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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Aug 9, 2010 9:33:05 GMT -5
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Post by km on Aug 9, 2010 11:14:10 GMT -5
ShelleyC: I'm curious to know more about your motivations in all of this even after you'd googled Gothard and found such damning information about him. I'm surprised that being ditched by Cecilia made you feel even more determined to gain her approval (even though she would never know you were doing these new things that she and her husband approved of.). Did you think at the time that all of that information about him was part of some kind of campaign to persecute Christians, or did you just try to ignore everything you'd read? And by the way, did you ever use ATI to educate your kids?
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Post by susan on Aug 9, 2010 12:29:05 GMT -5
Shelly, thank you for sharing, and I'm so glad you got out!
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Post by hopewell on Aug 9, 2010 14:39:26 GMT -5
Sometimes I've felt guilty that I didn't accept Christ until I was nearly 40, but reading stories here I sort of understand why now: my parents knew we had to be able to tell a wolf in sheep's clothing. I am glad too, after reading this story, that I have not forced my kids to go to Church or read the Bible--I've encouraged it, modeled it, but not forced it or tied it to treats.
Shelly, I too, am curious why after you read such bad stuff, after Celia didn't keep up with you, that you went ahead plunging into this. Your husband sounds like a decent guy--telling you to just be yourself [i.e. the girl he fell in love with] helped with the kids and, I'm guessing here, would have winced and laughed if you'd called him "Sir" I hope you explore in a further post the need you had or the "missing something" in your life that really egged this on. I get that you wanted to have the perfect family, etc. And, please, I'm not trying to pick on you--I'm just fascinated in a very sincere way.
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Post by juliacat on Aug 10, 2010 8:41:18 GMT -5
I'm struck by the lady at church talking to you about the head covering. Isn't church a place where people go to belong to other people?
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maicde
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Posts: 69
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Post by maicde on Aug 10, 2010 8:45:25 GMT -5
Very good article, Shelly. Many of us go to extreme lengths in trying to "find ourselves." Every person and every generations goes through the same thing. It's too bad that the kids have to suffer during this process while mom or dad "find" themselves. Then we wonder why our kids go through the same thing when they reach adulthood. Some things never change. Some people choose ATI to find themselves, Julia Roberts choses Hinduism. Who is right and who is wrong? What is 100% true is that we are all looking for our place in the world and a way to fit in that feels right to us. The "process" doesn't always make sense and hindsight is 20/20.
As far as being "religious" - I don't find ATI "religious". I find a snake oil salesman in the form of a man called Bill Gothard. Religion is his front, ultimate control is his goal, brainwashing is his means.
I also think of the first 100 charter families who were supposedly "the chosen ones". They were most likely the first 100 schmucks he found for his downline (his own brand of MLM business) who were willing and able to pay the sign up fee to get started. Instead of Company X "starter/new distributor kit" for new distributor training, they received the Bill Gothard start-up kit complete with his propoganda wrapped up with a neat and tidy bow - everything you need to become wildly successful in recruiting other gullible people who are also looking for answers. And off we go to the races!
I still find it hard to believe that people like Cecelia exist...she must be some awesome something....not sure what yet....but something. I would really love to find out what she's doing now, if she's still at it, or if she's written some tell-all book about her life living in a cult, complete with juicy tales about a "Godly" sex life complete with calling him, "sir" in the midst of throes of passion, pain-free "Godly" births, advice on "Godly" child-training including how to administer beatings without leaving marks, tips on grinding your own wheat (or other grain) as well as 101 recipes for "Heavenly" home-made bread.
I can also see one or more of her kids writing a best-seller, tell-all book once they run away from the gulag they were raised in. "Tie Your Mother Down" might be the title - taken from the Queen song of the same title.
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Post by krwordgazer on Aug 10, 2010 14:52:00 GMT -5
Shelley, I felt like I lost my identity in the cult I was in too. I remember my Mom saying, "What happened! You've gotten so rigid!" And how deep down I felt bad inside at how judgmental and narrow I had become, but also feeling I was just doing what was right, and why couldn't she understand that?
I realized recently that part of me was still afraid I was going to lose myself all over again-- that I still felt shame for having lost hold of "me" in the first place. For me, the passage about Christ having our secret names written on a white stone helped. I feel this metaphorical passage is saying that our true selves cannot ever really be lost, no matter how obscured we might allow them to become.
