For time banks, love is the language, the currency, and the law

by Karin Lacy

Hi. I’d like to share my experience with time banking.

It has never been easy when I moved to a new city where I had never been before and didn’t know anybody. So back in 2009, when I moved from Humboldt County to Chico, California, I learned about time banking and immediately joined the Chico Time Exchange. As a newling I right away had a chance to meet half a dozen local people, by participating with other time bankers in a cleaning project for a future yoga studio.

I don’t remember how many members the Chico Time Exchange had in 2009, probably 100 to 150. Back then the internet was not as widespread as today. The time bank had a directory with the members’ data and their offers and requests that one could download. The administrator was the busy hub of the time bank. All exchanges had to be reported to her. Thanks to their great time bank I have fond memories of Chico!

Two years later I moved to Mount Shasta, where they just were in the process of establishing a time bank. Again, I joined the time bank. The administrator was a ‘computer person’ who built a website for the time bank. He also became my webmaster and we often utilized time banking, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to pay a webmaster. For the members exchanges they used the open-source hOurworld website. I contacted my Chico friends and gave them the link to the Mount Shasta Time Bank website. It inspired them to build their own website.

The Mount Shasta administrator also became the administrator of the nearby Ashland / Southern Oregon Time Co-op and built their website.

Later, when I lived in the small town of Yreka, California, and intended to move to Ashland, I contacted the Ashland time bank, whose administrator already was a friend of mine.  I enrolled in the time bank and arranged my move to Ashland with new friends and time bank hours, even without first getting an orientation talk.

In September 2020, when I moved from Oakridge to Springfield, I checked ahead whether there was a time bank. It was during the pandemic and the LSSN time bank was closed. Heather Johnson, the co-founder, who lived just around the corner from my new apartment, offered to help with the unloading of my U-Haul truck anyway. In documenting our exchange, I credited her one time bank hour.

So what is time banking? Instead of money it is a method of time exchange. Most people have never heard of time banking. However, it was founded in 1980, over 40 years ago by Dr. Edgar Cahn, who passed away in 2022. We can thank this brilliant visionary that time banking has become a worldwide grassroots movement!

In time banking there are offers and requests. Each hour of service, given or received, is worth one credit hour. For example, in time banking one hour of babysitting someone’s child is of the same value as one hour of working on somebody’s computer or car.

In my opinion, it’s the best part of time banking that both receiving and giving have equal value. This fact makes the most distinctive difference between the belief of time bankers and mainstream citizens.  In our society success in life is measured with money. It is one of the major ways our society promotes separation, and divides people into haves and have-nots, winners and losers. Our leaders and controllers even trick the youth into taking on huge bank credits to finance their own college education. They proclaim that it will ensure that young people get well-paid jobs in the work force, and that they will easily be able to pay off their debts.

Currently, the most common model of time banking focuses on neighbors helping neighbors, to support the most vulnerable among us and to build a stronger sense of community.

Each time bank is unique and different, depending on the people coming together. When I became a member of Lane Service Sharing Network time bank, I didn’t know that Eugene has another time bank, First Non-Profit Time Bank of Eugene. I decided to become a member of both, and am currently volunteering for LSSN as the orientation talk lead.

Here are just some of the things that people have done with time banking:

• Strengthened the sense of community
• Improved learning at school
• Helped public housing residents save money
• Supported hospital patients as they return to regular life at home
• Brought art and music into a community
• Helped seniors remain at home as they age.

The people who are drawn to time banking are people of higher consciousness. They are driven by a desire to help make the world a better place. Time banking is also about letting go of our belief systems around money. More people are questioning whether we should continue to live life guided by money.

Many open-minded people who question our system of money adopted the new belief that “money is just energy,” money is neutral, is beyond good and evil. In the past I parroted this belief, too.  However, I learned that money has been installed in our civilization as a tool of power and control over the people. Its purpose has been to divide the masses in haves and have-nots, to maintain the belief in scarcity, to enslave us all to money, to hold us within the frequency range of the lower third dimension. Our system of money got us to where we stand today! Nevertheless, we each can choose to step out of the mainstream matrix.

Dear reader, have you heard of UBUNTU Contributionism – A Blueprint for Human Prosperity as developed by Michael Tellinger? UBUNTU Contributionism is a new way of living without money in the fifth dimensional frequency on Earth. When we dwell collectively in this higher state of consciousness money becomes obsolete.

In the realm of 5-D, the frequency of unconditional love permeates everything. Love is the language, the currency, and the law in the fifth dimension. There is only one law, which says: “Do not harm any other sentient kind.”

Michael Tellinger is one of the major whistleblowers dedicated to spreading the truth of our parasitic and predatory system of money. He describes how money was introduced to the human race by the creator gods as a means of enslavement and harvesting of human energy. He sheds light onto the banking system and exposes the truth about the global financial cartel.

After reading this book people look at the world with new eyes, and with this broadened perspective one cannot continue to live one’s life as before.

Living in a community of like-minded people who are guided from their heart’s higher and unified perspective is what we envision as heaven on earth. It is the revolution of consciousness in action, creating a new vibrational reality, called unity consciousness.

Time banking helps people to look at money in a different way. We can bypass money in our interactions. Time banking is first of all about community building. I personally understand time banking as the precursor or forerunner to UBUNTU Contributionism.

There is much to learn about time banking, more than can be said in this article. Please do your own research, starting with the hundreds of time bank videos on YouTube.

Dear reader, think about it: What skills would you have to offer? And what services would you want to request? Please join us at our next potluck gathering. See the Lane Service Sharing Network for our upcoming events.

If you are inspired to join a time bank by Karin’s story, please let us know! She can receive one credit hour from your time bank.