The Girl likes blue. When we told her that we would be moving her into the computer room, which is just a touch smaller than her room, she was distraught — until we told her we would repaint it and she could choose the color.
Monday we worked on the trim. Yesterday, I roughed in the walls, painting the edges so I could attack it today with just a roller.
Of course there was a temptation, and I did succumb to said temptation…
I’m out mowing, mid-morning. The Girl, who is taking care of E, sticks her head out the door and says, “E was wondering if we could have some of those peanut butter-filled pretzels.”
Sure.
I can just see our two-year-old son sitting on the couch, watching his favorite cartoon, The Littlest Pet Shop (no coercion there), and turning to L to say, “You know, I’m just a little hungry. Know what I’d like? Some of those peanut-butter-filled pretzel thingies. And you know, Daddy’s just right outside there, mowing the front yard. Maybe you could just, I don’t know, stick your head out the door and ask him. I mean, we could try to get it ourselves, but I think we’d probably be better off if we ask permission.”
Yes, that’s probably how it happened.
Today we embarked on the most time-consuming aspect of our little house project: painting. As we always do, we misjudged — or rather I misjudged — just how much more work we had to do before we could begin painting, and I was confident we would end the day with the first coat on both the trim and the walls.
First and hopefully last, for we bought paint that the clerk swore required only one coat, and no primer necessary even when changing a wall from a dark earth tone to a light blue. Still, I was hoping that even if we had to use a second coat, we could have the first one on today.
By the time we took a watermelon break in the late morning, we still hadn’t cracked open a paint can. By the time we do get painting, the Boy is in bed, the sun is high and hot, and the prospect of painting glossy white paint in blinding sun necessitated not only a hat for the head but sunglasses to protect the eyes. And since I’m not sure about the quality of L’s (which is a shame to admit), I gave her a pair of my old sunglasses and my hat — and suddenly she looked older.
As with yesterday’s helping, the Girl’s help in turn required some help. Still, fewer runs than the deck painting session.
Back inside, K and I worked to finish all the white in the house. I know this is the second photograph I’ve taking of K in this very position, but I was unable to find the first. Were we painting the living room? Repainting the living room? Painting the study-soon-to-be-L’s-room? They all seem strong possibilities, reminding me once again of the cyclical nature of working about the house.
Some of my earliest memories, when I was just a toddler, involve helping my father. The first house I lived in with my family was a brick ranch with a sizable lot behind it that was mostly overgrown and wild. At some point my father decided that leaving it fallow was a waste and that he must put the land to work. If I recall, the plan was to plant peanuts. But that involved clearing the land, and lacking any heavy machinery for the job, he did it by hand, with me “helping.” My helping is not such a clear memory, but I’d bet it was mostly getting in the way. I know I was most effective as a messenger, asking my mother to prepare a cup of coffee for Dad as well as a cup of “coffee milk” for me. Or maybe I just remember that because I heard my parents tell the story so many times. Such are first memories.
A few weeks ago, it was the Girl’s turn to help. She was actually quite helpful. Sure, I had to go back and correct some places where she’d put too much stain on and created runs, but that was easier than doing all the work myself, and the joy she got from helping was all the more priceless.
Today, as I got material ready for L’s big room change, the Boy comes down the stairs with his careful step, sitting on the bottom and watching me for a moment before rising and asking the question of the day.
“Help you, Daddy?”
What can a two-year-old do that’s truly helpful? Nothing. What can I do to help him feel helpful? Everything.
I give him a sealed bag and ask him to open it. He struggles for a while before asking, “Help me Daddy?”
In the end, I find some extra parts and a pair of needle nose pliers and ask him if he can pick up the spare parts with the pliers.
It keeps him occupied and filled with joy for at least twenty minutes.
“My turn! My turn!”
Or perhaps the solution is to double up?
My mother sometimes would be telling someone stories of her youth and mention her best friend, S, and how they could get together after not having seen each other in years and it would suddenly be as if they were back in school together.
