Future World

Next week we welcome in the New Year and I hope everyone is doing well and will continue to make plans to have a prosperous life away from the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs). I think this organization truly has had its day and we are seeing that it is losing its influence in our lifetime.

In December 2014, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin canceled New Year's celebrations due to a severe economic crisis, something no one would do in corporate America. They celebrate no matter what is going on in the nation. In 2017, we saw the complete ban in Russia of the JW organization with properties seized and supposedly, the Watch Tower corporation didn't see a penny from those properties they owned in that country. Yes, I have heard about wheeling and dealing with transferring deeds of properties to the JW membership and trying to hang onto what they have and hopefully sell off the properties so the Watch Tower leadership can pocket some money from those sales.

Interesting that a few years ago is when President Putin was supposedly secretly dating a very famous model and she was raised as a JW. The story goes is that her mother was a well-known dancer and had many suitors while she was a JW. She had an affair and claims to not know the father of her now-famous daughter, who she tried to raise as a JW. Yes, I think you know who I am talking about, it's the famous model Naomi Campbell, raised as a JW when she got her break in modeling and was introduced to American audiences when she had a guest spot on the Bill Cosby Show as a teenager. However, when Naomi grew up and became very famous I wonder if she acted almost like Mata Hari the dancer who was also a spy during WWI, and maybe had a small influence on the decision of President Putin in regards to the Watch Tower corporation operating freely in his country. Who knows, but we know the JWs in that country are still free to worship their own god Jehovah but they can't formally meet and have their own Watch Tower properties.

Ex-JW Naomi Campbell may have influence in Russia and
also dated the billionaire Vladimir Doronin.

There is much speculation on the Internet as to what may happen with the Watch Tower corporation, will it go on-line only, will it just shut down completely, will it downsize and struggle on for many years to come? No, I don't know and probably taking a guess would just be futile. Please know that the corporation is wealthy beyond our imaginations and it can morph into anything it wants since it has followers who live in fear day and night of a god of destruction that will kill them if they don't continue to go to the meetings, preach door-to-door, hand out JW literature, having no true friends only comrades fighting together in a figurative war against this ungodly system of things while they plod on in their lives never progressing, never changing, always under a self-imposed struggle over God vs Satan. It's all a sad cycle of self-abuse going nowhere.

I hope you continue to follow me on this blog site and hope you take some time to support me here and purchase my book if you feel so inclined. I think you will find it interesting to see how I was raised in the organization and read about a few of my personal battles and perhaps you can identify with my story.

In any case, I wish you much health and happiness in the coming year and hope you can find the courage to walk out of the JW organization and make 2018 your year to think about moving the JW policies out of your life and more of your own policies into your life. Policies that involve developing friendships at work, with your neighbors, and think about solid plans for a future right here and now on this planet. Stop thinking about some future world that may or may not exist. Whenever you stop and think about where you are in life and about planning for the future or thinking about past mistakes, you are right here and now in the present. What can you do right now that will benefit yourself? Knowledge is power, not rights, doctrines, edicts, or policies that you may rehearse and memorize and are terrified to defy. Stop and think about the here and now, and you will eventually find your heart's desire.

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#happynewyear

The Annual Tree Sacrifice

How many trees die for the Christmas celebrations each year? Christmas is almost a global celebration in this day and age, it's not just in Western culture but everywhere since it means corporations make a lot of money with making it almost a law that everyone celebrate Christmas and start buying tons of products and get them gift wrapped and placed under the mandatory Christmas tree each year.

Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness (JW), I only experienced Christmas when we lived near my "worldly" paternal grandparents who were devout Catholics, and Christmas meant midnight mass and having a devotion and reverence to Jesus Christ who died for all of us, that we may have everlasting life in a paradise. My grandparents had a beautiful large Christmas tree in their home that filled an entire corner of the living room where all the presents under that tree were mine. 

