Thank you, Paleface. Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving as well. Also, everyone else that has contributed to this forum...whether you are of the Lord, or not of the Lord. It is not an issue to me at this point.

Happy Thanksgiving Paleface, and all of you. We do have a lot to be thankful for.

Kboy, It is going to be interesting what happens next. Lately, and I think partly because of things you pointed out about the LWF, about how the younger people of the Walk look happy in their involvement in the church, I have started to believe that they might just make it as a healthy church after all. It would be nice to see them as part of the whole church and not an isolated little paranoid bunch of people like my generation was.

I don't know why my generation, (second generation) I am talking about, was so paranoid, so freaky, it may have been the grass and acid days and then going right into heavy alcohol use, the war, all the different mind games of the 60s, could have played a part in all of that mixed up time span, coming out of all that and then getting in the Walk. I am hoping the Walk is snapped out of it all. I am happy the Gary and Marilyn days are over. I hope they are anyway.

A.D.


As pointed out earlier, the vision has become so blurry, and the liquid refreshment so diluted, that it's hard for anyone to really get lathered up about anything. More and more, people are just living their lives, having and enjoying their kids, going to college--being fairly ‘normal’.

There are of course exceptions, as there always are, but they are becoming more marginalized than ever before. The inner circles are becoming smaller, with fewer willing to suffer the abuse that is required to gain inclusion. The collateral damage done to so many lives is evermore in the awareness of those who still remain. One cannot escape wondering how something they are still involved with could have racked up such a high body-count.

On a HAPPIER note, we have a lot to be THANKFUL for.

kBOY posted in part on November 15, 2015 05:41PM:

“Separate out the idea that LOVE needs to be attached to any specific ‘theology’ or group. It requires none. Jesus simply taught LOVE, and walked in it. He promoted no religion, ritual, organization, or group. He made endless attempts to instill this simple attitude in his disciples, who, being trapped in the mindset of Judaism, tried to make it more complicated than it was.”
----------------
There is much freedom in the above statement. Meditators and mystics are not required to give up their own will or give away their possessions. They’re also not required to conform to a restrictive stereotype. They can have the Spirit and be happy and enjoy all that is in the world.

Why be a Biblical Christian?? Seriously.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Robert Plant --- “Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed.”

Since we are celebrating Thanksgiving weekend, I just ran across a bit of TLW-related trivia that I was THANKFUL to have experienced while in the fellowship.

In the later half of the 70’s, while stationed in the Valley, I was involved with what some may remember as the Outlining project, where we undertook the daunting task of trying to transfer into outline form, major portions of TLW literature, starting with the School of Prophets Manuals.

If anyone can remember ‘sentence diagramming’ from the days of their youth, imagine doing that to entire paragraphs, along with prioritizing the sequential importance of each sentence. Pretty intense work, especially in the evenings after already putting in a day’s work somewhere else. At the time of my involvement, there were probably about a dozen of us, three married couples, and the rest singles.

There would be evenings when we would reach collective ‘brain-freeze’ and just have to throw in the towel. Instead of resorting to substance abuse for release, we would all pile into as few cars as possible and drive to downtown L.A. to this cool place called ‘The Intersection’, LA’s gathering spot for international folk dancing. There we learned folk dancing from all over the world--Irish, Polish, Israeli, etc. It was a blast. We would always leave that place with big smiles on our face and our clothes drenched in sweat.

[www.phantomranch.net]

As referenced by someone earlier, I am also extremely GRATEFUL for the family my TLW experience brought me, as well as the great friends we still have from there to this day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/28/2015 12:17AM by kBOY.

AD - I owe you an apology.
I broke a rule I made for myself long ago, that I wouldn't use the anonymity of the internet to make comments to others that I wouldn't make face to face. I violated that rule.
Your comments are often of a tone to which I disagree, but given what we've all been through, and the depth of hurt and betrayal we all experienced together, I apologize for attempting to diminish the validity of your thoughts in any way. I am sorry.
I am thankful for this forum and its vehicle to give many a channel of necessary release.

Continuing with the Thanksgiving theme . . .

For those unfamiliar with the schedule at Shiloh from ‘78-’79 (during my tour), it was, to the best of my recollection, as follows:

MON-SAT

6:00-7:00am - Breakfast
7:00-8:00am - Service
8:00-12:00pm - Work
12:00-12:15pm - Service
12:15-1:00pm - Lunch
1:00-5:00pm - Work
5:00-6:00pm - Dinner
6:00-8:00pm - Work (varied with dept./weather) [Mon. nights off]
8:00-9:00pm - Personal
9:00-10:00pm - Service
10:00-? - Personal

SUN

6:00-7:00am - Breakfast
7:30-9:00am - Shiloh service
10:00-11:30am - Washington, IA service
12:00-1:00pm - Lunch
1:00-5:00pm - Personal
5:30-7:00pm - Washington, IA service
7:30-9:00pm - Shiloh service
9:00-? - Personal

I only document this to illustrate the activities that were used to compensate for the extreme regimen.

Since we had Monday nights off, there was of course, Monday Night Football, which was an extremely popular distraction, especially for us West Coasters who were ‘duck & covering’ from our first real winters.

There was also the 1st generation of Saturday Night Live, with Bill Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, and company, supplying some much needed humor.

But probably, the most creative distraction came from the depths of the basement every week--the subversive publication, ‘Off The Wall’, which made light of everything it could get away with short of being shut down. It poked fun at every quirk that could be highlighted with our lives, from visiting ministries, to ‘insider colloquialisms’, and even sported a column with a few blokes making weekly football picks. I had kept quite a collection of Off The Wall issues until they were unfortunately lost during one of our many moves that took place back then.

Then there were the unavoidable tomato/etc. food-fights that would break out during summer harvest seasons, along with any crazy activity you could conjure up with snow during the winter.

With the greater majority of the 350-450 inmates being housed at any given time during ‘78 and ‘79 in their 20’s, it was like extended high school, with cliques, characters, jocks, and nerds. With Shiloh being one of Iowa’s largest communal homes outside of a college dorm, most of us did what it took to survive with a smile in order to live another life.

And, for that, I am THANKFUL.

pbxguy I feel the same way, I apologize too. That's the same way I feel. We all have been through enough insanity in our past, it's time that we give one another some slack, I was getting a little heavy handed there for a minute.

pbxguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> AD - I owe you an apology.
> I broke a rule I made for myself long ago, that I
> wouldn't use the anonymity of the internet to make
> comments to others that I wouldn't make face to
> face. I violated that rule.
> Your comments are often of a tone to which I
> disagree, but given what we've all been through,
> and the depth of hurt and betrayal we all
> experienced together, I apologize for attempting
> to diminish the validity of your thoughts in any
> way. I am sorry.
> I am thankful for this forum and its vehicle to
> give many a channel of necessary release.

KBOY that looks like a pretty easy schedule there, what is that, maybe 15 hours a day, 6 days a week and then just 6 hours of services on Sunday, that's not bad. Maybe that is why the prophesies didn't get fulfilled and the apostle didn't break into resurrection life, they were just too easy on you guys. It looks like the shepherds were just too soft hearted.

We referred to ourselves as 'slackers'--those responsible for holding up the Kingdom.