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Goodbye Jesus

Well, I Made It Through The Xmas Party.


sarahgrace

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Our work xmas party that i was ranting about before was on sunday night. as i expected, it was terrible. the play was the cheesiest, most clichéd, most stereotype-perpetuating piece of work i've ever seen. but with the help of my hidden bottle of gin and my friend to hold my hand when i got too stressed out, i made it through unscathed (although probably more bitter).

 

It was seriously heavy-handed on the evangelism side, more so than last year's... i didn't think it was possible, but there it was. One thing I felt a lot was a really overwhelming sense of guilt for having been party to these kinds of things in the past. It was so bizarre to be there and be on outsider... to know that I was one of the people that they were targeting and hoping to bring into their fold. It felt very awkward and uncomfortable... especially knowing that a couple of years ago i would have been singing in the choir and fervently praying for people to hear the Word of God and come to know Jesus.

 

Yeah... weird. Anyway, just letting you all know how it went.

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Our work xmas party that i was ranting about before was on sunday night. as i expected, it was terrible. the play was the cheesiest, most clichéd, most stereotype-perpetuating piece of work i've ever seen. but with the help of my hidden bottle of gin and my friend to hold my hand when i got too stressed out, i made it through unscathed (although probably more bitter).

 

It was seriously heavy-handed on the evangelism side, more so than last year's... i didn't think it was possible, but there it was. One thing I felt a lot was a really overwhelming sense of guilt for having been party to these kinds of things in the past. It was so bizarre to be there and be on outsider... to know that I was one of the people that they were targeting and hoping to bring into their fold. It felt very awkward and uncomfortable... especially knowing that a couple of years ago i would have been singing in the choir and fervently praying for people to hear the Word of God and come to know Jesus.

 

Yeah... weird. Anyway, just letting you all know how it went.

 

I hear ya, sarahgrace. Don't bother with the guilt trip stuff. Stay away until you feel stronger--unless that hurts your work reputation. It may take awhile, given that your bitterness was deepened even more.

 

I see you live in the Canadian West. I think our country is strong on religious freedom. You might want to check out the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I haven't found out yet if there is a Canadian equivilent of the American FFRF or not. I've been meaning to check it out and haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe someone on here knows the answer. For us isolated heathens living in intense Bible Spots in Canada, the kind of support we get from like-minded people can be life-saving.

 

I used to think all the fundy-promoting stuff was happening south of the border. I haven't seen it yet this year but last Christmas there was a campaign on by a group of Catholic women to put christ back into Christmas. They were selling nativity scene postage stamps to provide an alternative to snowman postage stamps. As though any true-blue Canadian has a problem with snowmen! Who of us as kids didn't love rolling in the snow and making snowmen, snow forts, snow-what-have-you. It's part of being Canadian!

 

But no. They have to "keep up with the Americans" and participate in fundy-promotions. UGH!

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ugh,

I'm so glad I'm not working for christians.

and my expected xmass partys will all be with seculars and pagans and atheists and other such people.

be well and joyfull,

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Yeah, the guilt thing comes with the territory, with realizing what a shitty cult you were a part of for so long. But, it doesn't last forever, and you learn to just forgive yourself and move on.

 

Hang in there, and you will get over it. And you will have your experiences to use to help you understand how evil the cult is and help you stay out of it in the future.

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...and my expected xmass partys will all be with seculars and pagans and atheists and other such people.

be well and joyfull,

 

Yea... you live in Montreal don't you. Jeez... you guys know how to have fun and you have restraunts that one could acutally describe as "good" and some as fantastic.

 

I'm coming down at the end of January for business. I wonder if I can get 5 lbs of Swartz's corned beef and 3 dozen bagels through cargo?

 

The amazing thing, I can never forget about Montreal, is the huge line up each noon at Montreal Hot Dog on Belmont Street up from Canadian Steamship Lines building. How the hell does anyone make a living from selling fries and dogs? Not just any dog, no sir... 'steamed' dogs. And the strange thing is... they were really good. In Montreal you eat them with cabbage of course. The best dogs I've ever had before or since.

 

Any people that can make a dog a delacacy, are darned dazzeling dudes.

 

Nobody eats better on this continent than the Montrealais.

 

I'm soooo sick of Ontario food!

 

You know... it appears to be that anywhere you find a whole lot of protestants... you find a whole lot of crappy food. Could that be because they read their cook books 'litterally'?

 

Mongo

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Nobody eats better on this continent than the Montrealais.

