What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?
We use our experiences to make sense of the path we are on, but sometimes completely new destinations and new companions become central to our agenda. Then the comfort and confidence we expect and are accustomed to are hard to find.
We can make sure we have spiritual, mental and physical refuges when life’s turmoil seems to be in every lane. Live joyfully and confidently.
What’s your top tip to be successful in life?
Far too many humans never grow up, and the world is caught in the vices of juvenile pseudo-luminaries. Night life, with its scarce moonlight, has not been able to properly define success. Success, to be identified, needs the light of day. It is shallow and short-lived if its contributors are handrails and training wheels. There comes a time when the child needs no escort to school, and the parents know their supervision of the child ends, and the child’s greatness is in the child’s hands.
Never stop growing your grasp of knowledge, your grace to others, and your greatness.
What’s a book, movie, or TV show that you wish you could experience again for the first time?
This title belongs to a book, my sister’s, which I peeked at over five decades ago. I am now recognizing that it was the most likely spark for my personal obsession with flight. I do not mean aircraft. I mean flying without wings or other attachments.
I fly in my dreams, in my songwriting, in my pursuit of life-changing truth, and in my imagination of what our world might become.
We have found a lot of ways to identify ourselves with the demands of the Old Covenant and even sometimes try to align ourselves with people who are in touch with evidence of the promises, but this is a fantasy that flies in the face of the great icon of faith, Abraham. We glibly say that we commit ourselves to the ten Commandments as the foundation of morality, and then we go on to add, according to our own evaluation, festivals, food restrictions, and golden rules. While many of the tenants in the Old Testament and under the old Covenant are accompanied with consequences or sanctions. The phases of life are by design, and so are the solutions of life’s problems. Let us consider that the phasing out of the sunlight brings a clean slate to people who have become unclean under various rubrics of the Covenant, and discover whether we have phased out of the truth.
There were several types of uncleanness that an Israelite in the camp under Moses might have experienced. I will list a few. Ancient Israel appears in sync with the easy solutions repeatedly.
With respect to all of these categories of uncleanness, we find the use of water and simply waiting for sundown ushered the defiled into the arena of clean again. Here is a typical scenario of the transition.
Then the priest shall wash his clothes, and he shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, and the priest shall be unclean until the even. (Numbers 19:7)
Towards the end of the Tanakh, in Haggai, the prophet is prompted to ask priest a diagnostic question about the transfer of cleanness on uncleanness, and they fail miserably. They do not understand how the thing works.
Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. (Haggai 2:13) Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean. (Haggai 2:14)
Christians are not better off looking for miracles rather than waiting for sundown, and we are not justified in carrying guilt over external defilements (it makes no sense to ignore a bodily discharge) that require divine atonement. Aligning with this mismanagement of the solutions we find ourselves phasing out the wrong things and majoring in minors. As Jesus puts it, we find ourselves straining out tiny flies but swallowing camels. Surely there is enough sundown to deal with uncleanness.
What’s a common misconception people have about happiness?
A common misconception people have about happiness is that it can be achieved by accumulating objects that bring delight or satisfaction. Of course that is happiness, but it is transitory because it prepares the field for futility and emptiness when the objects disappear. A variation of this arrangement is that happiness is merely the feeling and that feeling can be experienced at will through chemical means. This approach leads to abuse. Happiness then may be seen and experienced under any of life’s circumstances. Happiness is an emotion and also an attitude. Might I be happy at the funeral because I met the deceased’s son or daughter?
What’s a cultural tradition from another country that you wish existed in yours?
Tables seem to work against the nourishing effects one expects at dinner time. Even the Greek word for the posture at meal time is fascinating.
συνανάκειμαι – I recline, I sit with (to eat) contains two prepositions, sun and ana.
What are the biggest mistakes people make when visiting your country?
Here are two related mistakes. Immigration and mentally laziness. Immigration has certainly proved itself to be the catalyst of humanity’s most momentous ventures. The variations of humanity tell us that people have been on the move: visiting and exploring.
Turning off one’s brain is going to land a person in stagnation. That is a huge mistake, even though there is a sort of shut down at night when we sleep. Visiting a country and planning to stay without a proper invitation is a humongous error. These two mistakes seem to happen quite frequently.
What’s a song that always puts you in a good mood?
Robert Desta Marley
I’m a living man
I’ve got work to do
So if you’re not feeling happy
And you must be blue
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 