“Years melt away” is the cliche, I suppose.
Old friends,
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends.
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the ’round toes
On the high shoes
Of the old friends.
Or old friends hang out in the driveway, taking turns playing badminton with the Girl.
While the Boy watches intently
Occasionally Mama gets into the game, and then we’re all in trouble.
Meanwhile, the Old Friend calmly entertains everyone.
Especially the Boy.
L has had the same best friend, E (for the sake of simplicity, Big-E), for five years now. They met at preschool, thus bringing our families into a closer orbit than would have otherwise naturally occurred: play-dates became dinner with both families, or even a short vacation together.
Five years, for seven-year-olds, is virtually eternity. It stretches even longer than the endless nights of childhood when we simply can’t wait until morning.
“How long until morning?” we as mom, and the resulting answer might as well be expressed in scientific notation.
So every now and then, the two families get together for an afternoon at the pool, dinner, or perhaps an afternoon at the park. The five kids have great fun together, the parents chat and take turns tag-teaming with each others’ kids (“E, slow down!” “Big-E, you interrupted her!”), and in the end, we all return home satisfied. What’s not to love about an outing that gives the kids great joy while simultaneously exhausting them?
Over the past year, though, a second connection has developed. E has been in the same preschool class as E (gosh — this is getting confusing: three kids with the initial initial “E.” Let’s just call her “Lady-E”), and when we asked E if he was excited about seeing Lady-E today, he smiled hugely and said, “Taaaaak!” (The question was posed in Polish: he’s much better about answer in the same language than L is at this point.)
So L and Big-E zoomed ahead on a scooter and bike respectively while E and Lady-E tended to hang back on their less speedy models. And I (initial for the middle child, not me) sort of hung in the middle, like a middle child would.
We saw some lovely views, including a beaver dam,
had fun pulling our vehicle when we got too tired to ride it,
and had a nice picnic to fill the bellies and stop the complaining.
E and Lady-E are now the same ages (roughly: Lady-E is about a year older) as L and Big-E were when they met. And while five years have passed in the interim, none of us could have possibly believed how quickly it would have gone. Five years for a seven-year-old — forget about it. You might as well be talking the age of the universe.
Five years for any of us? It’s a flash, a blink, a second degree, a mere half-a-decade.
It’s absolutely nothing. Indeed, for us, the passage of twenty years has become nothing. I see on social media that a twenty-year-old beauty contestant boldly wore an insulin pump with her bikini (never mind the ethics of judging someone’s worth or beauty — oh, never mind), and I think, “Twenty years. That makes it 1994. I was starting my senior year of college.”
These kids are still learning how to control their arms and legs: college seems like an impossibly distant reality for them, but for us, it will just be a blip. A few birthdays, a Christmas or two, and suddenly this child or that is packing up to head to this or that college.
I keep writing about this because it keeps becoming more and more obvious. “Hold on to these moments as they pass,” sings Adam Duritz in “Long December,” and the older I get, the more that rings true.
Sometimes we eat better at camp than at home;
sometimes, not so much.
We played a little bit tonight instead of reading. It’s summer, after all.
With the addition of a new camper, we had to buy a new tent. This time, though, we looked at the experience of our “four man” tent and realized that tent sizes (i.e., the number of people that can sleep in it) assume that the campers are crammed in head to toe with nothing else in the tent. The thought of the four of us in our four man tent was horrifying, so we bought a six man tent.
We’re not into roughing it with a two-year-old, and we knew we would need quite a bit of room for storage, including toys for two. We shopped around, bought a tent, put it up, decided we hated it (and saw a small small hole in the canopy), took it back, shopped some more, and finally bought a tent online.
The result: utter comfort. Enough room for everything, a protected storage area, and plenty of space for toys.