 

I'm soooo sick of Ontario food!

 

You know... it appears to be that anywhere you find a whole lot of protestants... you find a whole lot of crappy food. Could that be because they read their cook books 'litterally'?

 

Mongo

 

You haven't tasted Mennonite food yet. The Mennonite cooks of Waterloo County can't be beat. Their food "schmecks"! Of course, it's tested, tried, and proven by Mennonites and related ethnic groups. It's hard to find people (except for refugees, immigrants, and international students) totally unrelated to Mennonites, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics not from the Pennsylvania German culture. The German culture is so strong in this town it's celebrated with Octoberfest every year. Sauerkraut, beer, and pork sausage is, I think, the crowning glory of it. I never go.

 

I'm more for the roast chicken dinners with mashed potatoes, dressing, and gravy, casarole, salads--both vegetable and fruit salads, finished off with pancakes or doughnuts and maple syrup, or some other rich desert like chocolate squares loaded with sugar and nuts.

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I think out here in Southern Manitoba we have probably one of the highest mennonite concentrations in the country. They're everywhere. You can throw a rock into a crowd and have a 90% chance of hitting a Dyck, Funk, Thiessen, Reimer, Gerbrandt, Klassen, Fehr, etc, etc, etc. I can't eat most of the menno food though 'cause I'm a vegetarian.

 

Anyway, I managed to skip the manager's meeting because I conveniently caught a monstrous cold. When i called th prez this morning i could hardly talk. so I slept instead.

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We don't have Christmas parties at Sprawl-Mart, and the ones I attended with my mom where I used to work were easy to live through. The owners of the nursing home were Jewish, and thus easy on the tolerant side. We would have very secularized Christmas parties. The residents would of course get a chance to get a Christmas service with the Catholic priest or Protestant pastor that served them, but that's about it.

 

I dreaded the Christmas parties I was forcibly dragged to as a child where my father works. Imagine a room full of strange adults that smells of stale coffee, and several drunk-as-shit men taping Christmas decorations to themselves in bizarre and obscene ways. We would each get a present (my brother and I) but we had NOBODY to talk to and neither did my subjugated mother. Of course my dad always wanted to stay as long as possible, leading to hours of poking around an old office building filled with dangerous drinking people and searching desperately for my bored-pissed mother so I could sit in her lap, hide my face, and cry just enough so my dad couldn't find me and yell at me for ruining his office Christmas party. Why the fuck we even had to go was beyond me.

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I am so dreading the Christmas season.

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I think out here in Southern Manitoba we have probably one of the highest mennonite concentrations in the country. They're everywhere. You can throw a rock into a crowd and have a 90% chance of hitting a Dyck, Funk, Thiessen, Reimer, Gerbrandt, Klassen, Fehr, etc, etc, etc. I can't eat most of the menno food though 'cause I'm a vegetarian.

 

You're a Russian Mennonite! Wow! I didn't know that. Well, okay, I don't know what you call yourselves but that is what we Swiss Mennonites in this area call your group of Mennonites. I'm a Swiss Mennonite and in some parts of the land the proverbial rock would hit either a Martin, Weber, or Bowman almost without fail--well over 90% of the time. These names are so common in the group I come from that last names have lost their meaning. Then there is the wider Mennonite community.

 

Do you have any idea of the size of the Mennonite population in your area? In this area, commonly known as Waterloo County though it has spread way beyond, it's in the tens of thousand all told. That's just a wild guess in the dark but it's hardly an exageration. However, I understand the Russian Mennonites settled in a solid block so that they are not infiltrated by other denominations. That is not the case here. In the old country we just lived where we could and the same happened here. I understand in Russia the Mennonites lived in a solid block or settlement and that they do the same here. I'm curious if I'm anywhere near correct.

 

Maybe this is off-topic. I'm just so excited to meet another ex-Mennonite. Sometimes I feel everybody here is an exSouthern Baptist. For a while I attended a General Conference Mennonite Church that had both Swiss and Russian Mennonites. There were Thiessens and Friesens and Flamings and Peters's. There were also Martins and other Swiss Mennonite names like Snyder and Gingrich.

 

Anyway, I managed to skip the manager's meeting because I conveniently caught a monstrous cold. When i called th prez this morning i could hardly talk. so I slept instead.

 

In the summer of 2000 I volunteered for Mennonite Central Committee's Native Gardening program. For orientation, the entire group from across the country got together. I learned to know something about Mennonites from your area, or was it Saskachewan. Whatever, I understand why you are glad to miss a manager's meeting.

