What are your daily habits?
Deep dives into international politics, songwriting, and looking for opportunities to provide accurate translations of the Bible, especially popular passages and verses are my most time-consuming habits. They have not changed for three decades.
At one point spiritual matters were a function of going with the flow of my parents and the wider family, but then a conscious wave began with cultural awareness, the pull of hormones and the thirst for knowledge.
By the time of my late teen years I had begun to explore the metaphysical realm, clairvoyance telepathy and the harmony of individuals and communities. A gift for music and having a way with languages seemed to funnel my interests into sacred writings, and eventually the study of theology. So for me, spirituality is like the old grandfather clock, ticking away its steady beat about values, pleasures and responsibilities.
How important is spirituality in your life?
Spirituality is 3rd of 4 or 2nd of 3 of the well-defined areas of human experience and striving.
Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
It has a name that describes EVERY ripe fruit. Sugar apple is never NOT sweet. Called sweetsop because the inside resembles soursop this fruit used to be in many gardens, front-yard and/or backyard. If only AI would break through into taste and smell, you’d be wowing to Sugar Apple. Only the unique friends, with whom one shares a sugar apple in part or whole, would be missing.
What countries do you want to visit?
Getting to know Earth
What are you passionate about?
My home , my hope, and my heritage define me. Were I not all in for them I would be a coward and a likely deceiver. Recently I heard a commentator on television ridiculing people who combine their employment with passion. His view was that work cannot be passion. I suppose that helps explain why robots replacing us in so many places is just the kind of robotic thing we do for money. Working without passion, to me, sounds like prostitution. The turmoil in societies all over the globe are like our appointment with death. Passion for flags, tribe and religion are going to define individuals and communities for a while yet.
I am all in for the earth and the community in which I live. I am all in for the people who shaped my thinking. Our consumer society lives on stupid slogans like “drill, baby, drill” without a thought about the finite resources of the planet. Beguiling people with the possibility that amazing technological advancements will contribute to humanity’s flight to a new planet home is one of our doomed fantasies that is driven by unprecedented financing and passion. Maybe we will just repeat among the stars the colonial and imperial expansions we have seen by European powers. I think we can see that passion for native land, tribal and political tradition and religious dogma as destructive and they have always powered the decline of the human race.
What is your favorite season of year? Why?
Easter Monday is a statutory holiday when the beaches are packed with people in love with life and beauty. Life hardly gets better than all day fun at the beach. Easter Sunday is the reminder that people have access to liberation, Easter Sunday also brings a sobering reminder that all people need to be freed from fear and meaningless lives The full moon aspect of Passover comforts me with the facts of the ebb and flow of life. In this sense Passover comes every month as the moon waxes to full and wanes to new. I like the exceptionalism of Good Friday with its unique action undertaken by someone other than me as the foundation of my sense of value and destiny. It stands apart from the usual confessions about a great hero and/or God, because I get to simply rely on and celebrate a truly incredible act of love.
Passover is originally a day to commemorate exit from the clutches of bondage. It is a Jewish festival and it has, through practice in both Judaism and Christianity, gotten rolled into a multiple day remembrance. When a Jew talks about Passover he means the 8 day period that runs from Passover Day to the last (or the seventh) day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Easter for me and many Christians includes Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday.
What quality do you value most in a friend?
If the world turned dark, cold and toxic I would need light, heat and a healing tonic. If I knew of a world where darkness, cold and toxicity had set in threatening life I would want to be there for that world’s residents. The sun, our friend, perfectly positioned to light and warm this planet, is the kind of friend I value and want to be.
It used to be perfectly ok to be in the sunlight all day but now that is dangerous. Friends can also be a bit much too, so the right amount of exposure to a reliable friend is exactly what I value most. I call that metered reliability.
What personal belongings do you hold most dear?
If someone could take from me my guitar, my Greek New Testament, and my Hebrew Bible I would grieve and mourn, but I will also be certain that the very memory of what those things have contributed to my life will dry my tears and embrace me with perfect comfort. My guitar needs fingers, so they are most dear too. The two halves of the Bible, sacred to hundreds of millions worldwide, need a hungry and curious mind, so my mind, as designed, is on that list of most dear. After all, thinking is a thing too.
Unlike Jimi Hendrix, who on discovering his lover was no longer residing at the Red House, said “I can still play my guitar”, I, without sacred text and guitar, would play the memory.
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 