"It's trust, not the economy, that is in a 'downturn'"

Bill Tully is Rector of St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue in New York City. St. Bart's was formerly a "society" church with reserved pews and a formal atmosphere. Some years ago, it fell on its own hard times, and it's been Mr. Tully's challenge to bring it back. He and they are doing well – precarious as all of us are at this time, but otherwise big and alive and lively.* We're on his weekly email list. Here's his take on Bernard Madoff and the deeper meaning of that affair; it's a fine follow-up to our own recent thoughts on honesty ("Ananias", February 22). Thank you, kind sir, for your good words!

It breaks your heart to hear the stories of those who trusted the disgraced "investor" Bernard Madoff and lost all or nearly all their savings. Their agony is real, their anger just, and both are more reminders that it's trust, not the economy, that is in a "downturn."

Our whole lives are based on trust. We count on small things like gadgets and computers to work. We rely on a web of arrangements and customs and laws to keep us safe. But it's the big things – you might say the deepest things – that really make the difference.

You learn trust from the way you're treated and loved from the earliest moments of your life. If I'm hungry, will they feed me? If I hurt, will someone make it better? Will they teach me what's good for me, and where the dangers lie?

When those moments go reasonably well, you grow in a way that allows you to test things on your own, to measure the challenges, to indulge your curiosities, to follow a dream or answer a call. In other words, to make a life.

In that sense all human beings operate on faith. But no one gets it perfectly. There are tests, and disappointments, and, as in the present moment, worse.

The Christian faith, like the basic faith of all life, assumes a fundamental trust. And at its best, it's an answer – a healing response – to keeping going in life when that trust is violated.

Our church community is alive to this moment. We're struggling, too. But let's make it a purposeful struggle. Let's look for ways to make that healing real to ourselves and to those who especially need it now.

I've seen this happen in lives before, and I'm seeing it now. I see and hear the heartbreak of broken trust, but I know the hope, too, and the hope is real.

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*Our Geranium Farm colleague Buddy Stallings is Vicar at St. Bart's. He writes every week too, and you can read his good words right here on A Few Good Writers.