In Memory of D’Arcy McKenzie. Christopher Houghton Budd Convenor, Economics Conference of the Goetheanum

Speaking I’m sure for his other colleagues in the Economics Conference work, I would like to share a memory of D’Arcy, whose presence and contributions to our work will be greatly missed.

Christopher Houghton Budd:

…in future time must come,

when we exist for one another,

and not the one, by means of others.

So shall the goal of earth be gained,

when each at rest within our selves,

can gladly give to others,

what neither would demand.

I learned much from D’Arcy through talks, emails, and one-on-one discussions. Sometimes it was a strain to get through his often-poor diction (says the copper to the kettle), but listen carefully and one could witness an active and original mind when it came to finance and the struggles humanity faces in this field. Too often in our movement those who otherwise take Rudolf Steiner very seriously, stop at his ideas about finance. Or, without any training in that world, condemn it without ground or insight. Not so, D’Arcy. Not only in his understanding, but also in his walking, he sought a different talk.

D’Arcy was also active in parent-teacher affairs and the travails of running a Waldorf school. Here again I learned a lot from him. Sometimes he would bike out in his shorts at dawn to meet me at Pearson Airport on a lay-over en route to or from Chile. In those chats he had the better of me, as I was usually jet-lagged.

Towards the end of his all-too-short life, he took up with renewed earnestness Steiner’s economics lectures and especially the role accounting can play not only in interpreting what Steiner said and meant, but also in bridging from his ideas to today’s realities.

It is very sad to see D’Arcy go, except that I sense he will make relatively short work of his passing, and turn as soon as he can, if he hasn’t already, to encourage us still here to press forward.

I say this because he has left us at a crucial moment. The work of the Economics Conference, if I may say so, brought him, and indeed all of us, to the brink of seeing that money is bookkeeping and that bookkeeping is money. We have been able to articulate this without wrapping it up in anthroposophical terminology. Instead, it can now live as raw soul experience through which the one knows oneself in spiritual fact – the true empiricism of finance.

When one comes to that point, the threshold moves from in front to behind and the question arises: Now where am I? And, for accountants and economists, at least, does this mean ‘job done’, time to move on?

The question I find myself asking is this: What in their next life becomes of those who steep themselves in money and numbers? Whence comes that kind of biography and whither does it lead one?

As we watch D’Arcy fade into his future, I fancy that if we are attentive enough we will see him turn and look back and with his ever-ready smile intimate that he has already glimpsed the answer to that question.