other Branch. And if you me there now so badly, then YOU pay someone to do it so no one gets hurt. But I will stay until it's wrapped up properly..."
But I didn't, and the rest is history...
But after the "big fall" of The Way in '89-90 and my our subsequent departure, I began to look at it in a different light, and concluded that I had indeed hurt my friend.
It seems that it was the "whole machinery and system" of The Way and the "do it in the name of "Moving The Word" that had brought about this sad incident.
I really was oblivious to the stress that I had put my friend under. I honestly did not think I was hurting him. I knew that he was a faithful "doulos/diakonia" kind of guy and just figured he'd get blessed for his efforts. I have yet to look him up and apologize for that. I actually want to send him some money too.
And so, what do I do differently now? I don't let anyone help me to pack up and move if and when I do. And I do all of my own house repairs, or pay someone who does that kind of work. We have moved a few times in the last five years as a matter of fact. I am so conscious of not wanting to use people, that I am probably denying some of our close friends the opportunity to give. But it is something I am adamant about.
Once when I had moved to Charlottesville, Virginia back in 1990, Earl Bu*ton offered to send a "gang of believers" to help me unpack my U-Haul. And so, I made it a point to arrive a day earlier than originally planned, and unloaded it all by myslf with my wife. And then when he called asking if I was ready to receive the helpers, I simply told him that it was done.
For me, this is one of the ways that I have gotten The Way religion "out of me".
I am thankful for God's forgiveness. I know He has forgiven me for this...
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topoftheworld
Examples of "TWI" daily thought intrusions-
Having no desire to participate in a job review (too much like "evaluations").
Still anally lining up chairs, pads, and pencils for a meeting-and not understanding people who don't.
Every time I misspell the word "receive" (purchasing and receiving is part of my job).
The habit of checking to see if "it floats" (God bless Grace Bliss).
Hi, Jonny-sorry for the interupt. You're right-part of the experience has resulted in our behaving with others in a manner much different than we did while in the household-rather ironic, when you think about it.
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Ham
Priceless, Johnny. At least the bastards can't touch some things.. but they probably would put up exit signs on the doors, leave new birth here..
I think my big problem, is when I left that organization, I took EVERYTHING with me, good and bad.. but such is life I guess. It just greatly frustrates me at times when I find myself doing the same stupid abusive crap that I sometimes did then, some of the junk I learned by example.
And I'm still sorting through everything. At least people don't have to hit me over the head with a brick to get my attention, at least not very often anymore..
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TheSongRemainsTheSame
"Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called 'On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual,' points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist ... [He] suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others ... And [he] concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature."
– Joseph Campbell
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TheSongRemainsTheSame
Yes Mark for sure, and of course, BUT your mind is with you eh?
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Belle
Very interesting, Song. Our actions do seem to have further reaching consequences than we might imagine or even know about at times. There was some interesting stuff on the Science Channel about that this week, but I don't know if I could articulate it in any way that would make sense to anyone.
:)--> Like we're made up of waves of information and particles of matter and those waves of information have more of an impact than just our immediate surroundings.
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