LOL! And what did the cows say?

I haven't read Tielhard de Chardin's work on the Omega Point, but I'll see if I can get around to it. I was visiting a friend last night and he had a copy of the book about Jesus' friend "Biff", said it's great. His girlfriend is reading it right now, but they'll lend it to me when she finishes.

"there's a whole bunch of stuff I could have skipped without missing it at all. If the point was to make me appreciate that I could have skipped it, well, I can assure you that I knew I didn't want to be shot at because I knew intuitively that it would be unpleasant."

Yeah, that's pretty much how my father felt about WWII. He was in a lot of combat there, and he advised me NEVER to involve myself in military service or in a war if I could possibly avoid it. He said it was the biggest, stupidest waste of valuable lives and material that he ever witnessed in his life. Like you, he found himself under fire on the 6th day of the Normany landings, and didn't like it one bit. After that he fought the Germans across France, Belgium, and into Germany...really didn't like them one bit at the time...but discovered after the war that they had had very similar feelings to his own when he started doing business in Germany...and he made good friends there in the 60's and 70's.

What are these situations we land in for...or about...in a spiritual sense? I can't say, but I suppose they could be about any number of different things. One thing I'll say the war did for my father, it made him grow up fast into a very tough, resourceful man and a great survivor. There was very little in life that he was afraid of.

Would I want to go through the same experience myself? Absolutely not. I take his advice about avoiding it as very good advice. Also...I have no desire to kill anyone in this life if I can possibly avoid doing so. My father killed a fair few Germans in combat, but he sure never cared to talk about it at any length. And as for them...I expect their family and friends missed them just as badly as we miss our loved ones when they die. I don't want that to happen to anyone on my account.