What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?

Sleeping
Productivity
Eating
Waking 
Fasting

CURIOSITY for me is not a spoof, because it attends each bringer of happiness. Sunlight makes me happy even at night when someone else is getting it.  Finished and unfinished business are also the main sources of happiness because that’s all she wrote. Ones and zeroes. My truth, my “spewf”.

What is one word that describes you?

For most of my life I have thought that my names have shaped my life, but more recently I have realized how much I have in common with members of my family, schoolmates, workmates, girlfriends, teachers and mentors.

Plant

I have to admit that I have been aware of my status as an acorn, even a mustard seed, for a long time, and the consideration has also accompanied me equally as long that the potential of seeds is tree. As for the usual end of human life, the earth itself beckons as the place where I will be planted, regardless of oak tree or mustard tree.

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

I would love to be that young girl in the story in the Second Book of Kings, servant of a Syrian general, who tells her employer that he might get rid of his terminal disease by seeking the help of an Israelite prophet. 

This girl grabs my attention as the world spirals downward into successive fragmentations of our increasingly interwoven communities.  Many of us may never see the light of a healing or have the joy of relief from suffering as long as we keep listening to our ethnic, religious, and political pride.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%205:1-3&version=NIV;KJV

What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?

The ritual can happen in bed, or in the kitchen, or any room.  It can happen with written material, with digital media, or quietness with my thoughts.  I have been known to ruin the start of the day by listening to my heart beating and falling asleep for another hour or more.  I love and am perfectly satisfied with beginning any day with gratitude for my loved ones and the whole planet.

I am determined to renounce robotic days.  I prefer to do what impresses me.  I do not like trying to impress myself by the things I do. A ‘good boy’ to myself is the least of my priorities.

I love to let a song, a kiss, the sound of finches or robins, a Bible verse or passage speak to me.  Very often I am subconsciously tagging something simple, a word, a musical phrase, a rhyme, the beating of my heart, anything that might help to shape my day.

Which aspects do you think makes a person unique?

Right now, inside the smooth programming of commercial and cultural ventures, there are intense and criminal plots to digitize millions of human beings. It is my understanding that human beings are unique from head to toe, and I have warmed up completely to the idea that imitating our heroes is a waste of time.  There is only one John the Baptist.  There will never be another Sojourner Truth. The colour of our eyes is not copied onto any other human being.  I believe in extreme uniqueness.

The discovery of finger prints did nothing to dampen racist conspiracies and religious bigotry.  The billions of dollars spent on looking for another Earth might have been put to giving boys and girls all over the planet a chance to put their unique treasures on display and to good practical use.

It is a shameful outrage for the manipulators  of public thought, health and wealth to try to make people gather up and mindlessly mimic the stars and personalities of our times.  The dignity and majesty of unique personhood are often the first elements to be stripped away when people begin to assert their legacy and dreams.  Every combination of human traits and attributes is unique.  Oh my! What will the quantum equations be?  Can the computers handle the complexity?

What makes you laugh?

I snicker, I giggle when a fool thinks a ridiculous proposition is perfectly clear to everyone.  I laugh out loud when I understand  the comedian’s lead  and punch line.  I laugh with my whole body when events fall into place without warning and when nothing seems to work.  I laugh at the person who trips and falls at the same place day after day because they are going to learn the hard way.  I laugh when the rain pours torrentially for forty-five seconds.  I laugh when I hear people say they are lucky to be alive because I know that living is much more than being alive.

Life is funny!

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

When I was reading the Church Fathers I repeatedly ran into Greek words which I realized were perfectly familiar to the original audiences as well as to the first disciples.  My fascination turned to bubbling joy a few years later when I started acing and kept acing every quiz and exam over six semesters of biblical Hebrew and Greek.

Nowadays when others whip out their favourite commentaries and authorities I am both content and productive with the simple unparaphrased sentences. I do little or no beating ’round the bush.

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

My teenage years were turbulent and adventurous.  I had no small gift of learning to play musical instruments.

I had one of these with the box covered with snake skin. I figured out how to accompany my singing.  I thought my masenko was magical.  In one of the family’s moves my one-stringed music maker disappeared from my life.