TrueTomHarley

They never take the signs down out in the backwoods. From last year:

Fred, from the group home, would hug complete strangers in public. It was one of his goals (set by others, not by himself) for him to cut it out, but I used to just keep an eye out for him—most people were not offended at all. They could see in a heartbeat his condition, but there were some who did recoil, and these I interceded for. There is an autistic son of one in the congregation whose care prevents either from attending too much. There are several in the tow of a sister who, along with her husband, takes several in as guardians. Sometimes you see them. Sometimes you don’t. I spend time with them all when they appear, though as you said, most don’t. I probably wouldn’t either if I did not have the background that I wrote of. Perhaps you would not either. I’ll come back to this subject. You’ve touched some fine memories.

The question that a more humble person might ask is: “Are you questioning that I am anointed?” The only qualification you have displayed for being anointed is to say that you are. Nice work if you can get it. Am I questioning it? No. However - and this is key - neither am I confirming it. How would I know? I can only observe that your input does not square very well with what I have come to expect of ones anointed. Let me tell you of my experience with those who have partaken of the emblems. There were 5 of them in a city congregation I once attended—I almost think 6, though they did not all overlap. This was extremely unusual. It was rare for a congregation to have even one anointed. Were they all truly anointed? Again, how would I know? However, the demeanor of some gave serious pause for thought. One chugged the wine at a Memorial celebration in defiance of ones who she thought might be doubting her calling. Another one would stare in the most spacey way and instantly made anyone uncomfortable. He was part of a large influx of interconnected young people in the early 70s that came into the truth and he was legendary among them for having had consumed great quantities of LSD. I actually came to like him because he never ever was critical and his response to anyone that was was that they should allow love to smooth it all over, but one could only get so close to him because he weirded everyone out. I think I would be better at it today and I wish I still had the opportunity. Were these two truly anointed, in your estimation? There were three others. All began partaking ‘on my watch.’ I liked them all, or at least did at one time. One who used to be very hospitable, ever quick to extend herself for others, in time became so critical of congregation matters that the fifth anointed (I’ll get to her presently) ceased association with her. Another, prior to his partaking, had been appointed an elder, and the C.O, in observing that he met the scriptural qualifications, nonetheless confided to the BOE: “He’s not the most humble person in the world.” He used to impress impressionable one’s by stating something or other from history, and if they would question it, he would assert that he knew “because he was an historian.” In time I told him to knock it off. He was a history buff. An “historian” was a recognized, usually published, authority, and the only one who recognized his authority was him. He actually is published now, I am told. He has authored a few apostate books. Before leaving the congregation (I honestly don’t remember the circumstances of either—only that I was not a part of it) he became such a close associate of the aforementioned anointed (had one ‘recruited’ the other?) that there was talk of immorality—both were married—but to my knowledge that was never proven. The fifth anointed sister I gave the memorial talk for. Her son said prior, when I asked him for input, that he wanted her heavenly hope to stand out. I said ‘no can do’ but then assured him that he would be happy with the talk, which he was. I observed somewhere along the line that so-and-so gave indication of the heavenly calling and that some of us might scratch our heads and say ‘how can that be?’ My answer: Be there in the new system and then you will find out—we don’t have to know everything. She had been out of the truth for many years, stumbled over a matter that could be expected to stumble more persons than not. She began partaking soon after being reinstated. She was a family friend, as were the preceding two. If I was given the assignment to rate them, she would have been the closest one to genuine—maybe they all were, or maybe none of them were—but she would have been the closest in my estimation. if you were invited to her home, you knew that you were in for a scriptural discussion, and yet the impression she leant was totally unlike you (this is a little unfair, because I know you only through your posts, whereas I knew her in person) in that she avoided any impression of being full of herself or of instructing. Her demeanor was more like that of a coach. She was fully cooperative with congregational arrangements in every way, unlike the preceding two, but similar to the LSD-imbibing one. I’ll go one more, from the sister congregation. This was an elderly sister also model in her speech and conduct. Nobody questioned her anointing, though I learned much later to my surprise that her own fleshly sister had her doubts. I don’t want to harp on the following because everyone is capable of saying some dumb and pious thing, but when I asked her to fill in for a Bible study while I was away—it was with the elderly Czech woman who I think I have told @Annaabout, the woman who, in hindsight, probably came to regard me like a grandson, and who faded from the picture just as I was getting married—she responded to an offer of refreshments by quoting Jesus: “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me.” My student kept commenting about this when I returned. “It is theater!” she sputtered. I throw the experience in because it is in accord with a tendency suspected with anointed persons to come across as pious. Or did it lend support to her sister’s suspicions that hers was not truly genuine? No idea here. But what I have been told and have come to believe about those anointed is that they do not in any way put themselves above others in the congregation, much less talk down to them. Your move, lady. (I see that you have just answered, so this comment and yours might not have any bearing upon each other)

It may be that she said something nasty to the Pres and she has been tagged for ‘Abuse.’

