Torn between two popes

Some predicted the meeting between newly elected Pope Francis I and his predecessor, Benedict XVI, would be awkward. After all, the Roman Catholic Church hasn't had a pope resign in 600 years. What would the two men say to each other? Would Benedict tell Pope Francis what he should and shouldn't be doing? Would the former pope be looking over the new pope’s shoulder? And would the new pope feel threatened, even resentful?

Would people find themselves torn between two popes?

Even if like me, you’re not Roman Catholic, the story is still intriguing because it’s carries a lesson in leadership that can apply to everyone, religious and non-religious.

Before the meeting, Swiss theologian and friend as well as critic of Benedict said, “Benedict XVI could turn into a shadow pope who has stepped down but can still exert indirect influence.”

The meeting would indicate if that would be a likely possibility.

I can’t help but love Pope Francis. His simple style is fresh, humble, and so uncommonly common. When the cardinals first congratulated him in the Sistine Chapel as newly elected Pope Francis, he stood with them rather than sitting before them. Then on the way back to the Vatican, he rode the bus with the cardinals rather than riding in his designated limousine. And the day after his election, he asked to be taken back to the clergy boarding house so he could pay his bill. He prefers simpler cassocks and even rejected those red papal shoes in favor of his plain black ones.

My favorite Pope Francis story thus far is how he personally called back to Buenos Aires, Argentina to cancel the delivery of his newspaper. The kiosk owner’s son answered the phone and thought someone was pulling a prank on him.

“Seriously, it’s Jorge Bergoglio, I’m calling you from Rome,” the Pope insisted.

“I was in shock, I broke down in tears and didn't know what to say,” Daniel Del Regno told the Argentinean daily La Nacion. “He thanked me for delivering the paper all this time and sent best wishes to my family.”

So, what did Pope Francis and Benedict talk about when they actually did meet last Saturday, March 23? No one knows for sure. Some have speculated that they might have discussed the investigation of the leaks into the papal documents, the rise of secularism in the world, and the drop of priestly vocations in Europe.

Perhaps they talked about how difficult it is to be pope. Can you imagine that?

So, maybe Benedict handed Pope Francis three envelopes.

Do you know the story?

A pastor arrives at his new church. His first day in his office, he opens his desk drawer and sees a note from the former pastor. The note says, ‘”If things get tough, open these three envelopes.” The envelopes were numbered one, two, and three.

Sure enough, within a few months the people began to grumble, so the pastor decides to open envelope number one. It said, “Blame your predecessor.”

The pastor did, and it worked well for about nine months. But once again the people began to complain.

The pastor decided to open envelope number two. It advised, “Reorganize.”

The pastor reorganized the church’s entire program. And that worked for about a year.

Then the people began murmuring again, this time worse than ever. The pastor feared for his job.

In desperation, he decided he had to open envelope number three.

With trembling fingers he pulled the note from the envelope.

It simply read, “Prepare three envelopes.”

I don’t know that Pope Francis will need three envelopes, but he no doubt faces a daunting task. And like any leader, he needs the support of others.

It appears Pope Francis has that from a very gracious Benedict. And Pope Francis seems secure in who he is. When they met in the chapel, Benedict offered Francis the main kneeler, but Francis refused, saying, “We are brothers.”

The Roman Catholic Church won’t be torn between two popes.

Something more than history takes place when words of unity are spoken. “We are brothers.” “We are sisters.”  “We are one.”

And that’s not a bad spirit for Christians of all persuasions to acquire on their journey to Calvary this Holy Week as they anticipate the celebration of their one Lord’s resurrection Easter Sunday.

And you don’t have to be pope to say it.

Did God create the God particle?

The smoke had barely settled from the conclave of cardinal’s announcement that Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio had been elected as Pope Francis, when the scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, made their own announcement: the so-called “God particle” does indeed exist.

“Look quick,” my wife told me, directing me to the evening news. “ They've discovered the ‘God particle.’”

I was curious: Was it A God Particle? Or The God Particle? Or God in a Particle? Or just God’s Particle?

And since it carries God’s name, doesn’t that imply he created it? Or rather does it mean it replaces the necessity of God?

The “God particle” is actually the particle that literally gives substance to our universe. Called the Higgs boson, it is what makes stuff have “mass,” and it therefore permeates the universe. For the past 50 years scientists have predicted this particle and just last week physicists at the Large Hadron Collider, which lies beneath the ground between the borders of France and Switzerland, have after years of testing made the discovery. The Higgs boson does exist.

The “God particle” is also believed to be the “force” that resulted in the so-called, “Big Bang,” which many believe resulted in the universe.

The term “God particle” has nothing to do with God, really, except for the fact that like it, God is everywhere but mysteriously hidden. Noble Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman’s editor suggested the phrase for Lederman’s book on the subject.

The research leading to and the discovery of the Higgs boson will likely have positive results, just as quantum physics led to the discovery of other inventions, like MRI’s and PET scans.

