The Serena Williams Child Doesn't Do Birthdays. This Gets Interestinger and Interestinger

[TrueTomHarley]

Few things cause more distress in the world of celebrities than a neglected birthday celebration. Yet Serena Williams presented them exactly that scenario with regard to her baby daughter, soon to turn one. “Serena and husband Alexis Ohanian wonÂ’t be throwing an over-the-top birthday bash for their baby girlÂ…In fact, they wonÂ’t be throwing a party at all,” reported Caitlyn Hitt for the DailyMail. Why?

Serena says: ‘We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, so we don’t do that.’ She repeats the tactic that she took with President Obama, [Let it stay, Miss Librarian, you old hen. It does no harm to you. It may even help you, for I have disabled my comment section. If anyone goes there and gets chatty, they will have to come back here to chat about it.] back when she was “excited to see Obama out there doing his thing….[but] I'm a Jehovah's Witness, so I don't get involved in politics. We stay neutral. We don't vote...so I'm not going to necessarily go out and vote for him. I would if it wasn't for my religion.'' Let me tell you that she took heat for it from people immersed in civic affairs, not to mention those who dislike Witnesses.

Notwithstanding that the parent organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses encourages members to give reasons for their stands and not just say “I do it because I’m a Jehovah’s Witness,” there are times when the latter response is exactly the thing to say. The actual reason takes a while to explain and people don’t necessarily want to hear it. You have to know your audience. I begin to like Serena Williams more and more. She doesn’t buckle under pressure, mumbling something incomprehensible. No. She says "We don’t do that.” She reminds me very much of a sister named Jackie who was ribbed at school for her modest way of dress. She threw it right back at them. “I set the style,” she told the would-be bullies. “If you want to be cool, you dress like me.”

Speaking of modest dress, Serena hasnÂ’t exactly done that over the years on the tennis court. Even given that you want freedom of movement, every so often you will hear her criticized for that, primarily from people who think they can embarrass JehovahÂ’s Witnesses on that account. Outspokenly she has thanked Jehovah for her tennis victories, yet how does that work with the flag at the Olympics? JehovahÂ’s Witnesses are circumspect about the flag of any nation, declining to salute, not for any reason of protest, but because of the second of the Ten Commandments. And didnÂ’t she cuss out that official at a certain match? Ah, well, athletes have been known to do that and people cut them slack. After all, if she was mild-mannered Clark Kent, she would find transition into Superwoman difficult.

So she has sent mixed signals over the years. Why would that be? Ah, here it is in the Caitlyn Hitt article: Last year she told Vogue, “Being a Jehovah’s Witness is important to me, but I’ve never really practiced it and have been wanting to get into it.” Okay. She was brought up in the faith and has made part of it her own but not entirely. Apparently, she is not baptized, a big deal for Witnesses. Now, with the birth of a child, she means to change some things. The birth of a child will frequently trigger a shift in priorities. Likely, she is conscious of a spiritual need not completely attended to in her own case and she does not want the same for her daughter. Since Jehovah’s Witnesses call each other brother and sister and I am old enough to be her dad, I tweeted: ‘Knock it out of the park! You go, my daughter.' I’m sure she saw it out of the gazillion tweets she receives each day, many from JW detractors telling her that she is nuts.

Her outspokenness served her well in another instance. When the man she was dating wished her a ‘Happy Birthday’ and she responded as she now does for her daughter, the man admired the courage. He “saw this gesture as Serena stepping outside her comfort zone for him and decided immediately that he wanted to marry her.”

It only gets more interesting. He is Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian. He is not a JehovahÂ’s Witness, and was not raised with any religion at all, but is reportedly okay with SerenaÂ’s faith. Now, it turns out that Reddit is a huge online discussion forum in which topics are hosted for everything under the sun. One of those groups, with thousands of participants, is dedicated to bringing down the organization of JehovahÂ’s Witnesses. When Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Gambacorta wrote (so far) four incendiary articles about JehovahÂ’s Witnesses, he used this group as his source of information and between articles checked in with them, as though Trump playing to his base.

It therefore reminds – I mean, it is not a type/antitype kind of thing, but it sure does remind one of Jewish Queen Esther of long ago, married to the wealthy Persian King who had been maneuvered by enemies into decreeing that her people be destroyed, and the sentence surely would have been carried out but for Esther’s (putting her life at risk to do it) bold intervention. Yeah, why don't you go in there to Mr. Ohanian, you Reddit Witness haters, and tell him that his wife is crazy? That sounds like a brilliant plan to me. Tell him that Mr. Gambacorta is on your side. Just make sure that you read up on Haman before you do it. (See the entire short Book of Esther)

Look, it is not parallel in all respects. Nobody is literally threatening to kill anyone, but they are threatening to kill the Christian organization that supports and coordinates the worldwide work that JehovahÂ’s Witnesses do, just as like-minded ones are now doing in Russia. Moreover, Mr. Ohanian cannot be expected to pull the groupÂ’s Reddit credentials; he runs a website dedicated to free speech. There is also a pro-JW group on the site, as well as a squirrelly in-between one, supposedly supportive of Witness teachings but unsupportive of the human leadership. Such will always be the sticking point in the divine/human interface. It was even true with Judas. He and God were tight. There were no problems there. But that yoyo claiming to represent him was just too much, not at all what Judas wanted to see. And those bumpkins he was attracting! DonÂ’t even go there.

