Trust

There are many ways to describe the life of a community. One of the best is to learn to see it as a trust. But trust is a strange term. It pushes the bounds of our pretended rationality, reaching into the realms of love, hope and loyalty. It goes without saying that trust is one of the core themes of faith.

Take the financial crash, for instance. Most of us take money for granted most of the time and few of us realise that the whole system is dependent on trust. A whole host of social commentators have pointed this out over the years, from the right wing, Francis Fukuyama and Matt Ridley through to the likes of Will Hutton, who said about the credit crunch…

What we are relearning is that without trust and fairness, capitalism risks its own sustainability, even while it unleashes forces that undermine those self-same values. London’s money markets froze because of a trust collapse; banks simply don’t believe each other when they say their businesses are sound and will not default on their obligations. Trust matters.

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The same can be said of the natural world. We live in relationship to it as a trust, part of the great ‘covenant’ of grace, whereby the ever creating Spirit continually produces fruitfulness from the earth for us to enjoy, yet requires us to live at peace with creation, in harmony with the natural world, and to employ our talents to that end.

As summer unfolds in this part of the world and the great lushness of green fills every space, it feels like a wonderful thing to be alive.

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