Will

“And this is one of the most interesting things about pharmakeia. People claim to be enlightened by the experiences, but when you ask them what they learned, you get saccharine clichés about the oneness of everything and how we just need to love everyone. Not exactly enlightening.”
― Lewis Ungit, The Return of the Dragon : The Shocking Way Drugs and Religion Shape People and Societies

“I constantly warn my assistants to guard against worship environments in which people can hear the voices of other audience members. That is why one of the most wonderful achievements of our time is the combination of sophisticated instrumentation and voice amplification. We have elevated accompaniment to an art form, added attractive worship teams, and created a worship atmosphere in which no one need hear her own voice or that of her neighbor. The entire audience—for now it has become an audience, not a congregation—can now lip synch their praise, with confidence that our Enemy will hear, and approve of the worship being offered onstage.”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“In the worship discussions it will therefore be important for us to convince the leadership that they are seeking unity when they are really seeking uniformity. Some of our most significant victories in the last few centuries have been when churches abandon the search for unity (a difficult and elusive search) in favor of a policy of uniformity. Unity can only emerge from the Enemy working in the hearts of individuals. A leadership can impose uniformity. Unity has, at its core, a common conviction and celebrates differences in expression. Uniformity emphasizes appearance—as long as we all meet together and sing the same songs, we must be unified. Uniformity says that our various beliefs about the Enemy can differ or even be nonexistent as long as we do not question the decisions”
― T.G. Brown, The Wormwood Archive

“When I was single I learned over dinner, careful not to drip tomato sauce upon discussions about the sprinkling of blood on the Temple altar.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir