Yeah…see that bright spec in the middle of my kids? That’s the blood moon. (Why didn’t I think of bringing over a better camera?!) We had a great time watching it. It was a beautiful celestial site and to have the kids in bed at a decent time was an added bonus! We were all in awe as we watched it.
There has been a lot of buzz about the tetrad of blood moons this year. I’ve heard and seen it all. (I’m in the preparedness biz, after all.) Many people have been frantically purchasing and storing whatever they can, in anticipation of a doomsday event thought to happen today. This death bed preparedness, as I like to call it, just isn’t effective. While I love people being motivated to prepare, I disagree with it when it is done because of fear and panic. Fear and panic are never good motivators. It usually leads people to a) overspending (that is an understatement) on all of the WRONG items, b) feeling let down when the panic event doesn’t happen (y2k, Mayan calendar ending, and now the blood moon tetrad) and then RETURNING or GIVING AWAY said food items they just bought, and c) it sends the wrong message to those outside the preparedness world.
Preparedness is best when it is done moderately, budgeted, and planned for. Preparedness is for MORE than just when the world ends. It is for all of life’s ups and downs. For many decades, we have been counseled that, where possible, we should gradually build a supply of food, water and financial resources to ensure we are self-reliant during disasters and the normal hardships that are part of life, including illness, injury or unemployment.
When we prepare this way, preparedness turns into self-reliance. The definition of self reliance is “reliance on one’s own powers and resources rather than those of others.” True preparedness and self-reliance is more than food storage or emergency food in buckets, it is also SKILLS. The skills to be able to garden, can, COOK, and so forth. These skills can not simply be bought at the store or honed in just a few days. It was intended to be that way. President Ezra Taft Benson (former president of the LDS church and U.S. Head of Agriculture) said, “An almost forgotten means of economic self-reliance is the home production of food. We are too accustomed to going to stores and purchasing what we need. By producing some of our food we reduce, to a great extent, the impact of inflation on our money. More importantly, we learn how to produce our own food and involve all family members in a beneficial project.”