Having room when we slept made every other part of the trip more enjoyable because it really became a home away from home, with similar daily routines. Of course there’s the eating and the sleeping, but with the creek just a few feet away, daily laundry trips make the rituals complete. Oh, of course we didn’t wash anything in the creek for real. The excellent campground facilities made that really unnecessary. But for a quick rinse, say from accidents…
Day two, we messed up. We turned a vacation into a trip, complete with deadlines and alarm clocks.
Not that these are bad things, or that the outing itself — a trip on the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad — was a waste.
There was lots to see, including a quarry that absolutely fascinated the Boy.
Not to mention the simple fact that we were on a train: it’s hard to over-estimate the excitement of a little boy who loves Thomas and Friends almost as much as he loves Bob the Builder, and to combine the two was a moment of sheer perfection.
The views weren’t bad either.
But we decided, in the end, that perhaps it would have been better just to hang around the camp site — to keep it a vacation.
Vacations shouldn’t really be planned. Sure, you have to plan when, you have to plan where, but the what, for a true vacation, has to be spontaneous. There might be a thousand and one possibilities or five, but for it really to be a vacation, none of those attractions can really be put into any kind of schedule. Then it becomes a trip, and a trip and vacation are two totally different animals.
Vacations have flexible schedules, flexible activities, ice cream at half past ten in the morning, late mornings, late nights, kids begging to “do it again” and parents being able to reply, “how about tomorrow?”
If all of that is true, we don’t get to go on vacation very often. K and I have always been all about the “plan maximum” for a given trip: see as much as you can, do as much as you can. Go, go, go!
This weekend, though, we finally had a vacation. Almost. One planned activity. That doesn’t count, does it? The rest were sort of spontaneous decisions, choices drawn from the various options presented by camping in a small North Carolina mountain town.
Babica showed me this: I was instantly hooked.
For just short of three years, I ran a web site that was highly popular with a very small demographic, writing about something that the vast majority of Americans and an even larger majority of potential international readers — we’re talking the 99.9999999% range — would have never even heard of. That topic was the various offshoots of a small Christian group, the Worldwide Church of God, with a peak membership of no more than 150,000, that imploded in the mid-1990’s when it changed all its distinctive, heterodox doctrines and began moving to mainstream, Evangelical Christianity. With that change, which the church leadership enacted in what many considered to be an underhanded, deceptive manner, the church membership dropped to roughly sixty thousand within a couple of years, then to thirty thousand in a few more years, as members sought newly-formed organizations that still clung to the Worldwide Church of God’s original teachings, left for mainstream Christian groups, or dropped out of religion altogether.
In the early years, there was a great deal of bickering and sniping among the splinter organizations about which group most faithfully adhered to the teachings of Herbert Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God. It provided fascinating, sometimes amusing reading, and having grown up in the organization and just dropped out of a philosophy of religion graduate program, I was hooked.
I started a web site, recruited fellow writers, developed a readership, and wrote almost daily about this or that church’s latest proclamation, declaration, or whine. As an atheist, I took a particularly smug tone, resorting often to heavy sarcasm and occasionally to outright mockery. Still, my pseudo-academic background led me to write several serious analyses of this or that organization’s claims and arguments, and I occasionally got comments about how the site helped this or that individual.
Then L was born, and I suddenly had no time. For some period before that my interest had been waning, but I hung on, convinced that what I was doing was somehow significant but doubting it was. Then, about eight months after L was born, after steadily decreasing posting, I called it quits with the following post.
I’ve been struggling–to find topics for this blog, to maintain my interest in all things Armstrong, to find time to care.
Truth be told, to care.
Jared said it best in a recent comment:
[A] moribund XCG is [not] entirely a bad thing either. After all, there’s only so much one can say about Armstrongism before you’ve said it all.
I don’t feel like I’ve said it all–there are thousands of words that could still be written about the phenomenon of Herbert Armstrong and the sect he formed. Yet, I really no longer have the interest or time to write anymore words about it.
