Registry reflections
Of figs, assessments and the unthinkable
Some things don’t change
Warwick’s off the hook, or at least he will be in a year or three. You see, Sue’s planted a fig tree for me. Up until now I’ve had to rely on Burnie figs which, by the way, I recommend.
The poor little thing has only just gone in, bare-rooted, so no sign of shoots as yet. Green shoots, or bamboo shoots, are the flavour of the month as the optimists search desperately for signs of recovery from the Global Financial Crisis.
It reminds me that Jesus used fig tree shoots to remind us to be wise about reading the signs; his hearers knew that summer always followed. Financial Review columnist Ruehl suggests that since economists focus on the big picture they didn’t see the GFC coming until it was the big picture. Nice try; the devil is in the detail, I’ve heard.
We read from Ecclesiastes in office prayers recently and someone reminded us that, given our incapacity to read the signs, we are called to be faithful, to get on with the task, secure in the knowledge that, with change and decay all around, God is in control.
And thank goodness for that. It’s put simply in Psalm 37: ‘Trust in the Lord and do good.’
None of which, I confess, leads in to the matter of Parish Assessments; I just thought I’d slip that in as a reminder that Parish Consolidated Statements are due in on 7 September.
Yes, I hear the guffaws. Well, it’s a challenge, not a limit. Don’t let Break O’Day get away with the prize for being the first in for yet another year.
But to return to the fig’s shoots and being faithful when the world is changing and the signs hard to read, I’m not enjoying Joshua Cooper Ramo’s The Age Of The Unthinkable (Little, Brown 2009). Which is not to say that the book’s unimportant. You don’t get to be World Editor of Time magazine without a very quick mind.
No, it’s the scenarios he paints which have me thinking of my grandchildren and the instability of the world they are inheriting.
When Ramo draws analogies between the out of proportion influence of 500 Hizb’allah ‘freedom fighters’ and two students remaking the world from their college dorm by inventing Google, he gets your attention. Whether he’s describing XDR-TB, the phenomenon of Wii Fit or the collision of history and spirit in Beirut, this is informed, scary stuff.
Ramo’s conclusion about this unstable world is that change will always produce more good than bad.
Yes, he admits that’s a leap of faith. Read the book, by all means, but if for you too it’s all too much, remember Psalm 37:3.
Some things don’t change. Trust in the Lord...and do good.
Registrar Morton