I also worked with people with special needs. It was the most emotionally rewarding job that I have ever had, https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2008/06/a-willowbrook-l.html

Never have I seen anyone so in love with the notion of instructing others, who writes a long passage & and subsequently comes back to it, asking what the reader gleaned from it—never for one second doubting his obligation to read it, nor the certainty that the words constitute pearls of wisdom that would bestow light if only...if only...the reader would let himself be molded by them. who was so ready to regard me as her star pupil when I but asked a few simple questions, and was so crushed to learn that it was not so. I’m asking the questions here, ma’m. As naturally as the sun rises, you assume the right to hurl the most incendiary charges at faithful men striving mightily and delivering much amidst continual and often unhinged opposition. You become so nasty at times that even @The Librarian (that old hen) has arisen to rebuke you. And only after a single year in the JW organization! It took but a single year to claim the heavenly calling & to shortly thereafter know that everyone else was doing it wrong & that YOU could instruct the sheep better than they! It’s unbelievable! I’m asking the questions here.

“A patient man am I, down to my fingertips. The sort who never would, ever could let an insulting remark escape his lips.”

Do you feel that God’s true “organization” manifests itself in any way on earth?

I didn’t say that. However, I have no such plans at present. Interaction on this thread is all that I have in mind right now. Maybe something on my own blog as well, but if so, names will be changed. And possibly a few hundred million flyers printed up and dropped by blimp over major metropolitan areas. Other than that, nothing at all. As you know, I am never mean-spirited. And whenever there are exceptions to that rule, it is only like tribulation that lasts ten days.

If you do know then you are doing better than I. Trying to get my head around it, for now. I admit that it makes no sense to me. You are very critical of the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Is there anything about organization that you like?

I gleaned that I ought to ask you the question I just did. Did you, by any chance, get your anointing before coming to join the Witnesses?

We are famously loyal. Here’s what happens to the home of whoever says we are not:

Not that one. He borrowed it from me.

Only Jehovah’s Witnesses identify with the notion of just a relative few being anointed. How long into the JW faith were you before you feel you were called? How long was it after that before you came to feel the others were doing it all wrong?

This reminds me of an apocryphal story of a brother all nervous because he was to be working with the circuit overseer, and he wanted everything to be just so, something he never would have cared about otherwise. So he pressed his suit, but got distracted. ”Brother, don’t you have a suit jacket other than this one?” said the CO later in service, glancing behind at the heavy black iron mark on the coat’s back. Maybe this brother did the same with his best white dress shirt.

I can’t answer for Billy, but my aliases don’t bother me at all. Except for Top Cat O’Malighan. I caught fleas from him

I haven’t admitted all of them. There is actually nobody here that is not me. Even you are.

They are all renegade sheep that have bolted from the fold. I am here to lasso them, kick their butts, and make them behave.

Far from condemning Billy for having multiple personas, (if that is the case) I came to regard it as a pretty cool idea, and so I created A Nice Guy, Vic Vomidog, Dr. Adhominem, Top Cat O’Malighan, and a host of others. I am on the very cusp of creating the immoral woman Ida Ho. My characters do not upvote or downvote, however. They are all Jehovah’s Witnesses, or at least the product of one of them, and they do not vote.

