💬 TREE 602: Jeff Gill shall not live by bread alone but by every word

I’m enjoying your comments and emails on this autobiography series. Please keep ’em coming!

13

I was a weird kid. When I was still young enough to spend serious time with my space Legos, I used to spend hours building spaceships and listening to preachers on the local Christian radio station.

Skilled preaching is like nothing else. A preacher who knows their stuff can take a crowd anywhere they want. It’s partly natural talent. Mostly it can be learned. If you are serious about being good at public speaking, forget about Ted talks. I recommend taking in a few hundred hours of quality preaching and a few hundred more of standup comedy.

I love the spoken word. It’s not only the information, it’s the medium itself. I’ve always got podcasts on the go. My radio station of choice is Radio 4 – I like it all, news, discussions, documentaries, drama, comedy, Woman’s Hour.

Exceptions: I like music for designing and drawing. I like silence for writing.

14

After I was born my mum got so ill she nearly died. A big part of her recovery was a total change in her diet. She embraced health food. Her children were part of that embrace. Mostly that was great. She is an excellent cook. Not having soda and candy around the house just made them more of a treat. But there was one thing: breakfast.

My mom decided that four days a week we could only eat fruit before lunch. Fruit meant apples and oranges. And they were never nice, and there was nothing tropical, and it was winter, and I was cold and hungry.

Then for several months, on the other days, we had wheat. This was how it was prepared: take raw grains of wheat. Cook them for a week until they are tenderish. Add some raisins. Continue cooking until the raisins are swollen and disgusting. Serve with milk and honey while fighting your gag reflex.

Also there was a cod liver oil phase.

Eventually, cereal was reinstated and mornings were better.

Food was another example from my mom of how you don’t have to do things the ‘normal’ way.

Because the food fight.

‘It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.’
— Jiddu Krishnamurti —

Grow slowly
Jeff