Jim Stewart's Blog

I’ve had some interesting conversations recently. I seem to have connected with a lot of people that really value bargains. You know, the sort of people that buy something worth £1000 for £100, then scratch their heads wondering how they can use it.

The sale buyer that cruises the New Year sale looking for the biggest reduction and buy clothes that will never see the light of day. When you work with a charity that takes clothes donations you are always shocked at how many items arrive with the labels still attached.

There have been reports about the effect of cancelled orders on people in places like Bangladesh. But really, if we are not buying then did we really need it?

I have always argued against collecting stuff. But I have to admit this has me thinking – how do we achieve a just transition from our over-purchasing stuff to a more balanced world?

This is a case where trickle down economics is in place, and removing it would harm those at the bottom of the pyramid. In part this is a change management problem, but to be honest I am not sure what we would be changing to.

There is an interesting Bible passage that helps me a little

When Simon saw that the apostles by merely laying on hands conferred the Spirit, he pulled out his money, excited, and said, “Sell me your secret! Show me how you did that! How much do you want? Name your price!”

Peter said, “To hell with your money! And you along with it. Why, that’s unthinkable—trying to buy God’s gift! You’ll never be part of what God is doing by striking bargains and offering bribes. Change your ways—and now! Ask the Master to forgive you for trying to use God to make money. I can see this is an old habit with you; you reek with money-lust.”

I think I saw something related in Nicaragua, where people with little money are taught to become self sustaining in food production, but have next to no money – and are happier than most of the cash rich bargain hunters.

I am sure part of the answer is a transformation of our desires to things that cannot be bought.

As I was getting ready to write this I heard that a pair of trainers worn once by Michael Jordan sold for over $500,000. It sort of fitted with what I was thinking. There are people with a lot of money to spend.

I had been thinking about the worst case scenario for this virus. The film Contagion is how we want this all to end – with the vaccine saving the world. But there are other films with darker endings, like I am legend, or maybe The Lost Future. Or perhaps the best would be the series Survivors.

What would the world look like if this virus continues to mutate and the vaccine does not arrive. The Canada/USA, NZ and Vietnam situations got me thinking about it. Closing access to others – creating a closed border. How long would it be before gated communities for the rich became well defended communities excluding those that might be infected?

But with the local lockdowns you can see this as a more general way of going forward.

So it got me to thinking, are our communities geographic these days? For some time I have seen my community becoming more and more spread out – all over the world. I’ve chatted with people in three countries already this week.

But each of us have things like church communities, football communities, school communities, family communities and pastime communities (football being closer to a religion than a pastime for many). In a world where the virus stays a real threat then the big risk would be the interface between all these communities. So if I had to reduce my communities to only one or two, what would I choose?

Everything is – or at least it seems that way. Almost every news report we see the word used. Funny how words suddenly like become like used like literally everywhere. It is almost unprecedented.

I am not sure why – I am sure Rishi Sunak is aware of how often the word is being used – so why did he choose to use it. And yet it is so misused. This is not an unprecedented pandemic. That would mean it has never happened before, and certainly Spanish Flu was a pandemic that was worse than this.

There is something about us that makes us adopt the language we hear. I am not sure if it is a peer pressure type of thing. But there certainly are “in” words.

And in the same way we seem to adopt social media posts that meet with the expectation of our friends. How many likes did you get for your last post?

A report I was reading today suggests that 800 people have died as a result of false information about the virus being posted. People have been attacked and killed. This isn’t just about posting things you feel are interesting – this is about posting things that really harm. A recent poll in the USA suggests that a quarter of Americans think Bill Gates is trying to implant microchips in them.

Like the old carpentry saying “Think twice, post once”.

I was just looking at one of the paintings I brought back from Nicaragua. It is about A4 in size and is a bright scene of a village near a lake. I get joy out of looking at it. It cost me £10. It then cost me £10 to have it framed. Without a doubt I have got value for money.

But I was supposed to haggle over the price. I was supposed to knock the price down by 20% and feel really good about winning a bargain. I just can’t do it. My saving of a cup of coffee (cheap coffee mind you) would be a loss of a lot more to the Nicaraguan that sold it to me. But they almost seemed offended that I didn’t try to barter.

Life sometimes brings us these conflicts. I know a lot of people get annoyed by the politics of Franklin Graham, and the beliefs of the Samaritans Purse organisation. But there they were yesterday, with their first plane load of aid for Lebanon. Feet on the ground in the disaster area. They were one of the only NGOs to set up in Italy as the hospitals were bursting. And I worked alongside them in a refugee camp in Greece,

So do we say, sorry starving people, we are giving our money to an organisation that isn’t there yet because of our world views, so please starve a little longer if you can?

It really can be hard to make the right choice, if there is one. I think I try to be guided by what is best for the weakest. But that means swallowing my pride at times, and I am afraid sometimes I have too strong a gag reflex.

Life is interesting. I see people desperate to hold on to their stuff when they go in to a care home. We build it all up over time and get weighed down by it more and more.

I like to picture life as a walk with a hot air balloon pulling us upward, and we can choose to keep our feet firmly on the ground by loading the basket with more and more stuff, or we can start to offload the dead weight we have built up over time.

I remember the U2 song “Walk on”, and the great graphics on the video wall. A song about living the reverse, about letting go of more and more as you walk life until there is nothing left to hold you down. Home is where the heart is, too much of our heart can be in stuff. Quite fitting that they end the song with a worship verse, where the heart should be.

