| Author |
Message |
Plain Patti
| | Posted on Thursday, January 27, 2000 - 7:55 pm: |     |
Careful, Allenette.
Too much happiness is a sure sign of an unconsecrated life! :)
My former SDA church reminded me of this joke:
Horse walks into a bar,
Bartender says,
"Why the long face?"
I think we should probably behave now.
My best friend and I used to sit in church together (whenever her parents would let us) and pass around notes that said things like:
"Look at the mouse tracks on the ceiling."
It was quite an oddity to see SDAs looking up!
OK, I will go before I get banned.
Grace and peace,
Plain Patti |
Jude the Obscure
| | Posted on Thursday, January 27, 2000 - 8:28 pm: | |
Allenette and Plain Patti,
Do you think Jesus ever told jokes? I'm thinking of Luke 13:31,32, NIV. "At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, 'Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.' He replied, 'Go tell that fox, "I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my toal."'"
Sly humor?
Jude |
Lynn W
| | Posted on Friday, January 28, 2000 - 10:14 am: | |
"Too much happiness is a sure sign of an unconsecrated life!"
This sounds like an Ellen White quote for sure. |
Plain Patti
| | Posted on Friday, January 28, 2000 - 1:32 pm: | |
That was my infamous Ellen impression.
Here is another:
I have been shown that many of our people waste their precious time in frivolous pasttimes and the pursuit of shallow pleasure. Time spent in joviality and reckless gaity serves no purpose other than to satisfy the demands of a base and unconverted heart. It is time robbed from God, from the study of His Word, from diligent soul-searching, and from prayerful meditation on heavenly things. The angels hide their faces when the professed people of God show disrespect for the holy precepts by participating in shallow and frivolous pleasures. Oh, that they could comprehend the magnitude of their sinfulness when they laugh and make light of matters on which their eternal destiny depends! Oh, that they could realize what a fearful thing it is stand in the presence of a holy God!
There. How's that? |
Jude the Obscure
| | Posted on Friday, January 28, 2000 - 2:13 pm: | |
Allenette,
Methinks you, you PK you, may have been a wee bit ironic when you posted,
"And.....of course this would NEVER, EVER, apply to [a SAD] minister....."
I think so because I'm a PK too, and I know of a minister (I'll let you figure out the denom) -- whom I'll call Mort -- who served on the staff of what I will call Temperance mag.
For all of you cyberholics out there who weren't close enough to the great "soul-reaping machine" [now don't do anything too clever with that term, Allenette] or who are too young to remember that publication -- may it eternally RIP -- Temperance was teetotaler rag.
Meaning it was okay, de riguer almost, to be INTEMPERATE with calories -- e.g. grow a Texas watermelon belly then known as a "GC front." But you couldn't even be TEMPERATE with alcohol -- e.g. no petit crystal goblet of chardonnay with dindin, 'cause "the wine of the wrath of God" is what "the great whore of Babylon" quaffs. Not to mention it destroys neurons -- a charge, incidentally, never even remotely substantiated by medical research.
Back to Mort: I've known him since we were both teenage "consciencious objectors in training" at a national church medical cadet corps camp (please note, SAD church cyber-attorneys, the lower-case initials). Mort's "outta the church" now and into the health-care business for himself. But I remember when he as a security guard at one of the largest campgrounds -- may it also eternally RIP -- in the NA denom used to smuggle in booze. And not just beer either, hard stuff. If I remember correctly, he specialized in what Russian connoiseurs, no hypocrites they, nosiree, call wadka.
Yes, the grounds were completely surrounded by an arrogant chain-link fence with uppity gates guarded by the few, the proud, the young stalwarts such as Mort with, I kid you not, white pith helmets and arm bands with big black CP (Camp Police) letters on a white background. (Wipe that smirk off your face, Allenette; they had to keep the maniacodemonic Shepherd's Rods out, you know. I mean, you would almost have expected Dur Fueher himself to arrive at any moment, mine kampfing all over the place and reveling in mass sieg heils and drooling to inspect your ... well, never mind what.)