But will the discovery lead us to or away from an affirmation in God’s existence?

It can do both, depending on what you believe or don’t believe.

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Those who think the confirmation of the Higgs boson renders God irrelevant, or that it proves science has once and forever blown any possibility of  holy smoke into the winds, are likely to be disappointed, unless they already disbelieved God.  

Getting closer to the supposed moment of creation doesn't necessarily disprove God’s existence.

But neither does it prove it.

Yet the question remains, where did that particle come from?

Perhaps it is as astronomer Robert Jastrow described it: “For the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

But maybe those theologians should welcome the arrival of the scientists as both scientists and theologians continue their search for further confirmations of truth.

The Higgs boson may give us a better understanding of the origin of the universe, and in doing so provoke questions about who or what or if anything was behind its creation, or if it was created at all.

Most believers maintain that God has chosen to reveal himself not only in nature but in other ways as well, in revelations usually referred to as Holy Scripture. But even then, this God doesn’t fit conveniently into formulas, either scientific or theological. Indeed, he is elusive, even though by faith believers affirm he is always there.

Is it possible to find God? “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” God told the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah.

And according to the Christian Scriptures, the resurrected Jesus told the women who were the first to see his post resurrected body, to go and tell the others that they should leave for Galilee, where they too would find him.

That would be on the far side of Easter, there with the One who existed before Higgs bosen was.

Or had yet to explode into a universe.

Or had a name.

Except in the mysterious mind of the One who is…

And who was…

And is to come.

The Surprising Sinkholes of Life

The Surprising Sinkholes of Life

Even though your house may appear to rest on solid ground, there is still the possibility you may find yourself suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by the rumble of your bedroom floor opening into a massive hole, sliding you and the contents of the room into its pit, interrupting your sweet dreams with dirt and debris.

And if you live in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, or Pennsylvania, you are more at risk for a sinkhole to ruin your day or night. But sinkholes occur in other places too, so you might want to sleep with one eye open, watching the bedroom floor for any unusual movements.

And don’t bother kicking the ground around your house like you do when checking a tire on a used car. The problem lies deep beneath the earth’s surface.

Just ask the people in Hillsborough County, Florida, known as “sinkhole alley,” an area that accounts for two-thirds of the sinkhole-related insurance claims in that state. This is where Jeff Bush once lived. Bush disappeared into a sinkhole when it yawned and swallowed him and his entire bedroom while he was sleeping last Saturday. Efforts to rescue him were limited by the danger of the expanding hole and were called off by Sunday morning.  

“This is not your typical sinkhole,” Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill said of the one that took Bush’s life. “This is a chasm that covers a great distance.”

But it’s not so much the size of the sinkhole that’s startling; it’s the suddenness of its occurrence.

Anthony Randazzo, who has been studying this geological phenomenon for 40 years, knows of only two people who have died because of a sinkhole. “Usually you have some time,” said Randazzo, who lectures on sinkholes at Oxford University.

“Usually you have some time.”

But apparently not always.

It doesn’t have to be a sinkhole that punctuates your life with an unexpected period.

Sometimes it’s a tornado. Or a heart attack. Or a drunk driver. Or a weak ladder.

And your day is done; your number is called; your bell has tolled.

Jeff Bush simply went to bed and woke up in a deep hole, screaming for help.

Life folds into death that way, and suddenly we are covered with dirt.

Concerned by-standers can only cover their mouths in horror.

Jeremy Bush, Jeff’s brother, tried to rescue him.

“He was my brother, man, I loved him,” Jeremy said through tears.

And Jeff’s aunt, Janell Wheeler, cried, “I just want my nephew.”

“Usually you have time.”

But not always.

Life’s surprising sinkholes crack open with those unusuallies, the exceptions that widen into gaping holes, plunging more and more victims into the underworld’s caverns of death. 

Eighteen people in Jesus of Nazareth’s day weren’t expecting a tower in Siloam to fall down and kill them. It must have left people wondering who was responsible. The builder of the tower? The people who were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was it some sort of punishment from God?

None of the above.

“Do you think they were any more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you will all perish” (Luke 13:5).

Jesus reminds us we live in a world filled with unwanted surprises---some of them not the usual you’ve-got-time-to-get-out-of-the-way- sinkholes---a world where towers unexplainably fall on unsuspecting victims and storms suddenly destroy people’s lives.

And Jesus indicated that our most certain certainty is found in what he called repentance, practicing the presence of Christ, living a life aligned with his Father, building on the foundation which is solid rock, Jesus himself.

As workers demolished the house that Jeffrey Bush once lived in, survivors found solace in one of the few items plucked from the wreckage: a Bible. Clutching it, they looked to the name of the street where they had lived for some 40 years: Faithway Drive.

Hopefully, with the Bible as a guide and faith in God as their support, they will continue their journey down faithway drive, traveling the precarious, uncertain road called life, knowing it’s the road to Somewhere, where the Someone who has been guiding them all along at long last waits.