I was listening to “Me and Bobby McGee” again today, and there is a great line in it “Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.”

75 years since the atom bombs were dropped. Lots of claims that Japan was about to surrender anyway (except they didn’t after the first bomb). You become aware of the event when you work in a place with a peace bell.

Photos courtesy of the amazing Dean Calma.

Since then we have come close, maybe the closest was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We have operated under something called MAD (mutually assured destruction). Did it work? Well we didn’t have a nuclear war.

It reminded me of a discussion I had with the head of CND in the UK. We were talking about modern staff reporting, and how you could demonstrate you helped the organisation meet a goal. I asked how you could ever show that a persons activities in CND helped to avoid a nuclear war. The answer was obviously that you can’t.

Either peace activists or MAD could have played a part, they are opposite ideas, and in truth we can never really say which one, if either, had a major roll.

What the former CND head said was that sometimes you just need to keep going without knowing whether you are having an effect.

Interestingly both sides would say their goal was to prevent a nuclear war. Worth pointing out that Iran is at the front of the bell ringing ceremony.

I used to work with somebody that had spent time in a very poor country. He was a really nice guy – but refused to give to poor countries. He said he just couldn’t see how you could ever have an effect.

Sometimes you just have to choose what is right and keep on doing it irrespective of the lack of key indicators of performance. What goals do we work for? Peace, justice, personal wealth a prosperous country or a mix of them?

There he goes, tail between his legs, Jerry Falwell jr. He posted a photo on the internet of himself and a young pregnant lady, both with large bellies and top button on jeans undone to cope with the bulges. He clearly offended so many conservative Christians that he had to go.

He has fallen from Grace. Except he hasn’t. Because when you get things wrong that is when you fall INTO grace.

I am sick and tired of the whole leadership perfection guff, whether it is church, politics or business. We are all human, we all have those warts. Thankfully I have a faith where I am accepted warts and all, and I don’t think it is right to then sit and point out other peoples warts.

In fact, I think a “failure” like Jerry is just what the conservative christian group need. They need to understand that every one of us is far from perfect. They need to see imperfect leaders (church and state) and recognise them for what they are – fallible humans. The god like image of the president needs to be broken.

We need more Jerry Falwell jrs. Give me 10, no 100 or a 1000.

I will not condemn Jerry – because I believe in grace. In the words of the U2 song “Grace finds beauty in everything”

I use a Chromebook at times. I wanted to play some music, so I loaded it on a USB and plugged it in. There is no music player on a chromebook (just Google Play that I refuse to touch). So I use VLC, a handy media player. But it is not allowed to play music from a USB.

No – music need to be loaded off the USB on to the computer. Easy you would think, so I copy it on to my Google drive (the cloud linked to the chromebook) and tick “Make available offline”. That means it is sitting on my chromebook – in the memory. But that isn’t internal memory according to chrome – no indeed. VLC can see it, but is not allowed to play it. No I should have copied it to internal memory instead of offline memory. Now in reality these could be exactly the same place, they are just called different names. But rules are rules.

Confused? I was.

I was reading about the postal vote issue in New York. People were given a pre-paid envelope for returning their votes. But the post office doesn’t frank (date stamp) pre-paid envelopes. And a check is made on returned votes – they must have a date stamp on the envelope. So the votes were discounted.

I’m sure the idea of trial by our peers was intended to add a common sense interpretation of laws.

I remember the story of Jesus “harvesting” on a Sabbath. He seemed to make it clear that there needs to be a human interpretation of laws. I also remember him summarising the 10 commandments into the essential (do this and you will do them all).

There are a lot of people annoyed at all the rules at the moment, who can you see, where should you wear a mask. But really, if you simplify it and add interpretation by peers than all you need to do is say “Do what you can to avoid spreading the virus”. If you do that then you will meet all the requirements.

Forget what you are allowed to do, what you are not allowed to do – are you doing what you can?

I remember the first time I steered a 70 foot barge. Turning the tiller seemed to do nothing, so I steered hard over, only to have to steer hard over the other way because of the delay in turning. Too much one way, corrected made me go too much the other way and so on until I hit the bank.

Similar things with the economy a few years ago, the boom and bust cycle.

It struck me that a lot of these outbreaks of the virus might be seen in the same way – too much lockdown gives people lockdown fever that results in unsafe behaviour when lockdown ends, which leads to more lockdown.

I wonder if politics is heading the same way – we seem to have more extreme swings recently.

I had a really nice cup of tea today. Funny how it makes the world look brighter. I like hot tea, and I like ice tea, but lukewarm tea – no thanks.

Why do we like extremes and are they good for us?

I remember going to see the live Monty Python show (in French). One of the sketches was the four Yorkshire-men (except they were not Yorkshire-men in the French version).

It’s a fun sketch that has been done in several ways, probably starting from the three classes sketch (I look down on him….).

I started thinking about it because Jesus was a Capricorn was on my playlist. Interesting song – I like the line “Everybody needs somebody they can look down on”. I saw an elderly man standing outside a shop today (wearing a mask) shouting at the window some words that were almost impossible to understand. I don’t know if it was a stroke or something else, but he really was making no sense. I wondered who he had been and what his story was. But in the end I thought he was another human like me.

Recently I’ve found myself looking down on the idiots that are spreading the virus. But they are human too. I’m not sure how I can stop looking down on them – looking down comes so natural.