In God We Trust (All Others, Cash)
The sign above the register said one thing.
My stepfather lived another.
“In God we trust. All others, cash.” It got a smile, maybe even a nod of agreement from customers in a small grocery store in Ossining, New York, back in the 1950s. It sounded practical. Sensible. A little humorous. But it wasn’t the truth of the man standing behind the counter.
Because when someone needed help, he never said no.
No credit checks. No forms. No quiet suspicion. Just a simple extension of trust. “Pay me when you can.” And somehow, people usually did.
Looking back, I realize how unusual that was. Even then. Today, it feels almost unthinkable. Businesses don’t extend trust anymore. They extend terms—through systems, through banks, through layers of protection designed to remove risk from the human equation. Credit is no longer personal. It’s outsourced. If there’s loss, it’s absorbed somewhere in the machinery.
But something else is lost in the process.
My stepfather wasn’t running a system. He was living a principle. He saw people, not profiles. Need, not risk. And he responded, not with calculation, but with quiet confidence in something deeper than appearances.
He trusted.
Not blindly, but generously.
And that kind of trust does something. It calls forth a response. When someone is trusted, they often try to live up to it. Not always. But often enough to matter.
Years later, when I encountered A Course in Miracles, I began to recognize that same quality described in different language. In the Manual for Teachers, trust is not presented as naïve optimism, but as something learned, something developed in stages:
“TRUST.” (M-4.I)
And then comes the quiet summary that seems to describe my stepfather better than any business principle ever could:
“This is the foundation on which their ability to fulfill their function rests.” (M-4.I.1:1)
He never used those words. But he lived them.
A “Teacher of God” is not someone with credentials or authority. It is someone who has learned, even in simple, practical ways, to see beyond fear. To respond with love instead of judgment. To extend rather than withdraw.
My stepfather didn’t quote the Course. He didn’t need to.
He trusted first.
And maybe that’s the lesson.
Not that we abandon all practicality. Not that we ignore the world as it operates. But that we remember what is possible when trust leads instead of fear.
The sign above the register may have been meant as a joke.
But the life behind it was the real message.
“In God we trust.”
And sometimes, if we’re willing, we let that include each other.