Holy Cross Centre Trust

A Social Justice Perspective on the Five Principles

Time Banking is not just about meeting present needs. It is also how we shape the world we will leave behind. Just maybe, our time on this planet is something we hold in trust for our descendants.

Time Banking does not exist in a vacuum. There are problems that make it more difficult for some than for others to preserve their families, raise their children, create safe neighbourhoods, and build community. More and more children go into foster care, come home from school to an empty home, cope with drugs, cross the line into delinquency, and go to schools that lose 40% of those who enter. The problems don’t end with growing up: changes in the job market, lack of a living.

wage, unemployment, no affordable housing, no affordable health care, racism and discrimination, violent crime and corporate crime, scams, corruption and bureaucratic indifference. For the elderly, loneliness, the cost of health care, loss of a role and our inability to tap their wisdom and their experience deprive the final Principle decades of joy. Both progress The Asset Perspective. and greed have contributed. If all people have something That is why each of the five to contribute, doesn’t that principles provides a crucial mean it is time to draw a line imperative. in the sand and declare: No More Throw Away People.

Redefining Work

If we agree that we must find a way to honour work that the market fails to value, doesn’t that mean we must stop being blind to much we take for granted? Doesn’t that mean: No more taking the  contribution of women,  children, families, immigrants for granted. No more free rides from subordination, discrimination, and exploitation.

Reciprocity

If the only thing that gets our attention is people’s problems, are we actually rewarding them for having problems? Why don’t we empower those we help by helping them to help others so they can feel as special as we feel?

Change means: Stop exacting dependency as the price paid for providing help. Stop devaluing those whom we help while we profit from their troubles.

Community

If we truly need each other, if we all benefit when we build upon the assets of others, then surely Martin Luther King was right when he wrote: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Doesn’t that say to those with power and money: No more disinvesting in families, neighbourhoods and communities.
No more economic and social strip-mining.

Respect

Each of us is entitled to respect – to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That boils down to a fundamental moral
and spiritual equality. Yet, all we hear is that our survival depends upon making profit, more profit and still more profit.

Isn’t it time to say: Stop running from what our conscience says, pretending we have no choice; stop acting as if all decisions are dictated by profit and loss.

There is another bottom line:

Social Responsibility

Being in Time Banking means more than just being nice to each other. If we take the Serenity Prayer seriously, Time Banking comes with a heavy obligation:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer says to us: we cannot continue to accept the things we can change.

For those of us in Time Banking, that has a special meaning. Time Banking lets us know that change is possible – change that others may not yet see as possible. Given what we know, we will need courage to change those things we now can.