Based on an Internet meme that ran through Facebook a few years ago…
On most nights as I lay down to go to sleep the last thought to go through my head is that one day I will die. For the past several years my response to this has been to acknowledge it as fact and to think that were it to happen while I am asleep, I won’t know or care.
I have a Russian godson named Nikita. He lives in Germany now and I’ve not seen him in eight years.
In my adult life every cat I have chosen to live with as a pet (life companion?) has been black. At one time all of my clothes and my furniture were black too so that the cat hairs would be less visible.
I am the oldest of three, followed by a sister and a brother. Since I left home my parents’ chosen family has grown to include two adopted children and a foster child. Though I recognize and accept them as my parents’ children, I have trouble seeing them as my siblings.
I hated all fruits and vegetables until well into my 20’s. One day I discovered that I liked raspberries. Since then I’ve been re-tasting and reclaiming all of the fruits and vegetables I had written off.
A couple of years ago it struck me that though I’m getting a lot older I still feel like the same high school kid inside. Most of the accomplishments in my life that people think of as "success" have been experiments or games for me (with my own internal rules and sense of what’s good enough). When I expressed this to a retired friend, he told me that this feeling never really goes away and that most folks are just scared to death to admit that they still feel like kids inside.
When I grow up I want to be a queer theologian.
I have been inside a Russian "closed city," and two objects of Russian state security that are normally off limits – a hydroelectric dam and a radio station. I got up at 4 AM to go broadcast Melissa Etheridge and Collective Soul on Irkutsk radio as I talked about academic exchange programs.
All the shirts in my closet hang with the buttons facing right.
My favorite ice cream flavor of all time is Bruster’s almond divinity. (Even in my everyday life I can’t get away from theological references…)
When I was 17 I flipped my car and walked away without a scratch. As I ran down the country road to the nearest house to call my parents, what I can only describe as a black, human-shaped silhouette ran along beside me until I approached the house, at which point it veered to the left and off through a field.
I cry every time E.T. gets left behind on earth by the mothership.
I’ve spent significant time in the Southern Baptist, non-denominational Charismatic, Metropolitan Community Church, Episcopal and Mennonite traditions. Each has shaped something of who I am and provided pieces for the jigsaw puzzle of my life and call.
I’ve built my last five desktop computers myself. Next time I’m very tempted to buy an HP business machine.
I faked my way through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in college, but read it on my own the following summer. I thought I’d go insane before it was over and have been a little touched ever since.
The greatest influences on my spiritual development have been my parents, the Church, Master Yoda, my friend Sam, James Alison and the rediscovery of Eastern Orthodoxy.
When I was a child my favorite color was orange. I don’t have a "favorite" color now.
I’ve been denied entrance to two countries in my life: Latvia and Russia. The Latvians held me for 12 hours in detention where I smoked and chatted with 18-year-old conscripts until they sent me home. The Russians put me on the same plane I’d just flown on from New York City. Both of those were long days…
Sci-Fi’s remade Battlestar Galactica is my favorite show, perhaps of all time. (Sorry, George Lucas. I believe it was Jar Jar Binks that caused me to abandon all hope.)
When I was young I dissected specimens in my biology kit with great interest. In high school I had to work up the nerve for two days to start cutting on my fetal pig. Since my father’s first angioplasty I get weak at the sight of blood.
I lost 70 pounds when I lived in Novosibirsk. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be that thin again.
I randomly buy shower scrubbies in hot pink, fluorescent orange and whatever other color catches my eye and stirs my inner fear of being called a sissy. It’s my house dammit and I’ll do what I please. 😉
When I was little I fell and cut open my forehead. When I went to get stitches the military doctors covered me with a sheet with a hole where they would be doing the work. I remember the sheet being lowered over me and then I remember watching myself from across the room, kicking under the sheet as I lay strapped to the examination table.
My favorite music comes from Hillsong Australia and probably the B-52’s.
I miss my friends who are scattered around the world. If I won the lottery I would take a year to relax and visit everyone before paying for my own doctoral program to ensure I studied where I wanted with whom I wanted…