Playing the discontent card, like Bruce the timeshare salesperson did, does not work with me or with anyone who has learned the secret of the apostle—how to be content with much and with little. The line “My kids do not stay at the Hampton” is likely to evoke even an wiseacre response, and when we arrived back at our hotel I texted to him a selfie of my wife and I in the long Hampton corridor—window and exit sign in the rear—and captioned it “Livin the good life.” I attached a smiley sign so that he would know it was simply a good-natured quip and not mockery. Photo: Blake Handley He would not have taken it wrong anyway, I don’t think. Introducing himself with many particulars, so that we would do the same and thus reveal how he might best sell us, he said that he was a retired detective from the Bronx. ‘This is a perfect job for a retired detective,’ I thought, and when I jokingly brought up his former occupation once again, he said “You think I’m not reading you right now?” I did think that. I liked this guy. Of course any experienced Witness ought to be able to do the same. I asked him whether real detectives rolled their eyes when they watched the TV detectives and he said that they did not. The show writers have real detectives for consultants and they mostly just spiff up actual cases to make them suitable for television—make the policewomen drop-dead gorgeous, for example. NYPD and Hill Street Blues were his favorites, he said. Photo: Andre Gustavo Stumpf The shows are so ubiquitous that it will be hard never to have seen one, but they were never staples for me, with the exception of when I worked with Gwen overnights at the group home and it turned out that she loved those shows, and the TV was in the central room like a shrine, virtually unavoidable, and so at length I figured ‘why be righteous overmuch?’ and I joined her in watching some. The joke became that the reason God created bad people was so he could have them killed on TV. The red wood rocking chairs are placed just outside the shops at Harbortown and the nearby lighthouse on television yesterday because the Heritage golf tournament was then being played on Hilton Head Island, and this is where all the fancy people hang out. Of the chairs, my wife said that it was no doubt done so that the men could there cool their heels while the women shopped, perhaps taking a cue from the statue of the kid reading. It was a good theory that I wanted to buy into, but it wasn’t confirmed by what I saw. As I gazed upon the moored yachts it occurred to me that, like snowflakes, no two are alike. It next occurred to me that my first occurrence was ridiculous—it must be possible to pick out models, same as with cars. In time, I managed to do so. The accessories and accoutrements were different, of course, but the basic boat was recognizable. At the next hotel, this time a Clarion in Savannah, as I was reaching for bread to make toast, I heard a tapping. I looked up and it was the matronly breakfast attendant, who glanced at the tongs I had not used, and all but said: “Your mama raised you better than that!”—even though I had had a clear shot at the bread and was (probably) going to be touching only the slice I was after. She was right. My mama had taught me better. And she would have given me the same scolding, only not so gently. That is something that’s not going to happen in your snooty timeshare, is it, Bruce? The next day we hunted up a Kingdom Hall and in attendance I sat behind a teenager who looked like he might not be paying rapt attention. So after the meeting, I broke the ice by apologizing to him. See, I was sitting right behind him, so he must have caught my singing full blast and that had to have been a trying experience. I asked him if I would be happy moving to Savannah, as some had suggested, but he said ‘Nah. It’s not all that great here.’ Trying to diffuse any tension that might have arisen by my being so much older, I told him how the hotel lunchlady had chastened me. He said that it was my own fault—I should have known better—you never reach for things with your fingers. You’re supposed to use the tongs. His mama had taught him that. There was not undue pressure on the timeshare tour, assuming one is not averse to sales. There only one rude moment, and that only for an instant, when the third closer abruptly wished us a good day and vanished, as though turning down her final reasonable offer was so gauche and unappreciative that it was really all a sensitive person could take, and perhaps knowing we had caused her offense and were about to let the deal of the lifetime slip through our fingers we would quickly call her back. We didn’t. I wasn’t scared of her at all. It was the lunchlady in Savannah that I was scared of.

I did go to the link, and that’s why I thought that you were a man. The first thing to meet my eye was “Hi everyone....My wife was the first one to call me an apostate.” If the wife called you an apostate, I figured that must make you a man. (Uh oh. You do not have one of those types of marriages, do you?)

Are you a man? I have always, for reasons that I cannot put my finger on, thought that you were a woman. This is not at all like the Librarian, (that old hen) who I keep referring to as a woman though I know very well that she is a man. I truly thought that you were a woman. And you keep dancing around my question: “Was there ever a time when you were happy with how kingdom interests were represented on earth?” Instead, you redirect it to a story of your “reawakening.” One does not expect an anointed of God to be so cagey in addressing a believer. Was there ever a time, in your estimation, that those responsible for the New World Translation, Bethel homes, Watchower publications, and pioneer slips, did it right?

As long as none of these personas are confused with Dr. Bob “Hammer” Urabi, I am fine. ”Hammer” is one of mine.

The last time I played this game with someone who had offended me, I kept holding out until at last the idiot cut off his head and slid it to me.

And when was that?