I do understand so very deeply what it is to want desperately to measure up, to please someone else who has set an impossible standard. I'm so glad we're both finally free of that.
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Post by arietty on Aug 10, 2010 22:54:38 GMT -5
One thing this installment of your story brings to mind Shelley is how we can get sucked into this lifestyle while not actually fellowshipping with anyone else in it. There you were with your headcovering and long skirts and striving for modesty in a church where you got no encouragement to do any of this. I was QF in a mainstream church myself and I knew a few women who headcovered in mainstream churches (headcovering is unheard of here). This is why I look back and am just astonished at how I brainwashed myself just from reading books and magazines (and now so much easier via the internet). This is also why it's easy to say it's not a cult because if I looked around there was no one else in it but me! In my immediate peers that is. And yet it's the same bondage as being in some compound ruled by a cult leader.
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Post by lg61820 on Aug 10, 2010 22:55:35 GMT -5
Shelley, You're not the first loving wife and mother who lost herself in trying to be the very best she could be.
As women, we often don't trust ourselves enough to know what is best and we turn to someone to guide us.
It appears you have rediscovered your inner voice and now trust yourself. It takes work to get his this back once you have lost it.
I am looking forward to the next installment of your fascinating story.
I appreciate your sharing it. LG
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Post by ShellyC on Aug 10, 2010 23:10:53 GMT -5
ShelleyC: I'm curious to know more about your motivations in all of this even after you'd googled Gothard and found such damning information about him. I'm surprised that being ditched by Cecilia made you feel even more determined to gain her approval (even though she would never know you were doing these new things that she and her husband approved of.). Did you think at the time that all of that information about him was part of some kind of campaign to persecute Christians, or did you just try to ignore everything you'd read? And by the way, did you ever use ATI to educate your kids? Yes, In my brain, I figured to just chew and spit..regarding BG, and everything I read about him. Yes, I did end up buying some used copies of all 3 character sketch books, and the 2 red books. I think life alwasy seems easier when you are following a bunch of man made rules. It kind of gave life a formula for me to folllow. Like a check list, or a daily, "too do" Nowadays, I do not follow anything precisely. I am still writing every day, about different people whom I have met along the way, since moving. I mentioned earlier in another post that my family had found ourselves hooked in with a very simular family last year. It was far times worst.(in a religious way.) As someone else pointed out..We all want to belong to something. I guess it starts in grade school. We want to be with the "it" crowd. Things don't change much when you are an adult. lol I still want to fit in..but I do not see it as a "fit in" type of thing any longer. I want Community. Real, genuine community..that is not cultish. The 1950's type of community that we see on those old black and white TV shows. Ladies having coffee and catching up together at the kitchen table, you run out of sugar, and rest assure, your friend Bette next store has some to borrow.... Friday night BBQ's in the back yard with the neighbors. Know what I mean? Has this all ceased in this crazy world?
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Post by ShellyC on Aug 10, 2010 23:14:16 GMT -5
One thing this installment of your story brings to mind Shelley is how we can get sucked into this lifestyle while not actually fellowshipping with anyone else in it. There you were with your headcovering and long skirts and striving for modesty in a church where you got no encouragement to do any of this. I was QF in a mainstream church myself and I knew a few women who headcovered in mainstream churches (headcovering is unheard of here). This is why I look back and am just astonished at how I brainwashed myself just from reading books and magazines (and now so much easier via the internet). This is also why it's easy to say it's not a cult because if I looked around there was no one else in it but me! In my immediate peers that is. And yet it's the same bondage as being in some compound ruled by a cult leader. Exactly!!! I think the internet really has baited so many ladies into the sticky web of legalism. I was reading about 10 blogs a day of head covering ladies, and why they were just obeying God! It then becomes a self rightous thing, even though it doesn't start off that way. *sulk*
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Post by nikita on Aug 10, 2010 23:22:47 GMT -5
Every time someone mentions BG's 'red book' I immediately think of Mao. I doubt that was what BG was going for... I like your series Shelley. It is interesting how you found yourself wanting so much more and really striving to find it in the example of Cecelia and through books and online even though you didn't have others around you to encourage it. I think it speaks to the thirst in your heart for more, for better, for completion. Your husband seems to have handled things very well with you. It's hard to find neighborhood community any more. Community tends to come in fixed groups from work, or church, or twelve step programs, but not just regular people who happen to live near each other (with the exception of community through mutual neighborhood gangs, but I don't recommend it). That community feeling seems to be an anachronism nowadays, with people moving around so much now. At least until you hit a retirement complex or home.