No, it is possibly not history repeating itself. Mark Twain said that does not happen. History does not repeat, he said, but it does rhyme a little.

"I am stronger than you. I bless Heaven for it," said Miss Pross to the wicked foreign woman trying to destroy her Loved One, resisting her "with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate." 

 

[Matthew9969]

There are hypocrites in every religion.

 

[Space Merchant]

The good thing is, she is not practicing the pagan practice of celebration of one's birth, and or allowing the practice of Artemis to enter into the home in regards to good and evil spirit teachings.

The irony here is elsewhere, non-religious people are throwing down the facts about Birthdays and or celebration of one's birth in connection to paganism.

If anything, Jesus told us one thing, to remember his death and what it means.

[JW Insider]

23 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

No, it is possibly not history repeating itself. Mark Twain said that does not happen. History does not repeat, he said, but it does rhyme a little.

I think the most important thing to remember from your Serena Williams [Ohanian] write-up is that there is no real evidence that Mark Twain ever said this. ?

Mark Twain might have said that history doesn't repeat itself, but there is no evidence that he ever added the part about the rhyme:

This is about the closest thing he is known to have published, or co-authored:

History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.  --1874 edition of “The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-Day”

Another contemporary humorist, from the time of Mark Twain said:

• “History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.” -- Max Beerbohm, 1896

The closest claim anyone has to originating the 'saying' is probably from this:

• history repeats her tale unconsciously, and goes off into a mystic rhyme; ages are prototypes of other ages, and the winding course of time brings us round to the same spot again. -- “The Christian Remembrancer”  October 1845

 

All this info and more can be found here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/

[TrueTomHarley]

this is not the first Mark Twain quote that turns out to be phony.

I have also had to toss out the irresistable "When I was 16, my father was so ignorant I could barely stand to have him around. Five years later I was amazed at how much the old man had picked up in such a short time."

It is like David Splane regretfully tossing in the trash: "When you and I get together over the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, we will have solved not just our problems, but those of the entire world.

Actually, I don't toss out nothin. I just qualify them. If he didn't say it, he should have. It is not my fault if he gets tongue-tied.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Yes TTH, you have a LOT of stuff rattling around in your head. 

I seem to occupy a LOT of space there, and you don't even charge me rent!

MOST people have a lot of stuff rattling around in their head.

As I prance through the corridors of your mind, perhaps I will see  Serena Williams .

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

.....

 

[TrueTomHarley]

4 hours ago, JW Insider said:

All this info and more can be found here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/

I worried that I had screwed up the Dickens quote as well. I checked on it and found that I had (in a minor way) I made corrections.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

It's just like here in the South, when you want to lambast someone unmecifully ... just end the statement with "... bless his pea-pickin' heart!".

                        That makes it OK.

Merely preface everything with "(paraphrased)",  or "...if memory serves ...",  then screw the quote into the ground as deep as it will go!

[Srecko Sostar]

On 8/30/2018 at 4:07 PM, TrueTomHarley said:

Serena says: ‘We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, so we don’t do that.’

‘Olympia doesn’t celebrate birthdays,’ Serena revealed during the US Open. ‘We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, so we don’t do that.’ - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6107057/This-Serena-Williams-not-celebrate-daughters-1st-birthday.html

I would not go to comment on other details you offer in your post or in MailOnline article what Serena said. That would be vast of time. :)))

But for giving reasons on our acts and choices because of religion affiliation that person have, I can say how "instruction" that was given to me and some others JW brothers who faced with "neutrality issue" aka refuse to accept military service in ex Yugoslavia was this: Brother Miloš Knežević, first elder of Betel in Yugoslavia (Belgrade 1980, before and after this year) told me NOT to tell that i refuse service because i am JW. But because of my "bible trained conscience that tell me do this"!

It looks strange to me, even then (i was 19), to defend my position in this way. But that was not to defend myself but JW YU Betel and JW religion in YU, in other word WT. 

It is funny to hear how Serena said, "my 1 year old daughter not celebrating birthday", but that is the way how mother teaching her children ... and those around them :)))

 

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

I seem to occupy a LOT of space there, and you don't even charge me rent!

Don’t be too sure about that and its going up.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Here is a link to what was said on the Archive about 14 months ago, about Serena Williams appearing naked, and very pregnant on the August 2017 Vanity Fair Magazine cover.