I feel like Chicken Little, for our common XCG sky will continually fall. David Pack will talk about his web site statistics until the day he dies. Rod Meredith will provide critics with still more reasons to call him Spanky until the day he dies. Those in the upper echelons of the dwindling WCG will continue to talk about their amazing transformation until the day they die.
But I will not be commenting on them at that point, and I certainly won’t be commenting on them when I die.
About six months ago, I started preparing a final post, but I kept putting it off. I thought, “Maybe I’ll just write a little here, a little there,” for a while. Several have noticed and commented on this, and I have remained silent as to the cause of this dip in output.
My initial draft of this post might provide clarification:
Certain things in life force us to see things in a different perspective. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, conversions–these are the kinds of things that make us stop and reflect on where we are, what we are, and most importantly, what we’re doing with the short time we have on Earth.
We have twenty-four hours in a day. We work at least eight of them; we sleep six to eight of them; we wash, shave, cook, eat, clean, drive, exercise and a million other forms of maintenance for another three or four a day. That leaves us with precious few hours a day for ourselves.
What do we do with that time?
Until recently, I spent time looking at, analyzing, and even mocking the beliefs and actions of a group of people I no longer have anything in common with.
Recent developments in my life now make that a less-than-ideal way to spend my free time.
The “certain event” I was referring to was the birth of my first child.
Since then, I’ve been of thinking about what I want my daughter to know about my own religious past. Truth is, I want her to know as little as possible. Because of shame? Embarrassment? Certainly not. I don’t want her to know for the simple reason that it no longer impacts my life. I can’t see much positive coming from me ever going into any detail with her about what I used to believe, about what her grandparents used to believe, about the fact that a true handful of people in the world still believe it. I don’t believe it, and that’s that.
And so, to quote one of my favorite authors:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
To talk of many things–but not the XCG. And not here.
Some might be wondering whether this signals the end of my presence on the XCG scene. It does. In fact, I doubt very much that I will even “lurk.” As a famous, oft-misquoted teacher once said, “It is finished.”
I appreciate all the support I’ve received during this little two-and-a-half-year adventure. I thank all the fellow contributors who, throughout these last nearly thirty months, have helped to make the discussion here a little more balanced. I am grateful to all you regulars. You really kept the site going.
Most of all, I’m heartened by some of the comments of the past, folks telling me that I have helped them in some way. I appreciate you sharing those thoughts, for it gave me a certain joy that I will truly never forget.
But the time has come.
Best wishes to all, ill wishes to none, and I leave with the hope that if we ever meet again, we’ll have so much more to talk about than the XCG.
What had I accomplished?
I’d made several people mad: some sent me nasty emails or left malicious comments. Still, what could I expect? Wasn’t I doing the exact same thing with others’ beliefs? Some people threatened my web host with a lawsuit, but since the group in question was outside my scope of interest and never directly or indirectly mentioned on my web site, even a libel claim was ridiculous.
I’d inspired others to start their own web sites, and I’d provided apologists with plenty of material in turn for their own writing. What could I expect? With me criticizing them, they were right to criticize me, and since no leader or group was going officially to deal with a puny little hen like me, individual members took on the responsibility, inasmuch as the various churches officially allowed such activities.
But what about helping people? I’d always assumed that I must be doing that, that I must be helping others see the errors in logic that the various groups committed. Still, I only had a couple of emails. The comments to my farewell post provided a bit more information.
thank you G — your site certainly helped me when i transitioned out of the cog world a couple years ago — it was a comment i made at that time, and i echo it again here. your efforts have been appreciated.
I’ve been wondering when you were going to wrap it up here. Of course you told me before, after your daughter’s birth, that you were going to bow out soon. You hung on longer than I thought you were going to.
So long, and thanks for letting me have rather too much fun with Bob Thiel. Now go raise that little girl of yours and kiss [K]. Real Life is calling . . .
Thanks for all the work G.
The void between postings was a sign that time is short, we were in the gun lap!