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valsa
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Post by valsa on Aug 11, 2010 1:44:31 GMT -5
The 1950's type of community that we see on those old black and white TV shows. Ladies having coffee and catching up together at the kitchen table, you run out of sugar, and rest assure, your friend Bette next store has some to borrow.... Friday night BBQ's in the back yard with the neighbors. Know what I mean? Has this all ceased in this crazy world? I don't think that it's ceased- I think it never existed in the first place. The "perfect 1950s" are largely a nostalgic invention of the collective American imagination. Things, for the vast majority of people, were a lot worse back then than they are now. If you weren’t a middle class (or above) Christian white man, your life sucked in the 1950s. Back in the 1950s, Bette is regularly beaten and raped by her husband and, literally, has no place to do, as this is before there are any domestic abuse shelters, or even domestic abuse laws. The people who invite you to their Friday BBQ own a small diner where they don’t allow “colored people” in the door and the husband regularly forces the poor single mothers who work there as waitresses to have sex with him in order to keep their jobs, because he knows the social disapproval of their situation means that no one else will hire them. The prevalence of news media means we are exposed to more of the dirty happenings of our city/state/country, but just because we didn't hear about them before doesn't mean they didn't happen. However, all that aside, I can borrow a cup of sugar from at least three of my neighbors and have been to several BBQs over the last few years. Communities like that definitely exist in 2010.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 1:56:49 GMT -5
I completely agree with Valsa. The 50's is a myth. There are very good reasons why the 60's happened in response to it!
As to community, yes it is hard to find. Try to be the community you want, that's my approach. Offer, engage, initiate.. if you live in the 'burbs and don't your neighbors be the person who plans the block party.
I've had long stretches where my only community came via the internet.
The best community I have is now my adult children.
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jeb
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Post by jeb on Aug 11, 2010 5:53:19 GMT -5
ShellyC said . . . "The 1950's type of community that we see on those old black and white TV shows. Ladies having coffee and catching up together at the kitchen table, you run out of sugar, and rest assure, your friend Bette next store has some to borrow.... Friday night BBQ's in the back yard with the neighbors. Know what I mean? Has this all ceased in this crazy world?" One of the things I was amazed at were the changes I observed in the Mississippi families and communities that I had known in the late 50s and early 60s when we moved back in the early 70s after 11 or so years in California. My first wife was from Mississippi and it was a big, important part of community to get together as family and friends for a watermelon feed or a fish fry or a potluck or an ice cream cranking good time or whatever. Happened all the time. T'was good to be together. When we moved back . . . all of that had gone away. You hardly saw some of the family from one month to the next never mind friends and neighbours. Wha hoppen??? TV??? I never did figure it out but it sure was different and, I must say, quite disappointing to me for I had been looking forward to those good times again as I remembered them. And in the 15 years I lived there the second time the only community event of that sort that I saw was at the Union Community Center down the road from Ellisville, MS where they got together once a month for a potluck. That was good for sure but somehow it wasn't enough nor did it feel like the good times of those earlier years. Times had changed, eh? and not for the better in my estimation. Or was it just a case of 'You can't go back'? Know what I mean? Anyway, you obviously struck a chord, ShellyC, with that question, eh? John
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Post by km on Aug 11, 2010 7:34:53 GMT -5
The 1950's type of community that we see on those old black and white TV shows. Ladies having coffee and catching up together at the kitchen table, you run out of sugar, and rest assure, your friend Bette next store has some to borrow.... Friday night BBQ's in the back yard with the neighbors. Know what I mean? Has this all ceased in this crazy world? I don't think that it's ceased- I think it never existed in the first place. The "perfect 1950s" are largely a nostalgic invention of the collective American imagination. Things, for the vast majority of people, were a lot worse back then than they are now. If you weren’t a middle class (or above) Christian white man, your life sucked in the 1950s. Back in the 1950s, Bette is regularly beaten and raped by her husband and, literally, has no place to do, as this is before there are any domestic abuse shelters, or even domestic abuse laws. The people who invite you to their Friday BBQ own a small diner where they don’t allow “colored people” in the door and the husband regularly forces the poor single mothers who work there as waitresses to have sex with him in order to keep their jobs, because he knows the social disapproval of their situation means that no one else will hire them. The prevalence of news media means we are exposed to more of the dirty happenings of our city/state/country, but just because we didn't hear about them before doesn't mean they didn't happen. However, all that aside, I can borrow a cup of sugar from at least three of my neighbors and have been to several BBQs over the last few years. Communities like that definitely exist in 2010. This.
