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.

A possible cure for lonliness

“I’ve been lonely for quite some time now. It hangs over me like a black cloud and follows me wherever I go. At times I can escape it, but it seems like it always waiting there…”

I’d heard similar confessions before from others.

I’ve heard it from my own voice within, at times, too.

People get lonely. Some studies list loneliness as the most common anxiety of people today. Some estimate as many as 50 percent of the population experiences chronic loneliness.

Someone you know is lonely.

Maybe you’re lonely.

The challenge is knowing what to do when you’re in the midst of it, when it descends on you like a fog, enveloping you in its macabre embrace, holding you with a grip that won’t let you go, submerging you in its ever tightening grasp, squeezing you into a more complex, dangerous, even intimate relationship, mysteriously drawing you in deeper, surreptitiously suffocating you in its folds of despair.

Some self medicate to endure their relationship with loneliness. Alcohol and drugs are common prophylactics.

Many attempt to elude loneliness with people.

A divorce lawyer asked a client: “You haven’t been married very long. Why did you get married in the first place?”

The client answered, “I was lonely, and I hated being by myself, so I got married.”

“Then why do you want to divorce your husband?” the attorney asked.

The client again answered, “Because I am lonely, and I hate being by myself all the time.”

No one is immune, regardless of profession or walk of life. A prominent pastor, whom I’ve admired, resigned from his ministry last week. Dr. Stephen Shoemaker, senior pastor of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, resigned his pulpit in order to focus on his recovery from depression. “The life of a senior minister is a very lonely life, and the life of a senior minister in difficulty is a doubly lonely life,” Shoemaker said.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why up to 1,500 pastors leave their jobs each month, and 45 percent, according to one survey, say they’ve experienced depression or burnout to the extent that they needed to take a leave of absence from their ministry.

I’m reminded of the depressed man who went to a therapist. After listening to the complaints of loneliness, fatigue, and anxiety, the counselor suggested the client go and hear the Great Grimaldi, the encouraging entertainer who just happened to be in the city at the time. The discouraged client slowly raised his head, looked at the counselor and responded, “Doctor, I am the Great Grimaldi.”

Perhaps in your role as parent, child, life partner, or leader, you have felt like the Great Grimaldi---always the one responsible for making others happy.

Studies have shown that loneliness most often results from several factors: life transitions, including career changes, children leaving home, and retirement; separation from familiar surroundings, and that includes family and friends; being misunderstood or unfairly criticized; and the experience of being rejected, either from a relationship or work, or both.

In the Bible there’s a story about David before he became King David. He and the people he led had lost everything, and his followers were unjustly blaming David, even threatening to kill him. The seemingly invincible David was experiencing failure, the grief of major loss, and the pain of rejection.

The Scripture says David “encouraged and strengthened himself in the Lord” (I Samuel 30:6).

David then took control and got busy in his effort to reclaim what had been stolen from him and his followers.

Sometimes the best defense against loneliness is an effective offense. Loneliness can be viewed as a signal, like hunger, that some area of life needs addressing.

As much as possible, take control of what you can in your circumstance of life. Do something, anything---as long as it’s positive and has the potential to help you and others.

I read about a seven word cure for loneliness: Get busy doing something for someone else.

Then leave it with them; they are responsible for their own choice for happiness.

It’s no guarantee, but helping someone else is one of the surest ways to dissipate that dark cloud of despair. In doing so, you might just open the curtains, allowing the sunshine of hope to shine in the darkened rooms of your lonely life.

Reasons to laugh in a season of sadness

Most of us know what it’s like to laugh at the wrong time.

The character Ray Barone in the sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, got himself in a peck of trouble when his wife Debra confided in him that her parents were getting a divorce. Typical of Raymond, instead of being empathic, he found the situation laughable and couldn't restrain his snicker. Debra made him pay severally for his faux pas.

When I was in high school, I wiped out on a mini-bike near our cabin on Lake Altus, Ok. As I slowly picked myself out of the gravel---still intact, albeit with skinned knees, a black eye, and bloody elbows---the first thing I heard was my older brother, Mark, laughing. No, he was actually howling. “Look at that,” he screamed, cackling as he doubled over, writhing in rapt amusement.

I’m glad the incident wasn't recorded, for it could have made its way to “America’s Funniest Videos.”

But like Raymond, Mark paid a price for his laughter, for Mom bopped him hard on the top of his head with her ring finger while I was dragging myself back to the cabin. (Mark remains unrepentant to this day and still laughs about my mini-bike tragedy whenever he gleefully retells the story.)

