What's at the root?

Room to let in Arles; 500 Francs per month. 

An envelope arrived in the mail. My summer student and I and a board member were sitting around in the museum and I said, “Hey, it’s money!” when I opened the envelope. “I love it when it’s a cheque and not a bill.”

There followed a brief conversation about money, and the inevitable saying, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” It was a short conversation. We seemingly don’t know what to make of our conflicted attitudes around money. For one, the proverb is obviously just a proverb, a saying. Evil has more than one possible root: anger, lust, jealousy, disappointment, ambition, vengefulness, can all lie at its root, very human emotions and longings that can lead to dark thoughts, harmful actions.

But if the evil content of our lives can sometimes be measured out in dollar signs, so surely can the good that we do be assigned a root, like, “The love of _____ is the root of all goodness.” With what word would you or I fill that blank?

Here at the Heritage Museum, we handle artifacts in abundance: recording their identity in databases, carefully storing them for future display, cleaning and polishing them if necessary. The teacup I hold was once handled by someone now long dead, whose days I can’t measure out but can only guess at through the choice of a teacup she owned once long, long ago. A beautiful teacup; I believe she loved practicing hospitality, to put her best foot forward in the presence of the many guests that were blessed by drinking tea from this delicate cup. Maybe cakes and tea served to welcome guests were for her a measure of her days.

In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, a narrator assesses the meaning of his life and concludes that he has, “ . . . measured out my life with coffee spoons . . .” What markers will we look back upon some day as being the measures of our days? Coffee spoons? Teacups? Hammers? Acres? Grandchildren? or $$$$$?

Money is measurable; “He left behind for his children an estate worth $269,478.23,” could be an accurate, audited assessment of the measure of someone’s days, the bottom line of life. The net proceeds of an entire existence of days and days and days all spent and gone.

Psalm 90: 12 – 14. “So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom. Do return, O LORD; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants. O satisfy us in the morning with Your loving kindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days . . ..”

We’ve put together a display in the museum called, “If you can’t afford to buy it, make it.” In the display is a wooden shovel laboriously carved—we’re told—from a poplar trunk. I envy people whose days will be measured—at least in part—in beautifully crafted things that last: paintings, quilts, music, gardens, poetry, architecture, inventions.

Yesterday, we said good-bye to a neighbour who built three guitars and was apparently noted in his circle of friends and family as a maker of beautiful music. His grandchildren’s eulogy gave us a measure of his days: a quiet, gentle man who—although not expressive in his affections—loved family dearly and showed it through the careful crafting of objects they would come to treasure.

There was no talk of his bottom line.

Perhaps unconditional love is the root of all goodness.