Instead, back to Mort: The young, proud stalwart got "circumsized" (ordained) and served for a looong time on the Temperance editorial staff. But he never, nosiree never, neglected the nosegay, if you know what I mean. Still doesn't. Long after he had "left the church" he told me that he had always secreted a liberal supply in his desk at work. Yup, he swelled till he was popping his buttons with pride over what he had "gotten away with" all those years. Never put on excess baggage, though; he was actually a not-too-shabby-bad marathon runner.
And Mort's only ONE example among so many it would make your brain float, and not from the sauce either. And so, yes, Allenette, you rascal PK you, you WERE being ironic, weren't you?
"Ah, yas," as W.C Feilds, that great rosacia-nosed debunker of hypocrasy, reportedly still alive and drunk in Oakland, might say, "Once a SAD, not always a SAD; but once a PK, always a PK." Sorry, Allenette.
Or, as Charlie Dickens' Tiny Tim, of "Christmas Carol" renown, actually did say, at least in fiction, "God bless us, every one!" And that means YOU too, Allenette!
This whole SAD hypocrisy thing reminds me of Romans 2:17-24, NIV:
"Now you, if you call yourself a Jew [SAD]; if you rely on the law [27PFB] and brag about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth -- you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself: You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols [rage against the evils of Mammon], do you rob temples [or church treasuries, as in the Falkenberg and Davenport fiascoes and innumerable others]? You who brag about the law [as Mort regularly did in Temperance], do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: 'God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles [non-SADs, as in the LA Times, the Washington Post, etc.] because of you.'"
So stars in your crown, Allenette, for that all-too-home-hitting joke.
And speaking of fiction, as far as this story goes, any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Heh, heh.
And bless not just Allenette alone, either. Bless all of you who think Jesus might have had a sense of humor, might have gone to parties, might have associated with gluttons and prostitutes and tax-collectors and wineos, might -- unlike the dour John the Baptist -- have come AS GOD HIMSELF into the world eating and drinking, and maybe not just Adam's ale either, might even have actually changed H2O into -- gasp -- something a wee bit stronger and redder. And so host a toast to Jesus of Nazareth!
Nor go thou gentle into SAD night. Rather,
Rage against the dying of the gospel light,
Jude |
Lynn W
| | Posted on Friday, January 28, 2000 - 2:31 pm: | |
Now don't be to hard on Mort. Perhaps he was doing research so he could write from experience.
??? |
Jude the Obscure
| | Posted on Friday, January 28, 2000 - 2:46 pm: | |
Actually Mort and I have always been friends. We've never exchanged a harsh word, and although I did resent him when he was "in the church" and imbibing and I was also "in the church" but not imbibing, I don't resent him any more. I remember one time when we were both working "for the church" he visited me in my office. We were talking about drugs, because a couple of people who worked in shipping had been caught smuggling drugs up from Mexico, where we had a branch. I was shocked at the news, but when I told Mort, he smiled that crazy-crooked smile of his and said, "Come on, Jude, where's YOUR stash?" That's when I forgave him, not because I had a stash -- because I didn't -- but because he showed me my own holier-than-thou attitude. And so I've always been grateful to Mort for that. And, in the words of Star Trek's immortal science officer Spock, "May he live long and prosper."
Old Mort!
Blessings,
Jude |
Cas
| | Posted on Saturday, January 29, 2000 - 7:14 am: | |
What a great way to start out the day! Before I saw the name I knew it had to be a post from Jude writing about Mort and camp.
Jude, Please keep up the good work, you are such an inspiration, a major joy to read your posts! I am becoming more and more curious as to what you do? Are you a writer? Should be if not!
God Bless us all. |
Allenette
| | Posted on Saturday, January 29, 2000 - 12:02 pm: | |
Well, I am going to import (export?) the PK/campmeeting part to the PK thread that needs revitalizing, on aToday (with credit given of course) Boy do I remember the fear and loathing accorded those Shepherd's Rods at campmeeting time (In my case, Union Springs Academy, mid 60's, NY state) You would have thought they were ALIEN KIDNAPPERS! The local police were always called to send them on their way and to their credit, they always went peacefully, perhaps to give the SDA head honchos less to crow about later?
Yeah, the good ole Temperance magazine, the one with the pictorial drug guides so you could see which pills were "better" to take than others....ooops....giving away my age now! :-) |
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