The first funeral I attended other than that of my brother Dougie was my grandmother Moore’s. I was only 7 years old at the time and laughed, not during the funeral itself but at some insignificant thing during the visitation time. Mark did help me that day. Cutting his eyes in my direction and furrowing his brow was the only signal I needed that something serious was happening. Or about to.  I put on a somber face the rest of the day.

For our instruction, the Bible tells us there is both a time to laugh and a time to cry. The trouble is, we don’t always know the time or the season.

Take the 40 days comprising what many Christians refer to as Lent: Should we laugh or should we cry?

After all, Christians believe Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, not just 325 days of the year, but 365. Are Christians pretending that Christ is in the grave, forcing upon themselves fake frowns, feigning self deprecation, or worse, becoming “addicted to a certain kind of sadness,” as Gotye describes the estranged lovers in his pop song, “Somebody That I Used To Know”?

What season is it, after all?

Should we laugh or should we cry?

I don’t want the Almighty to reprimand me for laughing when I should be crying.

This is a season within a season, a time within time, when believers laugh with tears of sadness and weep with smiles of joy.

I cry, if not outwardly at least inwardly, thinking of what evil does to the innocent--- as well as the not-so-innocent, not only the children who didn’t get the chance to vote for their life, but for people enmeshed the in the web of iniquity, swamped by endless waves of guilt upon guilt upon guilt that ceaselessly crash upon an already crushed self-esteem.

This pain, in the words of John Coffey (the late Michael Clarke Duncan) in the film the “Green Mile,” is “like pieces of glass in my head all the time.”

But having taken a deep breath and praying, I smile, peacefully participating in those little disciplines I have chosen---the extra time in prayer, fasting, and giving---because by engaging in them, I am inviting the resurrected One into my 40 days, knowing he is has already triumphed and will ultimately demolish the evil in this world.  And so, I am able, as Francis of Assisi advised many years ago, to “leave sadness to the devil” for “the devil has reason to be sad.”

That reminds me that even in this season of sorrow, and loss, and tragedy,  a 40 days extending far  beyond 40--- a time encompassing all of life’s angst on this terrestrial ball that we call home---He gives us reasons to be fully alive.

Reasons to smile.

And even laugh.

The ministry of back scratching

As soon as I asked the question, I asked myself why I had asked the question. Even as I was mouthing the words, the stodgy side of me whispered to the daring side, “What do you think you’re doing?”

She has been a resident in the long term care facility for several years and given her advanced age, this will likely be her home until she dies. It doesn't take much for me to illicit a smile from her, most any caring words will do: “You look nice today.” “I love that smile.” “You’re in a happy mood.”

And her grin embraces the entire room, her world.

That day, I was about to make my exit when I noticed she kept squirming in her chair as if she were trying to scratch her back. “Is something wrong with your back?” I queried.

“It itches,” she declared.

And that’s when the words quite involuntarily slipped out: “Would you like me to scratch your back?”

As a pastor, I've sat up all night with people as death waited at the door, gone to the grocery store for needy people, helped a farmer cut tobacco (I was practically worthless to him), and eaten meals, the content of which, in some cases, I didn't know and was afraid to ask. (I did once ask, “What was in that dish?” and discovered I had just eaten horse meat.)

But as a minister, I've never scratched a back.

 Never.

She leaned forward, “Please…”

What was I to do?

I imagined what I would say when I arrived home and my wife asked, “What did you do at work today?”

“Oh, let me see, I worked on my sermon, counseled a young couple, had a planning meeting, read a couple of journal articles, and by the way, scratched someone’s back--- my definitive accomplishment for the day.”

It’s a fact: Our backs itch in response to stimuli, like clothing, dust, hair---or a bug. Our first natural response is to scratch the spot of the itch with our fingernails. “The reason for this response is simple -- we want to remove the irritant as soon as possible,” according to the website, health.howstuffworks.com

That helps me understand my role a little better: I’m not merely a back scratcher; I’m practically a physical therapist, alleviating pain in people who can’t help themselves. As I left her room, I held my head high, for after all, I was on a higher plane: I should don a white coat, one like the physicians wear with my name embroidered on it: Dr. Whitlock, Itch Therapist.

I would tell my wife that in addition to thinking deep theological thoughts and dispensing wise words of counsel, I had added the art of back scratching therapy to my repertoire of pastoral activities.

And then I read something quite distressing.

According to a study at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, the ankle has overtaken the back as the most satisfying spot to scratch.