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Post by grandmalou on Aug 11, 2010 9:52:10 GMT -5
Ah, John (jeb) you hit the nail right on the head with this one: "Wha hoppen??? TV??? I never did figure it out but it sure was different and, I must say, quite disappointing to me for I had been looking forward to those good times again as I remembered them. " 1952...a neighbor lady who used to come and have coffee with my mother, a SAHM...was having a hard time with her husband. Seems all he wanted to do was watch the 'boob tube'...she complained to my mother that the two of them USED TO go hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, rock hunting, picnicking, all sorts of fun stuff together. And after they got the TV he got glued to it. She even tried one time putting on her sexiest nightie and standing in front of it...he just leaned around from one side to the other to try and see the TV, finally yelling at him to get out of the way... She went out to the garage, got a sledge hammer, and came back into the house and put the hammer right through the TV screen. It's a wonder she didn't get electrocuted...BUT she did get her husband back! At least until he went and bought another one. Oh, yeah...we have lost a whole lot of community since we've gone "techie"! One time Sandy's boys got to acting out things they saw on TV...like Power Rangers, maybe? She had some bug spray on top of her fridge, where the boys hopefully couldn't reach it. Charles climbed up there and got it, and sprayed Jonathan in his face, and into his eyes. She called me and told me she was taking him to the hospital, and asked if I would go to her house and get the "Damn TV" out of the house, as she was sick to death of the boys acting out everything they saw on it. I did, and stashed the damn TV in a barn. Later, about the time Bill would have been home from work for awhile, she called and asked me to bring the TV back. She said: "Mom, if he doesn't get to watch HIS TV, he will just go out and buy another one, and we will all have to go hungry because he will spend the grocery money to buy it" Good times...they were no myth. We had them. I remember them well...seems they are lost and gone forever... I do remember that grandparents were loved, respected, revered, and I for one, looked forward to every visit to them. Now we are scowled at, ignored, made fun of, and treated like something that should be scraped off the bottom of the shoes. Am I sorta bitter this morning? Damn straight!
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Post by usotsuki on Aug 11, 2010 10:02:22 GMT -5
Nothing to watch on TV anyway unless you pay out the neck for cable or dish... prolly all for the best.
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Post by ShellyC on Aug 11, 2010 12:18:50 GMT -5
You know, I actually never thought about the TV or puters overtaking REAL community. It is rather ironic that we have been so dumbed down apparently, that folks would rather watch reality TV, about other people..then making real relationships and having community IRL. I guess it really is a loss art sort of speak..unless of course you go out on a hunting trip to find "like minded" people who are looking for the same old time fun times.But then you are running the risk of it turning into a commune/cult. Or people telling you that you are not open minded etc. I am starting to wonder if there really is a difference between commnity and commune/cult? I mean, I use to think there was, but as of lately...I am thinking maybe not. Thank you everyone for helping me think more in depth about these things..
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Post by dangermom on Aug 11, 2010 13:54:18 GMT -5
If you weren’t a middle class (or above) Christian white man, your life sucked in the 1950s. I'm not sure that people back in the 50's thought that. The adults in the 50's had spent their childhoods surviving the Depression and young adult years in World War II. Then the war was over and suddenly there were all these young men back from the war (far more than most other countries had), you could get more education than ever, jobs were everywhere, clothes, cars, and homes were more affordable than ever before, and there were all these new inventions making life easier for most people (instead of the few that had them before the war). We've just been discussing poor Serene's living conditions, but those would not have been uncommon before the 50's. Even if you were black and living under Jim Crow, or female, or whatever, it must have been a huge and surprising improvement. Hardly anyone was starving or getting shot at. Even polio was getting defeated.
