The Best Place for Trust 9-24-9

Woodbarton House, Devon 9-24-9

For many years I have wondered in idle moments what would happen if access to my lines of credit and banking accounts was suddenly cut off while traveling overseas. It never really concerned me, as this never happened … until just now. Casually, an attempt to get cash out of an ATM failed. With increasing levels of agitation, my efforts at a number of ATMs have proved futile. The screens consistently tell me, “This service is temporarily unavailable.” This card worked just fine in seven countries a few weeks ago. What gives? I have started to wonder how this is going to work out if I end up in a place with no local language skills and no one willing to let me borrow their debit card. Getting off the tourist grid and into the real world requires getting off credit and using local currencies. Apparently, it also requires a level of trust I am very short on. Images of al fresco sleeping and extended periods of religious fasting are suddenly a good bit more believable. I wonder what hypothermia and hypoglycemia are really like when experienced concurrently.

A visit to a local bank was of no help, only confirming that an opportunity to learn how to operate without money a very long ways from home is forthcoming. The bank people mumbled something about PIN chip technology now being embedded in debit cards to prevent fraud. The recent bankruptcy of my bank’s holding company might also figure into the equation somehow. In name, my bank doe not exist anymore. Someone here in the banking system must have been surfing the Internet and doctored the bank authentication codes that allow ATM’s to dispense portraits of the Queen.

For several months before commencing this world journey, I accumulated funds in my checking account so I would be able to lubricate whatever situations I might find myself in. Suddenly, immediate recall of the Jewish experience in the Sinai desert comes to mind. When they attempted to accumulate manna for a rainy day, they found it spoiled overnight and became infested with worms. The Jews had been told in no uncertain terms to trust God for their needs each day and to punt the hording model of capital conservation. Here thirty centuries later, my plans for world-wide self-sufficiency seem to have been ablated and opportunities for learning to trust in the good will of others and the provisions of the One who got me here in the first place, under a down duvet in the clouds yet, are going to abound.

My good friend Tony has agreed to cast his fiscal future to the winds and he went to an ATM today and withdrew enough funds to pay for my bed for five days. I wrote him a check on my apparently non-existent bank. Don’t ask me why I brought my checkbook to the other side of the planet. It just seemed like a good idea at the time; Providence, perhaps. I will eventually make good with Tony.

At the end of five days I am supposed to leave England, using pre-paid tickets, to go to my next destination without money and without a place to stay. To be totally accurate I do have money. There is a $5 bill and three $1 bills in my passport. I also found a coin on the ground today that is worth $1.59 to $1.66 depending on recent spot brokerage rates for assorted currencies. This is feeling a bit like being on a high ropes course without the high ropes or the safety clips.

It is hard to let go of contingency planning and hording thinking. Already I have figured out that the coin I found in the station will buy me ten packets of a generic Chinese noodle with a ‘special flavoring packet.’ I figure I can have a large, actually a rather vast gluttonous, English breakfast for the upcoming five days and then one of those packets at mid-afternoon and early evening to head off the inevitable rebound hypoglycemia that derives from morning gluttony. I might even be able to swap my portraits of dead American presidents for something to eat on days six and seven, if people in another land are feeling good about US dollars and the American economic prospects on those two days. Like weather forecasts, beyond a five-day time horizon there is no meaningful predicting what will happen.

It makes no sense for me to put my trust in banks that can disappear overnight. I have sudden recall of the imperative that reminds me, “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon”. What I hope to learn at a deep visceral level is that the One who miraculously healed my leg in August, the one Who granted me first class travel anywhere in the world, the one that moved a common thief to return something precious to me, the one Who created this magnificent world for us to enjoy, is going to continue to prove to me, “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, and a plan that will give you hope and a future.”

I’ve just been asked to join the natives for dinner. I’m on it.