Indeed, Professor Francis McGlone, a member of the International Forum for the Study of Itch (It does exist, I looked it up, and I’m itching to become a member) observed, “It was interesting that the ankle was the itchiest site and that the most pleasure came from scratching it, because the back has been well-known as a preferred site for scratching.”

Now, what am I going to do if I notice some poor souls trying unsuccessfully to scratch their ankles? Unlike the back, ankles are often uncovered. Before scratching, they would need to be cleaned. That would of course entail washing someone’s feet.

But for that I wouldn't get to wear the prestigious doctor’s white coat, spotless and starched, emblazoned with my name and title. It might get wet and soiled. No, for foot washing I would likely need to wrap a towel around my waist and lower myself, getting on my knees, bending down, washing and drying feet in a basin of water, I suppose.

That’s almost too much like what Someone I know did a couple of thousand years ago.

And I’m not sure I’m there yet.

Maybe I’d better just stick to scratching backs.

 

  

Let that hot letter cool down before sending it

If only they had followed Abraham Lincoln’s example about what to do when in a fit of anger, we are tempted to put our thoughts on paper, or even worse, post them online.

I’m referring to the pastor and the waitress, the pastor being the Reverend Alois Bell, the woman who wrote on her Applebee’s receipt, “I give God 10%---why do you get 18%?” The server, Chelsea Welch, who wasn't actually the one who waited on Bell, photographed Bell’s comment (including her signature) and then posted Bell’s note on Reddit.com with the headline, “My mistake sir, I’m sure Jesus will pay for my rent and groceries,”  subsequently giving Applebee’s cause to fire Welch.

Pastor Bell didn't like the fact that she was being charged an automatic 18% gratuity for a large party. When her snarky comment raised a bumper crop of criticism, Bell apologized, admitting her words were a lapse of judgment. “I’m human,” she said, “I did that.”

Applebee’s defends its action in firing Welch because, according to the restaurant chain, she violated the company’s social media policy, which includes protecting personal information about their “guests.”

Not everybody appreciates the mandatory gratuity for large parties. After all, when it comes to a restaurant tip, how is it a gratuity if it’s included in the bill? (But why did Bell have to invoke God to justify her aggravation? A tip is a gratuity based on performance; a tithe is an Old Testament command referring to the obligatory giving of 1/10 of all possessions under Hebraic law.) 

It’s easier to sympathize with the waitress. We all have our limits on putting up with snide, unkind remarks from ungrateful people.

During college summers, I used to sell cemetery property door to door in Houston, Texas. (We called ourselves “pre-needs counselors.”) I learned what it was like to be a verbally abused salesperson and would occasionally massage my trampled ego by asking rude people, “You aren't from Texas, are you?” If they answered, “No,” I would respond, “I figured that because most people from Texas are kind and considerate.”  If they said, “Yes,” I would raise my eyebrows in apparent shock and say, “That’s quite astonishing because most people from Texas aren't like you; they’re kind and considerate.”

 It felt good to say it, and maybe that’s why I got chased off a few front doors, once by Broom Hilda herself. (I mean it; she really did wield a broom in my direction. And no, she wasn't from Texas)

As for Applebee’s, their action in firing Welch is justified. (I still wish they would rehire her.) After all, we like to think that the items we’ve ordered to eat and drink, the amount of our bill, as well as the percentage of our tip, won’t be posted online for the world to see.

So how could Lincoln have helped the pastor and the waitress?  According to Lincoln biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals, Lincoln had a habit of writing “hot letters.” In an interview on NPR’s  Fresh Air, she said, “When he was upset with somebody he would write what he called a hot letter where he would write it all down and then he would put it aside until his emotions cooled down, and then write: Never sent. Never signed."  

Having expressed his angry feelings, Lincoln felt better, and he didn't have to regret the angry words he never sent.

Think of the embarrassment Pastor Bell could have saved herself if she had written a “hot letter” to the manager, let it cool down, then rephrased her cutting remarks, or simply placed the letter in the unsent file. Or she could have written her remark on her own customer copy’s receipt and put it in her pocket rather than writing hurtful words on the restaurant’s receipt. And if Chelsea had covered Bell’s signature in the photo, and then only shared it with some trusted confidants, she would still have her job today.

Now, as for me, I’m glad we didn't have smartphones or the internet back when I sold cemetery property. Unaware of Abe’s method of handling anger, I might have recorded the front door vituperation of some boorish customer, maybe even recorded Broom Hilda chasing me, posted it online, and gotten myself fired. Think of it: I would have missed out on the 20% sales commission I made on all those cemetery lots I sold.

And then, without a job, I wouldn't have had 10% to give back to God.