Well, he
isn't necessarily my best friend. He is
more like one of the many “brothers from another mother” I've been honored to know since meeting and marrying George, the joy of my life.
Due to the very worst of circumstances beyond our control, we will not be able to attend. But we
will be there in spirit, sharing our sincere congratulations on this happiest
of occasions.
As if it were
yesterday, we remember him attending our wedding nearly 25 years ago. Like
George is to me, Scott is a gift--one of the most noble of men. He deserves the very finest of everything and
has found in his soulmate a match truly Heaven sent. We know that your bond will endure in the
best of times and in the worst. Treasure each other for you are truly blessed.
So with heartfelt celebration, enjoy your day and your new life together in faith, hope, and love.
A WWII veteran, “Mr. C.” became a father figure for me when
my own dad died far too young.
Mr. C could be authoritative and intimidating. He also constantly talked about his war
experiences which really turned-off this hippy-wannabe-child of the early 70’s.
One day though, Mr. C told a chilling tale about capturing
some Nazi troops. “They were just boys,”
he recalled. As the American officer in
charge, he ordered them to line up and throw down their weapons. Not a single German soldier moved.
Mr. C immediately began his search,
and as suspected, the very first Nazi was still armed. Mr. C shouted in perfect German, “I said,
throw down your weapons!” In the next
instant, my current surrogate father, then military leader instinctively disarmed,
shot, and killed that boy for disobedience. Without any further hesitation, the rest of
the prisoners finally complied.
At that moment, I realized
Mr. C wasn’t bragging about his exploits. His story-telling was confessional. He wasn’t proud but more agonized. He was in an extraordinary, dire situation
where it was either kill or be killed.
I finally realized the stress he
must have been under during his tenure as an officer in WWII--all the nightmares he lived, witnessed and endured: heartbreaking, mind altering, and life changing. Mr. C managed to survive somehow but not without deep and everlasting
invisible wounds.
Once a French friend asked me,
“Don’t Americans realize war is bad?”
I guess some of us don’t.
"Killing is often misrepresented on film as being far easier than it is. In reality, the “duty” is mentally taxing, leaving most soldiers physically ill in the moment and often haunted by nightmares for a lifetime. Being responsible for ending the life of another human is a significant source of trauma...;"
"Never mind the outspoken Christian leaders who reject the Big Bang and human evolution; nearly 70 percent of rank-and-file evangelicals in the United States say they don't see religion and science as being totally at odds, a new survey found.
'Although many politicians and the media at large portray evangelicals as distrustful of science, we found that this is more myth than reality,' Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University who orchestrated the survey, said in a statement...."
"Ecklund and her colleagues think the perception that evangelical Christians are unfriendly to science might hinge on just a few of these hot-button issues, like creationism. The evangelicals who saw science and religion as incompatible often fixated on human origins, the study found. One survey participant who was part of a largely white evangelical congregation in Houston, Texas, explained this point of view to the interviewers:
'As a Christian, creation — really it's all or nothing. Either the entire Bible's right or it's all wrong. Either everything inside of it is 100 percent accurate, or none of it is. So if creation could be disproven … So just completely take that away, that just devastates my entire way of life, my entire being. … Nobody wants to change. Christians don't want to change, and atheists don't want to change....'" "...Science and Religion Can Co-Exist," Megan Gannon, Live Science, March 17, 2015.
