Last month I had lunch with a bunch of businessmen. A cheese maker who exports around the world, an inventor/manufacturer, a beef farmer/inventor, and one in food retailing, light-engineering and internet businesses. As usual, our conversation centred around the issues of the day including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the global economy. Whatever the make-up of our motley group, at some point conversation always poses a question as to why the folk in power do the things they do. Not just what they do and how they do it, but why they do it. Rudyard Kipling had also noticed this same quizzical tendency in his young daughter Josephine and penned a poem about the best English words for opening-up discussion, and thus allow an enquiring mind to learn.
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I know);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Without being taught these words his daughter had naturally used them! Only then did Rudyard realise that these words open doors in the young mind. In fact, so powerfully do these words capture information that some adults do not want to use them. Nowadays we think that this is because an adult does not want to or cannot generate the mental energy needed to change the circuitry in their brains and so change their mind. However, a good lunch with a disparate bunch of friends is an excellent way of absorbing added information or a new reality of life. Could it be a good thing if those in power and who see themselves as moral arbiters, had lunch with a disparate bunch of ordinary mortals now and again?
Our Glewstone Court meeting ranged over the economic cycles of the past sixty years when older readers will remember the inflation of the nineteen seventies. This hit particularly those with debt, those in the private sector and the self-employed; that same group will again find scant solace as inflation puts up prices whilst savings, fixed pensions and most fixed assets lose value.
Commentators tell us that tax free Cash ISA rates are so low that savers could gain by swapping them for bonds which pay a taxable 4%. They also note that Stocks and Shares ISAs are more likely to bring a smile to the cheek. Mind you; Shares also bring scowls as I know having lost a few investments over the years. Although over the long term a sensible investor will gain, they must expect some losses.
Some say buying shares is a gamble but, unlike money on a horse, shares are a stake in the efforts of people engaged in productive work. Investment can help a company increase production and innovate. Although sometimes that money is wasted by managers who are poor stewards’ scripture tells us that. A good steward will magnify the investment ‘an hundredfold.’ We also read that we all have been given a talent – which can include money – to invest on behalf of others, and that we ‘should use our talent wisely or lose it.’ Additionally, we learn that ‘investment’ which helps people to ‘trade,’ their own talents, is preferable to giving money via intermediaries who gain by the process..
May is the month when Hawthorn infuses the still air of the undulating countryside with the sweet mellowness of its blossom. It is also a time to give you the scriptural quotation which assures me that I am not old. It says, “Young men see visions and old men dream dreams.” Ergo: Despite my age I cannot be old because I have a vision. I see a time when our local places of worship are full of local folk. However, they are not at worship to be taught by, ‘their betters’ or to listen to an orthodoxy coming top-down; especially one which echo’s the prevailing ideologies of social media.
I see worship led, as it was during the time of the Celtic Church, by local people. People whose way of life was such that others recognised sainthood in their neighbour. Wales and Cornwall have hundreds of placenames which still speak of Christian lives of sainthood. We read in the creed, “I believe in the Communion of Saints,” and, although those Saints are now unrecognised by distant hierarchies, they were recognised in the village and the parish. Such Saints are around us still and they are often the unsung folk of the parish such as the ones Jesus talked to.
The scripture is right; an old man does dream dreams.
But a vision will keep you young.
View from the Pew 