Keeping something like this going can be the same as problems facing the COGs. Sometimes there’s some new input, but otherwise it’s just moving bones from one grave to another.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
My thanks as well.
We wish you well.
You will be a much healthier person mentally.
I have a going away present:
gods
The peer review team liked it more than is customary for such articles.
It too may the last of its kind.
So, I’m going to take this opportunity to plug my own blog, and I hope you won’t mind. It’s a little different than XGC for a couple reasons: 1) It feature the stories of people who were in or around WCG and who now have given up faith entirely, and 2) I pretty much let them write it, so I have had no problem keeping it going since 1997– Wow, 10 years!
Non-Believer Former Members of the WCG
http://ironwolf.dangerousgames.com/exwcg/
Excellent job G and yes, there is a time to move on as I know you have. The world will little note, nor long remember what you have done here…but I’m glad you’re in the neighborhood so we can have lunch and a good laugh from time to time!
And..for a limited time, if you act now, a free opportunity to finally be rubbed the right way by a former minister of WCG! Call now for a free assesment to see if you are sane enough to come to the office.
Best of all things to you and your family. I have a third little girl coming to the planet compliments of my son and daughther in law today, even as we speak.
Best wishes G for you and your family. Congratulations on that little girl! This blog and a few others were a big help for me. My folks are still under the armstrongist thumb so I’ll continue to work on them in the meantime I just tell my kids not to pay any attention to what Pop-Pop says about God. For the most part I’ll be moving on as well although I’ll check in from time to time on Gavin’s site just to see what is going on. I just don’t have the time anymore and my fourth child is due in February.
Dennis: Congratulations on another grandchild and best wishes to your son and daughter in law.
It has been great reading posts from everyone!
Well, G, we’re on the same page! I’ve recently found myself either satiated, or undergoing waning interest in all things ACOG, and have been visiting all the regular sites less and less over the past several months. That’s probably a good thing, because it indicates that everything is processed.
I really don’t know if there are any answers to all of the great philosophical and religious questions mankind has asked himself over the centuries. About all a person can do is to be kind to fellow man, and indulge in the pursuit of happiness.
Thank you for all of the thought provoking materials presented here, and the work that went into them. Best wishes for a good life for you and your family. It’s been fun being part of the xCG community and making some friends here.
BB
My daughter was born this year, and between that and graduate school, time is short. I understand your position; it would be impossible for me to do what you have been doing. It’s been a good time!
But as far as the XCG’s and my daughter go, it is my duty to protect her from such garbage. I have to shield her from the apocolyptic-paranoid-fearful-slave mindset of the in-laws who are in the LCG. I don’t want my girl’s mind poisoned. I don’t even want her exposed to the XCG Lite mindset of my mother. I’m an atheist now, and I won’t hide it from my daughter…but then again I don’t mind if my wife wants to raise her as a Christian, so long as she hears both sides and gets to make up her own mind. But XCGdom? Forget it. I don’t want that filth near her. In this vein, I still have an interest in the XCG’s. Keep an eye on the enemy.
Paul
Shucks G, what can I say? You’ve been a much appreciated kindred spirit, and flown the flag for the power of free-thinking in a community known for a lack of just that. I understand the need to let it go. Thanks for everything you’ve done: XCG has been an empowering venture with a distinctive voice of its own.
Kia kaha: strength to your arm
Gavin
:)
G,
How long do we have?
Or you could announce your retirement, pop back in from time to time as a guest blogger on Gavin’s other “Coast to Coast” site and then surprise us all with a new format — just like some folks we know. =)
“Wanna take a ride?”
Best wishes there G, whatever you choose to do!
b²
Thanks for being instrumental in our exodus from an (x)CoG G.
Congrats on your new arrival. Enjoy the moments, they go by so fast…
Peace to you and yours
Thanks so much G. Your site played a very important role in helping me exit the cult, and in convincing me that suicide was not the best path.
You and Gavin literally saved my life.