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Post by rosa on Aug 11, 2010 14:23:12 GMT -5
There's plenty of documentary evidence from people who thought, during the war, that everything was getting better at home...and then they came home, and it suddenly got worse. Black soldiers were disrespected while they were still in uniform, and an incredible number were physically attacked for not accepting the abuse. Women of all colors were pushed out of the workforce - Black women back into house servant work, White women back home (whether hubby was bringing home his paycheck or not.)
I just read Bill Mauldin's memoir about the immediate postwar years, and the way the young soldiers came home and tried to get reconnected in their communities but were shoved down or pushed out is amazing.
Shelly, that community takes a lot of work, and a lot of doing it with people who aren't like-minded. My neighborhood has it, a little bit, but it can be a lot more rewarding to hang with like-minded people even if they don't live next door (or better yet, convince them to move next door - we have a lot of friends in a 3 or 4 block radius because we all bought houses around the same time and talked up the neighborhood to each other.
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valsa
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Post by valsa on Aug 11, 2010 14:44:31 GMT -5
I don't think the problem is that we're dumbed down. I think the problem is that we're over-connected. We have less down time today than we did 10, 20, or 30 years ago. We're always "on call" and attached to our cell phones, blackberries, computers, etc. Most people don't have the luxury of leaving work at work and just coming home and relaxing. So, to combat the stress, we like to veg out and watch mindless entertainment for a few hours. How is that any different (other than prevalence) than what people have always done? The only difference is that they just had to do it with live performances- don't forget that plays and theater performances (including those that modern society considers "high brow", like Shakespeare) were also performed for peasants. Of course, I’m sure there were people back then who also thought that wasting all that time watching plays was a sign that people were being dumbed down too.
Maybe it’s just that I have no personal experience with cults but, to me, going from “hunting trip with likeminded people” to “cult” would take some massive leaps. I hang out with like-minded friends of mine and we're not a cult. I'm in a few like-minded clubs at my college and we're not cults. I interact with both like-minded and differently-minded neighbors of mine and there's no cult brewing on my block.
People back in the 50s didn’t have today to compare their lives with. Today combines the tools of convenience that the 1950s were just discovering (and more) with the rights for minorities that the 1950s was seriously lacking. While today is not perfect (rights for woman, gays, and racial minorities still have a long way to go), it’s much better than 1950. Likewise, I’m pretty sure 2050 will be better than today (and, no doubt, we’ll have a whole new generation of people who are nostalgic for the “idyllic 2010s”.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 18:22:26 GMT -5
You know, I actually never thought about the TV or puters overtaking REAL community. It is rather ironic that we have been so dumbed down apparently, that folks would rather watch reality TV, about other people..then making real relationships and having community IRL. I guess it really is a loss art sort of speak..unless of course you go out on a hunting trip to find "like minded" people who are looking for the same old time fun times.But then you are running the risk of it turning into a commune/cult. Or people telling you that you are not open minded etc. I am starting to wonder if there really is a difference between commnity and commune/cult? I mean, I use to think there was, but as of lately...I am thinking maybe not. Well my personal experience is that some people want an intensity level from community/friendships that would be satisfied by a cult (or intense controlling church). I have backed away from people over the years whose definition of friendship was just too close for my tastes. I actually don't want people just popping in to chat, or calling me every day. Some people desire friendships where you live in each others pockets. Having teenagers I tend to see that as a teenage girl thing, you spend all day at school together then you rush home to talk to them on MSN.. then you call them, lol. I have some good friends nearby and some good friends further afield.. and I have some very long term friendships made online. It's all disconnected (most of these people don't know each other) and I'm happy with it. It's not the community I longed for in my QF days but I have come to see that as a dependency that was not overly healthy. It's funny people bring up the blackberry, internet thing.. that is one of my pet hates as far as sermons go. The "technology is keeping us apart" sermon, LOL. Every time my husband and I hear it we roll our eyes and it seems it gets trotted out regularly. Life changes. It's easy to focus on things now past (the neighbour dropping in for a chat) and not see new connections right in front of us (friends and family texting us regularly.. FB status's filling us in on stuff we would never have heard before.. the ability to connect on the phone no matter where we are.) Church sermons are always full of laments about how things were better, how we have lost something.. really seems counter productive to me. Why not focus on all we have gained? Why not rejoice in the incredible connectivity we now have? (the answer being because christians need to feel bad so that God can fix it I guess.. though it doesn't have to be that way.) This thread is way sidetracked, LOL..
