My Chinese New Year resolution is to blog better.
This was such a popular (and kinda fun) facebook exercise . . . I thought I would add it to my blog. . .
- I love all kinds of music. Currently on my computer one would find . . . Instrumental Southern Gospel Hymns on Hammered Dulcimer . . . David Crowder . . . Jimmy Buffett . . . Beethoven . . . Blind Willie Johnson . . . Paul Simon . . . Chris Tomlin . . . Weird Al . . . Andrea Bocelli . . . Jackie Wilson . . . Sam Cook . . . et. al.
- I once drove 2 hours through Eastern Kentucky mountains in a thick fog with my best friend Mike hanging out the passenger window screaming "LEFT!" or "RIGHT!" based on the edge of the road because I couldn't see the road out the windshield. Yeah, it was stupid, but it has given me a great object lesson for what faith really is.
- All of my best stories start, "This one time, Mike and I. . ."
- I love quality satirical comedy.
- I love people who can make me laugh. They are more precious than gold.
- I was a DJ for a Christian rock hour in high school.
- In connection with #5, I once interviewed DeGarmo & Key on their bus after a concert. Doesn't mean much to a lot of people, but I thought it was my finest moment.
- I once stayed up for 54 straight hours (you guessed it . . . with Mike).
- I wanted to be a Nuclear Engineer when I left high school. I finished college with a B.A. in Religion. God is funny sometimes.
- I love to hear my wife sing.
- I think I have learned more about God from my relationship with my children.
- I was born in Detroit and walked to school nine blocks 4 times a day (at 10 blocks, I could have brought my lunch, but rules are rules, so I had to walk home for lunch and back to school).
- I have had a variety of jobs. I have worked in retail electronics. I have detasseled corn. I have worked midnight stock. I have worked in the produce dept of a grocery store. I have set cams in car transmissions on an assembly line. I have been a janitor. Now, I am a professor.
- When I was a kid I thought Ultraman and Speed Racer were the coolest shows on my 5 channels (in Detroit we picked up more than the traditional 3 . . . there were two local stations).
- I never actually passed chapel when I attended William Carey College (we were required to attend, but it didn't figure in the GPA and wasn't required for graduation so I was one of the 50% of Religion majors who never passed).
- I once almost knocked over Benjamin Netanyahu (after my mentor knocked him into me).
- I celebrated Palm Sunday 2008 standing on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem with a bunch of great students from Shorter College.
- I was a pastor of a small, rural Texas church while I was finishing my Ph.D.
- When I was high school, I told my mother that I didn't want to be a lawyer because I didn't want to go to school that long. Three years later, I then changed my major (my school and my state) and promptly continued in grad school for another 10 years.
- I love to cook.
- I love to buy unusual ties. It doesn't seem to be a rational thing. My ratio of ties to shirts is problem about 10 to 1.
- It is difficult for me to buy things for me. It is VERY easy for me to buy things for others.
- I am a pacifist—not because I think it is more effective or because it is countercultural--mainly because Jesus said to be, and when push came to shove, Jesus was.
- I love meat. However, I am confident, if I had to kill my own meat, I would be a vegetarian.
- I love animals, and if I had another life to live, I would be a marine biologist.
