The Giant Sucking Sound

I heard the news today of the passing of Ross Perot.  Although only 5 foot 6 inches tall, he was a giant of a man.  I had once read his book, entitled, "On Wings of Eagles" about Perot putting together a team to rescue some of his EDS employees from a Tehran prison.  On the drive home today, I learned some other notable things about the man that made me think. 

Now, I preface this post with a statement that Ross Perot was not perfect.  He was a man with failings and shortcomings like all of us, but I think we do a disservice, especially today, when we judge people in the past by today's standards or when we negate a lifetime of goodness by focusing on the negative in people.  If all were held to that standard, well, we could honor no one, for we all fall short.

First, I learned that Ross Perot believed that family meals were a sacred time.  He insisted that the family eat together, and he would sit at the head of the table and say grace, thanking the Creator for His Goodness and Mercy. 

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I think it is important to place family meal togetherness as a priority, especially in our busy world.  It is a beautiful thing to humble yourself and be thankful for your food, your sustenance, your blessings, and realize that it did not come by the sweat of your brow or from money you spent that you are partaking in a meal, but by the provision of a benevolent God.

You see, Ross Perot despite achieving tremendous success and being a billionaire, started from humble beginnings.  He was raised in East Texas in Texarkana and his upbringing shaped him.  When he was 25 years old, he dug his father's grave with a shovel and filled it in order to honor his dad.  He was frugal.  A story that made me chuckle is that he entered the U.S. Naval Academy at age 19 and when sworn in, he was given several pairs of shoes and a dozen sets of underwear.  Up to that point he had never had more than one pair of shoes and three pair of underwear at one time.  Perot said, "This was possibly my first example of government waste."

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Later, he brought to our national consciousness the subject of waste.  I had to laugh as I thought about how we are frugal, too!  We waste nothing!  We compost everything.  We aren't hoarders, but the only things that go into the trash are items that can't be shredded and composted.  We produce very little garbage.  We feed our soil and even feel guilty on vacation when we throw away a banana peel!  We wash and re-use zip loc bags, plastic forks and spoons and plastic sour cream containers.  Stretching a buck is important.

Another thing I remember about Perot is his charts and graphs.  He had a keen ability to be able to communicate things in a simple fashion that anyone could understand.  In fact, I think he would always say, "It's that simple." as he would finish a point.  He was the one that brought attention to the nation about the need for balancing the budget and the dangers of NAFTA.  Remember "the giant sucking sound?" 

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I've always believed in the following Bible verse and have been averse to debt from a personal standpoint.:

Romans 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 

I think it works on a national standpoint as well. 

I believe that Ross Perot loved his country, saw trouble brewing and wanted to sound the alarm.  He wanted to serve.  His son said it best when speaking of his father.  As quoted HERE: Perot Jr. said his dad truly loved the country, and that’s why he ran for president, “It wasn’t for personal gain,” he said. “He was a businessman, frustrated by what was going on, and wanted to help fix the country.”

Good, Simple Food (Part 1)

“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.”
― Wendell Berry

Mealtime is a special time.  Today many people eat in front of the television, or in their cars, or on the run, or gobble something down quickly while reading or surfing the Internet and either eat alone or ignore the other people that they may be eating with.  I don't get it.  I think suppertime, especially, is a sacred time - a time to hold hands across the table and thank God for blessing us with our health, our family togetherness, and asking a blessing over the food that He's provided for us and asking a blessing for the hands that grew the food and for the hands that prepared it. Somewhere along the way, mealtime became a task instead of an event.  We made meals just another job and ceased to be thankful for the meal and ceased enjoying conversing with one another task while we savored the flavors of a home-cooked meal.

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Mealtime also became something that would be foreign to our forebears who worked hard to produce the food they ate.  Many times when we eat (as Wendell Berry points out in the quote above), we're eating processed food that is so far removed from its natural state that it is more of an industrialized factory product than an agricultural product.  This transformation of the 'ceremony' of mealtime into a job and the meal itself from a natural product to a factory widget has taken a toll on our lives from both a relational and a healthy standpoint.

We should be talking more during meals, learning from one another, discussing current events, and taking an interest in each other's lives.  Asking simple, crazy questions like, "If money was no object and you could travel anywhere on the planet, where would you go?" around the table and then listening and commenting as each person answers provides great conversation.  Slowing down, putting down the phone or the computer or the game and actually talking with one another allows us to reconnect with our families and build a family legacy.

One thing that we've discovered since we're trying to raise the majority of the food that we place on our tables, is that we're more thankful for our food.  When you grow it, you know the time that it took to milk the cows, gather the eggs, harvest the vegetables, and plan and cook the meal.  You are thankful to the Creator because a lot went into getting it to your fork.  You had to overcome hardships with weather, pests, predators and crop failure in order to eat.  When you really understand this, it makes you really thankful and you realize that He is the Source for all we have.  As a society, we don't know the farmer and many times the food is coming from across the globe.  The distance from farm to table has made us less thankful, I think, as a people.

Fresh from the Farm

This year, for example, we had unseasonably cold weather that ruined our cauliflower crop.  We absolutely love oven roasted cauliflower with garlic.  I'm telling you it is like candy!  Well, they'll be none this year.  The freezing conditions turned the ripening cauliflower heads to brown mush.  They weren't ready to harvest prior to the freeze or I would have picked them all early.  Such a shame.  I clipped the plants off and fed them all to the cows and they loved it.  At least someone got enjoyment out of the cauliflower!  The point is when we harvest cauliflower next year, we'll be THANKFUL!

Good, simple food grown and prepared at home and shared with those you love.  Can it get any better?  For the sake of brevity, I'd like to discuss the health standpoint of simple food in the post tomorrow.