My best wishes to you and I hope life brings you many, many bountiful joys.
Congratulations on the birth of your first child … it is indeed a life-changing event.
You did say one thing that has total truth in it in your “good-bye” .
the fact that a true handful of people in the world still believe it
I know that you meant “just a few”
But it is the TRUE people of God who still believe and will continue to believe.
May you find your way.
Oh, Man! What a cheap shot, Frenchie!
Actually, I hope that one day you and the rest of the deceived Armstrongites find your way!
BB
My last posting… promise…
The winding down of this site was noted with apparent glee by Dr T, who to me implied sic semper infidelis. Au contraire, I found this to be a very balanced and temperately moderated site. On other sites, the moderator beat me to a jellied pulp at the sniff of my appearing positive about anything that eminated from a COG. As I may have said already, this site is open, COG-related discussion; most of the “correction” I’ve received has been empirical rather than imperial.
FWIW, at my remote roost in Manchuria, I encountered students from a remnant Sabbatarian community. Their little congregation was perhaps the work of a (COGspeak) Sardis-era missionary, with whom their ancestors would have lost touch two or so revolutions ago. What a coincidence to be the first westerner ever encountered since then… Their first question was about the Sabbath being on Saturday, as in China the first day of the week is Monday…
Yeah, I fliggered Bob Thiel would be sure to comment on G’s announcement. He says:
I thought that G was planning on phasing his anti-COG site out. I have long thought that those who are against the COGs would realize the truth, as in the last two sentences that he wrote above.
He means G’s comments, “Until recently, I spent time looking at, analyzing, and even mocking the beliefs and actions of a group of people I no longer have anything in common with. Recent developments in my life now make that a less-than-ideal way to spend my free time.”
But as usual Bob doesn’t see things correctly. If G were among “those who are against the COGs,” then he’d be motivated to continue this project. But he’s not “against the COGs.” He’s just in favor of things that are more important and necessary to life and happiness than the COGs have ever been or will ever be.
Then Bob says:
On the other hand, there are those of us who ARE COMMITTED to learning, growing in grace and knowledge, trying to get the good news of the Kingdom of God to the world, and wish to be part of the Church of God. So, the COGwriter site has no intentions of shutting down.
Oh goody. We were so worried that the Cooge Writer was going to shut down.
But since Bob is committed to learning, growing in grace and knowledge, trying to get the good news of the Kingdom of God to the world, and wishing to be part of the Church of God, that means there’s still hope that he’ll eventually see the light and leave the COOGEs behind.
Not that we’re holding our breath or anything . . . .
can’t resist… must respond…
Once during an episode of Batman, an Australian friend generalized that Americans overuse the prefix anti. Did you ever notice (like Seinfeld, perhaps) that Dr T usually puts in the anti when mentioning COG criticism or another COG that has a doctrine that doesn’t match with one of the LCG? Yet the comments appear fairly warming when it is noticed that some non-COG group has a doctrine that shows some similarity? The similarity should be no surprise, as it has been widely stated that HWA was revealled those doctrines when reading their literature… or the works of Allen, or Rupert, or Adolph…
Someone, somewhere posted that Bob’s site is not really different from this one; the difference is that when making comparisons, his metric is the LCG, and ours is reality.
Okay, resistance was futile. My last post, I promise…
See you next year in Beijing.
I’ll go help my Sardis students with their English…
G Scott wrote,
”[with]ill wishes to none”
Well, that’s great. What brought about the conversion?
What brought about the conversion?
And what will bring about yours, Mr. Snark?
Ah, Mr Olar, by engaging in name-calling you prove my point while trying to make one of your own. Thanks. That means I need say no more.
Please get off MR. Pack’s back. Leave the Apostle alone.
Please get off Mr. Pack’s back
Clever! Back. Pack.
Back! Back!
Do not attack the back of Pack!
I’ve heard that before. Do all you guys plagiarize?
Now to think up something to honor Olar the Scholar.
