“I’ll trade you. This for that. One of these for two of those.” 

We know how it goes.  Barter, trade and sell.  The exchange. 

Exchanging works for money when you travel from country to country and it goes on every time we go to class to give our time in the hopes of receiving an education.

It’s really simple.  I see something I want and I’m willing to give up something I have to get it.

Sometimes it’s fast. I see a coke, I have a dollar. The trade is done. 

In other cases, it takes longer. I see a movie premiering Friday and I go to work and wait until payday.

Or I ask a friend to loan me the ticket money. 

This is the classic “delayed gratification”, but still, the exchange goes on. 

I study for a test and get a good grade.

I don’t study for a test and trade my bad grade for the memories of talking on the phone instead. 

“I’ll trade you. This for that. One of these for two of those.”

Some people are experts at this type of thing. Stock traders, antique dealers, CarMax.

Or lucky.

Lottery ticket type luck.

Or seriously unlucky.

Lottery ticket type luck.

The greatest example of an exchanger I’ve heard of lately was the story of Kyle MacDonald who traded one red paperclip for a house. He started with one red paperclip on July 12 2005 and 14 trades later, on July 12, 2006 he traded with the Town of Kipling Saskatchewan for a house located at 503 Main Street.

While we may not be as skillful as Kyle, we are all fairly skillful at trading bits of our time and money for other bits of things, we may not have thought about how our relationships have some similar pieces.

If we’re friends, I hear your ideas and your stories and your trouble and your bad jokes, trading my time and attention because I think you and your point of view is worth the investment. 

I listen to the advice of friends and older people because I think their perspective is more valuable that me spending more time alone thinking my own thoughts over again and again.

People trade their word and ideas and perspectives because everyone has the chance of gaining from the exchange.  It is true that some people bring cheap ideas and thoughts and try to disguise them as priceless, but even then, there is value in bringing all the ideas to the table.

Your voice, your words, your angle of vision on things makes the sharing and the talking more valuable.  And talking it over with other people often helps us straighten out our own ideas, in addition to gaining good new ideas and perspectives from others.

It is hard to ever give the final word.  Mostly we give the final word for now.

People also exchange their time and hopes and loyalty to their faith.  What makes people choose religion? What do they get from faith?  This is a question we’ll come back to a bit later.

But first: every religion in the world has some form of higher power or deity or God. What makes these gods/God choose to spend time with us? 

What does God get from the exchange?

Don’t hold back.  There isn’t a particular answer yet.  Gathering information and perspectives about lots of faiths will help us see what is common and unique to each.

Also, we’d love to hear about your best trading moment.

Question 01- What is the best trade you’ve ever made?

Question 02- What are the faiths/ religions you’ve studied or have heard of? (This will give us a list.)

Question 03- Why do different religions say that God/gods spend time with us?

This is the first word.

Until the final word,
27 February 2007