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Post by nikita on Aug 11, 2010 19:04:30 GMT -5
You know, I actually never thought about the TV or puters overtaking REAL community. It is rather ironic that we have been so dumbed down apparently, that folks would rather watch reality TV, about other people..then making real relationships and having community IRL. I guess it really is a loss art sort of speak..unless of course you go out on a hunting trip to find "like minded" people who are looking for the same old time fun times.But then you are running the risk of it turning into a commune/cult. Or people telling you that you are not open minded etc. I am starting to wonder if there really is a difference between commnity and commune/cult? I mean, I use to think there was, but as of lately...I am thinking maybe not. Well my personal experience is that some people want an intensity level from community/friendships that would be satisfied by a cult (or intense controlling church). I have backed away from people over the years whose definition of friendship was just too close for my tastes. I actually don't want people just popping in to chat, or calling me every day. Some people desire friendships where you live in each others pockets. Having teenagers I tend to see that as a teenage girl thing, you spend all day at school together then you rush home to talk to them on MSN.. then you call them, lol. I have some good friends nearby and some good friends further afield.. and I have some very long term friendships made online. It's all disconnected (most of these people don't know each other) and I'm happy with it. It's not the community I longed for in my QF days but I have come to see that as a dependency that was not overly healthy. It's funny people bring up the blackberry, internet thing.. that is one of my pet hates as far as sermons go. The "technology is keeping us apart" sermon, LOL. Every time my husband and I hear it we roll our eyes and it seems it gets trotted out regularly. Life changes. It's easy to focus on things now past (the neighbour dropping in for a chat) and not see new connections right in front of us (friends and family texting us regularly.. FB status's filling us in on stuff we would never have heard before.. the ability to connect on the phone no matter where we are.) Church sermons are always full of laments about how things were better, how we have lost something.. really seems counter productive to me. Why not focus on all we have gained? Why not rejoice in the incredible connectivity we now have? (the answer being because christians need to feel bad so that God can fix it I guess.. though it doesn't have to be that way.) This thread is way sidetracked, LOL.. Well, first of all I am one of those who had so much community living communally for many years in a cult that I have no desire to go back to that kind of constant contact again. It was fun and since we didn't do TV or movies we had a lot of fantastic conversations and real connections at the time but at some point you just move past the 'dormitory stage' and want time to yourself. And I have actually refused to move into apartments where I noticed over friendly neighbors coming to talk to me as I looked at the place. To me, a neighbor who wants to drop in on me would be a nightmare. I love the internet and cell phones and facebook -- I live a thousand miles away from my kids and ex husband now but I have access to the kids' lives that I never had when I lived in So Cal with them because of facebook. That they let me into their lives (and their girlfriends do too) in this way is very precious to me. I saw them more often when I was down there, but facebook really does keep me connected to them and I know right away when anything is happening even the most trivial things like when they are going dancing or out to the Far Bar or playing soccer or having a great or bad day at work, sometimes complete with instant pictures. That would have been a short mention in a letter or occasional phone call in former days. No, the community is still there but it looks different now. I do think that people need to get the hell off their phones when in social situations and attend to the people in front of them or their kids when they are actually with them. But used properly these things are amazing at keeping us connected to the world around us and the people we love.
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valsa
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Post by valsa on Aug 11, 2010 19:37:13 GMT -5
I'm also one who doesn't want an overbearing community. Granted, this isn't because of any dealings with a cult- I'm just a very, very introverted person. I like my peace, my quiet, and my alone time. Extended social interactions drain me, which is why I communicate with most of my friends and family via computer. Before the invention of the computer, I would have been soul-crushingly isolated.
The only time someone dropped in on me expectedly was when my step-mother came by with my niece (whom I adore) I let her talk to me for a while but she wasn't allowed past the doorway. Though some might think me rude for that, I only play host to those who have been invited.
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