posted December 11, 2003 12:59 AM         

quote:

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Fundamentalism is an emotional conviction while True Seeing or Sight is a Knowing that is divorced from emotion and emotionalism. That is the Sight of Daf, when he states that he cannot “believe” the message, but he Knows it to be the Truth.

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That makes it quite clear to me. In fact, your entire post makes a lot of things clear. I feel so much joy!

posted December 11, 2003 11:32 AM         

quote:

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The Teachers and Warners are not here to punish sin. They are not here to punish ignorance. They are here to Teach “covering”. The Lord shall “cover” the sinner, hiding his sins. The Lord shall “cover” the waywardness of the ignorant, straightening the road. Of course, this is conditioned that the individuals in question request such covering. Conditioned that they ask. This asking requires no witness, no secondary testimony, no public pronouncement. It is a petition from the Heart to its Lord, private, sacred and an activity that perfumes the heavens and inspires the angels to sing.

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juniperb

posted December 11, 2003 01:28 PM         

juniperb

posted December 11, 2003 11:49 PM         

I like the last part of your post best: "Peace and Blessing to those who suffer in the name of religion."
And we are suffering from it. Recalling another quote: "Mankind will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." --Diderot
(I know it's a little strong ).

posted December 12, 2003 08:46 PM         

To be truthful, I'm grateful, that I never had God crammed down my throat. It's sad to hear people that have been so emotionally scarred by contact with a human creation labelled "god", that they are hesitant to listen to anything that contains the word God in it. It's understandable, but still it's very very sad, because none of you are to blame for the fact that a bunch of people who do NOT understand God, tore through your hearts in a vain attempt to explain God's Will to you. When I say vain, I equate it with VANITY, because how presumptuous is it to try to brand the word CHRISTIAN or MUSLIM or HINDU or PAGAN on another's soul in the name of one's own notion of God? God is perfectly capable of teaching us what God is, in God's OWN way.

Today I watched as a Jehovah's Witness greeted a young lady and then began to weave her religion's tale of what God wanted, and what God promised, and how God was going to make that happen, and I was (not to my credit I'm afraid) a bit perturbed. (Understand that the RIGHT way is to let God's Will be done. I didn't do the right thing, I reacted..because I was perturbed.)

I wasn't perturbed because the woman was spreading her beliefs, no I too feel that tolerance and patience are the best Evangelism and so if I were where I should be spiritually, I would have let it be. But I'm not where I should be, and I didn't let it be. Instead, I walked up to the lady, smiled and said

"Good morning sister, how are you this lovely day?"

"Just fine, and you?"

"Couldn't be better. Say, I see you are handing out literature. That's GREAT, what a coincidence..I am too."

I reached into my bag and pulled out a copy of the first message which John delivered(Woe)..the one that says:

quote:

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Woe to you hypocrites that speak the words of your chosen ones, but close your ears to God's message when it comes. He speaks through dreams and signs, words that are whispered to the heart, but you have shut yourselves off from these as men have instructed you to. For this, you are doomed to follower your elders into the grave where neither the Word of God, nor the words of men will reach you again.

---

She wouldn't even look at it. Just kept shaking her head.

"No, that's ok. I have mine right here", she said.

"Are you sure? Perhaps there's some information in here that could add to what you already know?"

"No, no..that's fine. I don't need anything else. Don't really need to hear what you have to say."

"Ok", I said, "Sorry to bother you, I just figured since you were sharing, that you'd understand what it's like to have a message to share."

"No, that's ok. Goodbye."

Then I turned to the girl who had been listening to this exchange, shrugged my shoulders and moved on.

From a distance, I watched what happened after that.

The young lady listened politely as the JW sister went on and on, but when she attempted to hand her a copy of The Watchtower, the young lady waved it off. I could almost hear her saying, "No, that's ok", as she shook her head.

posted December 19, 2003 04:40 AM         

... for my first 15 or so years. I was no where near sheltered, though. My parents were/are very open, and my grandmother gave me A Treatise on White Magic by AAB for my 21st birthday!

posted December 31, 2003 12:37 AM         

It's not my job to shove my beliefs down people's throat...but it is my job to display love and kindess towards everyone...which I try to do.

Funny though, my grandmother was very gifted with intuition and could read people's aura's like nobody's business...this gift was passed to my own mother, who continues to nurture this gift, and then to my sisters and myself...and ultimately I've passed it to my daughters...among some other gifts that must be from Divinity. So...we were raised as Baptists, but my mother sought out tarot readers and even had a deck at one time long ago...so, I guess my whole family are Rebels!

heheeh...Baptist's without a cause...hehehe

posted January 03, 2004 12:31 AM         

I think it would be cool to identify as Catholic, so long as I didn't have to do or believe anything... I wish Catholicism was an ethnicity as well as a religion, like Judaism.