 

I don't know if I'm right but I get the impression that Russian Mennonites are a good notch more arrogant than the Swiss Mennonites, if this is possible. Thus, it must be even rougher for the exC.

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So what do the Mennonites believe? I've heard of them but I don't know really anything about them.

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I think out here in Southern Manitoba we have probably one of the highest mennonite concentrations in the country. They're everywhere. You can throw a rock into a crowd and have a 90% chance of hitting a Dyck, Funk, Thiessen, Reimer, Gerbrandt, Klassen, Fehr, etc, etc, etc. I can't eat most of the menno food though 'cause I'm a vegetarian.

 

You're a Russian Mennonite

<snip>

 

 

 

Anyway, I managed to skip the manager's meeting because I conveniently caught a monstrous cold. When i called th prez this morning i could hardly talk. so I slept instead.

 

In the summer of 2000 I volunteered for Mennonite Central Committee's Native Gardening program. For orientation, the entire group from across the country got together. I learned to know something about Mennonites from your area, or was it Saskachewan. Whatever, I understand why you are glad to miss a manager's meeting.

 

I don't know if I'm right but I get the impression that Russian Mennonites are a good notch more arrogant than the Swiss Mennonites, if this is possible. Thus, it must be even rougher for the exC.

 

Oh, sorry to disappoint, I'm not menno by any stretch. never was. I'm of British heritage, and a transplant at that - I didn't even grow up in Manitoba so I don't know nearly as much about the russian mennos as you'd like to know. In fact, you probably know more than me. All i know is that there are a shitload of them out here!! But yeah, I actually grew up just north of Toronto... in terms of what kind of ex-christian i am, well.... i was raised atheist, converted to an evangelical baptist church at 15, got sucked into the Toronto Airport bullshit at 16 and was go-hard charismatic for several years... then started to drift.

 

But yeah, sorry to get your hopes up about the mennonite thing. It's a culture that I can't even begin to understand. I should have been more clear.

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I think out here in Southern Manitoba we have probably one of the highest mennonite concentrations in the country. They're everywhere. You can throw a rock into a crowd and have a 90% chance of hitting a Dyck, Funk, Thiessen, Reimer, Gerbrandt, Klassen, Fehr, etc, etc, etc. I can't eat most of the menno food though 'cause I'm a vegetarian.

 

You're a Russian Mennonite

<snip>

 

 

 

Anyway, I managed to skip the manager's meeting because I conveniently caught a monstrous cold. When i called th prez this morning i could hardly talk. so I slept instead.
In the summer of 2000 I volunteered for Mennonite Central Committee's Native Gardening program. For orientation, the entire group from across the country got together. I learned to know something about Mennonites from your area, or was it Saskachewan. Whatever, I understand why you are glad to miss a manager's meeting.

 

I don't know if I'm right but I get the impression that Russian Mennonites are a good notch more arrogant than the Swiss Mennonites, if this is possible. Thus, it must be even rougher for the exC.

 

Oh, sorry to disappoint, I'm not menno by any stretch. never was. I'm of British heritage, and a transplant at that - I didn't even grow up in Manitoba so I don't know nearly as much about the russian mennos as you'd like to know. In fact, you probably know more than me. All i know is that there are a shitload of them out here!! But yeah, I actually grew up just north of Toronto... in terms of what kind of ex-christian i am, well.... i was raised atheist, converted to an evangelical baptist church at 15, got sucked into the Toronto Airport bullshit at 16 and was go-hard charismatic for several years... then started to drift.

 

But yeah, sorry to get your hopes up about the mennonite thing. It's a culture that I can't even begin to understand. I should have been more clear.

 

 

No problem. I just figured the names you listed are Mennonite names--in fact, I know some of them are.

 

Sage, here are a few websites that may answer your questions:

 

Cond Grebel University College

Mennonite Archives of Ontario Links to many different groups of Mennonites.

Confessionof Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, 1995 here you will find beliefs. Click on each item to learn more about it.

 

Something wierd seems to have happened to this box for posting. I can't figure out how to change font size and style.

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Oh, they are all mennonite names. You'll find hundreds of each of them in a Winnipeg phone book. Just none of them are related to me. ;) I was just responding to your comment about mennonite food and how there are lots of mennonites in the Waterloo area, just saying there are tons here too, and the food's great, but i can't eat most of it. ;)

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