Ah, Mr Olar, by engaging in name-calling you prove my point while trying to make one of your own.
My snarkily observing that your comment is snarky proves your allegation that G Scott has ill will toward . . . somebody? Oooookay.
Thanks. That means I need say no more.
Indeed, it doesn’t appear that you needed to say anything at all.
I can’t believe that the zombies have finally gotten up the courage to attack just because G has stated that xCG has become a spent force.
What a bunch of tail gunners, just like their idol AMR.
BB
It’s good to see you going out on top, G.
So don’t let the religious bastards and other assorted spiritual clowns & bible freaks get you down. You’ve done a great work in exposing Armstrongism and the stupid self-righteousness that it breeds in these Pharisee clones that have that big A stamped on their foreheads (and their own little black book tucked away somewhere).
Best2U,
— Stinger
“Don’t let the religious bastards and other assorted spiritual clowns & bible freaks get you down”.
Venom spued from a moron. Leave Mr. Pack alone. Idiots
Ms Ramsdell
Remember the prime directive: avoid ad hominem arguments
We only comment on what is said. Take it as brutally frank feedback.
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions” — Denis Waitley
Besides, Mr Pack loves it! He believes it’s persecution, one of his proofs that he is on the right track! (From one of his World to Come “broadcasts”.)
Heather, how do you know David Pack is “the Apostle”? Did he receive laying on of hands from Jesus? Did Jesus tell him, “Feed my sheep”? Has his shadow healed the lame or the sick? Has he raised the dead?
What is it exactly, apart from David Pack’s say-so, that makes him “the Apostle”?
G is doing the right thing. Raising a child is the hardest, most rewarding job a person can know.
I want to address some comments to Frenchie, Buffalo, Heather, AMR and the like.
First, the comment about you being tail gunners is true. You hear the website is discontinued, so you want to toss in some venal cheap shots at the very last moment. Doesn’t sound very Christian to me.
I don’t have the same antagonism towards Armstrong as some do. My experience in the old WCG was generally positive. I know that some people did get burned, however. I saw it happen.
During a FOT, Mr Armstrong said “so many of you people don’t get it.” Then he added “a lot of you ministers don’t get it.” That comment hit my brain like a thunder bolt.
After that comment, I stopped kissing the minister’s foot. I stopped looking for assurance from other people.
So many people were burned by bad pastors. So many people were burned by the people around them. Like Jonathon Livinston Seagull, I became free of that stuff. Thank you Mr Armstrong!
Heather? You want to call people morons and idiots? Then you still don’t get it! You’re still “in the flesh.”
Where were you when God created the universe? Where were you when God created life on this earth? Can you set the sun or moon in its orbit?
Yet you feel free to pronounce judgements on people that you’ve never met? Whom are you to presume such things? You better look at your own life, and take care of your own sins.
And the same goes for Bob Thiel. He thinks highly of himself, but he’s going to face a big surprise.
Well said, Big Red!
There’re so many splinters, with so much to hide —
When we assess, they return and deride.
With AMR and Heather, with us their beef
Is that we choose not to hail to their chief.
That said, Big Red,
it’s time to go to sleep…
The comments show the nature of the web site, indeed all sites: topic X soon morphs to topic Y in the comment section. One post, in fact, had well over a hundred comments that were mostly about something entirely different. Still, there they are, the comments that still bring a smile when I consider them:
All those hours of work for three comments? To help three people? One could of course make the argument that only three people replied but that perhaps many more felt the same way.
Our neighbors had a couple of backyard visitors the yesterday. They live in the woods behind our and our neighbors’ line of houses, and I often see them circling above as they hunt. (Their arrival surely explains the decline in the chipmunk and squirrel populations.)
One hopped about a bit, trying to get more comfortable
and coincidentally making it easier for me to get a good shot.
But eventually I ventured too close, and it retreated.
Getting ready for vacation — this alone makes you ready for the vacation itself.