“All time is Lent”

Just a thought.

Happy New Year

I don’t have any new year’s resolutions. I have been trying to live more in the present and will keep working at it. That’s not neglecting my duties in preparation for the next day/week etc; nor is it not learning from experience. It’s about not letting fear of possible futures or worry about past events crowding out what is good about today. The past cannot be changed and it is impossible for all the futures to come true. This is a simple, noble idea but it is hard to change one’s habits.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of a new calendar, here are some quotes on the theme of time:

What we call the beginning is often the end, And to make an end is to make a beginning, The end is where we start from.                                 T. S. Eliot (from ‘Little Gidding’).

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.     Albert Einstein

We have trained them [people] to think of the future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain – not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.     C. S. Lewis (from ‘Screwtape Letters’)

Time goes, you say? Ah no! Alas, time stays, we go.                             Henry Austin Dobson

Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever.                                     Hebrews chapter 13 verse 8

Money, money, money

The title of this post intrigued me “Financial lessons from Yoga, Homer Simpson…” and it is a fairly quick read. I’m not necessarily endorsing everything it says but I liked the idea that simple pleasures in life can be just as fulfilling (and fun) as other more expensive ones. The blog also reminds the reader of other obvious but often ignored truths; such as the fact that we are most likely to succeed at what we are good at and have a passion for – the hard part may be in finding that calling we were made for.

Meanwhile, the New Scientist reported the other day (“Virtual money gets real” 04 June 2011) that there is a new virtual currency, the bitcoin, that is becoming popular with some. In an age where money is increasingly so much digital information and decreasingly cash in our pocket, this is a currency which is entirely on-line (there are others linked to particular games or networks like Facebook). Like any other currency, its strength depends very much on the confidence of the people who use it. National currencies used to be mostly backed by precious metals such as gold, or a basket of other currencies. These days they are backed largely by the tax-raising powers of the relevant government. For the time being most of us are likely to have more confidence in the government’s ability to raise tax than in a currency which is little more than an idea.

That set me wondering what the future of money might look like as trade and taxes become more globilised, as commodities become less predictable as a means of backing a currency and if electronic currency does not inspire us with confidence. One possibility might be to make a currency out of a carbon credit. Much of what we buy will have involved the emission of CO2 and an individual annual allocation is one way of managing the CO2 we put into the atmosphere. That would limit the amount of goods and services that could be produced and give value to the “Carbon Credit”. However, this currency would not necessarily take directly into account the rarity or abundance of raw materials or the amount of human skill involved. It would push the market to those things which are more CO2 efficient.

Perhaps another currency might be energy. It could cover all forms of energy, not just electricity generation, and there would be more profit in the more efficient means of making things. It would also encourage consumers to favour the things that require less energy in their production and use. The downside to this one is that it might create an incentive to make more energy and produce more CO2. The advantage of both of these is that they could be universal although I think in practice both would be unworkable as a currency even if we end up with some kind of CO2 and energy rationing in future. As it is essential to all life, water could be considered. OK, so this would only work in a desert or on the moon, but we do need to come to terms with the fact that it is a finite, and therefore precious, resource – more precious I dare say than gold. I don’t know what the currency of the future will look like but I suspect that it will relate to the rationing of finite but essential resources.

Whatever currency we use, I guess that sooner or later there will be some who have rather more of it than others – no matter how egalitarian it starts out. The fact is, some people will save more than others and that will leave them with more than the person who has not. And some truths about money and wealth remain the same: you can’t take it with you (as both the apostle Paul and Job might have said). Money (whatever form it takes) may bring us power and influence but it can’t buy us happiness.  An authentic life (a life of godliness) lived contentedly may enrich us more than common currency – and in that respect Homer may well be rich after all.

A Northamptonshire Peasant

Condescending at best and derogatory at worst but that is how he was described as a marketing ploy. No wonder John Clare did not fit in with “society” in the 19th century. I mention him because I like some of his poetry. I’m glad to say that I made up my mind about the poems I read before finding out about him – I was able to judge them on their merits and on their personal appeal without being clouded by my opinion of their author. It turns out that I don’t have much in common with him. Two centuries separate us, he was a country lad and I’m very much the townie. He loved the countryside, its wonder, its beauty, and the freedom to roam its fields. For myself, I don’t mind the countryside, understand its importance somewhat, respect it even, but I would hardly claim to love it in the way that others do.

And it came as a bit of a surprise to discover that much of John Clare’s poetry was written while he was a patient in an asylum. However, that is not what I wanted to tell you about. In one of his poems, Song 4, he uses the phrase “the mirrors change and flye”. I like that metaphor of time passing rapidly. Perhaps you have seen the 1960’s film of H G Wells “The Time Machine”? In it the hero watches a shop window as the display changes from season to season in rapid succession.  The faster his machine goes, the more the display becomes a blur while the shop and its surroundings shimmer as the light changes with the speeded up weather and the passing of days and nights in seconds rather than hours. That scene conveys an air of melancholy and alludes to the peril that is to come later on in the story. Or perhaps you have seen a scene in some TV programme where the character is looking at a bathroom mirror and sees his or her face as it changes in quick succession from their younger to their present face. The mirror and the person stay the same but the reflection shimmers as the years pass.

That shimmering effect from the rapid succession of small changes is reminiscent of ripples on the surface of a pool of water stirred by the wind. It might remind you of that phrase of looking “through a glass darkly” (which can also be translated as “puzzling reflections in a mirror”). I wonder weather John Clare had heard the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians which is what where that phrase came from.

John Clare’s poem caught my imagination many years ago: the idea that time passing was like looking at your reflection in a clear pool of water and then a breath of wind stirs that water ever so slightly causing it to ripple gently and shimmer your reflection through time.

“As the wind the waters stir, the mirrors change and flye”.