Not too long ago, I was asked by a publisher if I might consider reviewing a children’s book. We corresponded a little bit and I said I would take a look. If I liked the book, I’d say so, and I’d run it by our little boy as well to see what he thought. Well, I got the one book, but then I also received two more books directly from the author. They were all signed, with the date, and…
I’m in a mood for Flaubert. I love the way he searched endlessly for le mot juste (the exact – uniquely correct – word, the most precisely accurate language). Sometimes he found the words that evoked and carried more truth than any fact could possibly do. Love art. Of all lies, it is the least untrue. For none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and language is a cracked…
Fun with Watchtower covers, from TruthBook Blue (this is number ten in a series!) [youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=4l3WNTu1oZk[/youtube] If you read this blog, I am quite sure that you already have an idea of what I might have to say about the following question: Does “the faithful and discreet slave” endorse independent groups of Witnesses who meet together to engage in Scriptural research or debate? This question – and its answer by the Governing Body – appeared in the September “Q&A” section of…
It’s such a familiar narrative now, and it’s almost comforting to me to see more and more people testifying to it – to know that what I observed and experienced is pretty much the same from congregation to congregation, and not just a matter of my own family or community in the Jehovah’s Witnesses: the fantasies of a paradise earth devoid of all but other Jehovah’s Witnesses, the fatalism toward the coming apocalypse and the lack of engagement in the…