The adults didn't exchange gifts but they had lots of food and wine and I still have a memory of my grandfather giving me a taste of whiskey in a tiny glass. I always had a love of horses from birth and one year I have a particular memory of a gift that was a metal truck horse trailer filled with plastic horses, an arena I pieced together and tiny bales of hay. When we left the celebration and got back home, my present was placed in a closet and I never played with it again. My mother told me it was off limits and to not take it out of the box. For kids, time really means nothing so I don't know how long it was after that Christmas with my grandparents that we packed up and moved away from them and somehow that gift they gave me didn't make it into our boxes for the movers.

Since we were now alone without any worldly influences from non-JW family members, we were fully engulfed in the JW congregation we attended and had no friends or contact with any non-JW on a personal level. Any outsider was treated with cold detachment and politeness, but nothing else. Christmases came and went as I wondered if we would ever have a big Christmas tree in our home like my grandparents had. I never asked my parents about it, I just waited and wondered.

Actual photo of the annual Christmas tree
display at Union Square in San Francisco
that I remember seeing as a child.

My parents liked road trips to San Francisco since we lived in the country and I saw the biggest Christmas tree imaginable in a department store. The storefront was all glass leading up to the top floor, it was all open so you could see all the floors and the Christmas tree was on the ground floor reaching up to the top. I never saw anything more beautiful in my life. I told my mom I wanted to see it from the top and my mother said no, we don't celebrate Christmas. My father said nothing as we walked past the storefront and for some reason, it caused me deep embarrassment that I asked to see the tree top, since I wanted to see all the decorations and what was on the top of the tree. I don't know why I had that reaction but I felt cut to the heart. My mother's response was so cold and mean, like I had said something horrible that other people could hear.

Neiman Marcus, San Francisco, CA.

Now that I have left the JW organization, I have never had a Christmas tree in my own home. I still feel a detachment from the celebration. I don't mind that other people celebrate it and string lights around their homes, it can be very pretty, but I don't care about it. I do get a bit troubled by all the trees that are cut down for the holiday and then are thrown in the garbage like trash. I feel that people have no respect for nature and this annual tree sacrifice should stop, but then I stop and think, why? Why do I feel so upset about that? Why do I feel sorry for the trees? They are cut down and dragged into homes and then dumped in the street or in garbage bins like they were never living, beautiful things. 

I find it extremely humorous when I read about people so devoted to their non-belief in God, they believe in nothing, no Higher Power, no Grand Creator, nothing, not even in any sort of afterlife, yet some go nuts if they can't have that Christmas tree in their home whether they have JW family members or not who would object to such a display. Even some ex-JWs who have left God behind race out and buy that Christmas tree. I consider myself a spiritual person and do believe in a Creator of all this but not of the Christian God of the Bible, however, Christmas holds no special meaning for me, I can take it or leave it.

But then I wonder, well, I guess the Christians have adopted this time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ and it's really only a secular holiday to get you to separate your hard earned cash from your wallet and has little if anything to do with spirituality. So there are always two sides to every coin.

What am I doing this year? No, I still do not want a Christmas tree in my home, not even a small one, it holds no value or meaning of anything to me. It's just a tree sitting in my house that I have to clean up and haul it outside to be picked up by the garbage men come the New Year. I do enjoy the colors of the season, scented candles, and gathering with friends or taking a long trip to the snow and renting a cabin and enjoying hiking and sitting by the fireplace at night. 

I like this time of the year with the Winter coming and I cherish the memories I have of my paternal grandparents and of their honest and sincere kindness and religious devotion at Christmas and going to mass. I remember kneeling with my grandmother at her altar in her home with small porcelain idols of the Virgin Mary and tiny religious paintings of the Christ, as she taught me how to pray on the rosary with each bead a separate prayer and her love remains a strong memory that makes me smile to this day.

#christmas  #jehovahswitnesses

#jesuschrist  #holiday  #wintersolstice
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