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.

Stan the Man: A Living Legend

“Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, and you'll never go wrong.”

---From the film, “The Sandlot” (1993)

A great American legend, and one of my heroes, was buried last week. But “Stan the Man” Musial was more than a hero; he was and remains a legend. And legends live on, influencing those who come behind them, inspiring new acts of courage and goodness.

Though dead, Stan Musial lives on.

Even now I can feel his left hand gently resting on the back of my neck, as if he had anointed me for something beyond myself, a budding 7 year boy with a field of dreams. My dad had made reservations for us to eat at Stan Musial and Biggies Restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. My older brother, Mark, and I stood there in our coats and ties, blinking from the photo flash that captured more than our smiles alongside a baseball luminary: Musial’s taller figure leaned slightly forward over Mark and me, as if he were gracefully bestowing a measure of his greatness on us.

It was the summer of 1963, Musial’s last year as a professional baseball player.

The day before, we had made our way across the prairies of Oklahoma, the tires of Dad’s 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville singing along Route 66 as we sped through the foothills of Missouri, finally arriving in St. Louis, the “Gateway to the West,” but more importantly to us, the city wherein back then lay Baseball Mecca: Sportsman’s Park, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Son, Stan Musial is getting ready to bat,” I recall Dad telling me. “He’s a real legend.” Even though St. Louis lost both games of a double header to the Philadelphia Phillies on that otherwise perfect baseball afternoon, August 4, 1963, we saw Musial single to center field in the bottom of the 9^th in the first game. (He didn't play the second game.) That in itself made the day complete.

I didn't know it that afternoon, but Dad had called ahead and made reservations for us to dine at Stan’s restaurant. I treasure that photograph and the autographed picture of Musial, “To David, Best Wishes, Stan Musial.”

Musial didn’t just sign our baseball programs and pictures. He actually took time to sit down and talk to us. Kind and considerate, Musial was a true gentleman. There was nothing brash about him; not even the slightest hint of arrogance could be detected in his demeanor.

Years later, in August of 1986, Mark took his own family to St. Louis to watch the Cardinals.  Like our dad had done years ago, Mark called ahead and made reservations for dinner at Stan and Biggies. Stan, although retired, was still around, and Mark asked if it might be at all possible to meet the legendary Musial.

Having been seated at the restaurant, Mark heard a familiar voice. “Where’s the family from Oklahoma I need to meet?” Musial inquired.

Then, just like he had done years before, Musial sat down for a visit, taking his time, as if Mark’s family were the only guests in the crowded restaurant.

 “There sat Stan Musial, THE Stan Musial, right there at our table, just talking with us for a full 15 minutes. It was amazing,” Mark reminisced.

Like Andy Griffith, Tom Landry, and 15 cent hamburgers, they just don’t make them like that anymore.

It didn't matter to me that Stan Musial played in 3 world championships, earned 3 Most Valuable Player Awards, had 3, 630 hits in his career, and was selected to a record 24 All Star appearances.

What mattered to my brother and me that August day in 1963 was that Musial cared enough to sit down and talk, even waiting for Mom to snap a picture. As Mark and I stood there for the picture, almost too awestruck to smile, Musial seemed to be saying to us, “Follow your heart, kid, and you’ll never go wrong.”

Sportscaster Bob Costas gave a eulogy at Musial’s funeral last week. He told of Musial’s last time to bat, that year I saw him in 1963. Harry Carey was the radio broadcaster for the Cardinals then. When Musial settled into the box for his last bat, which would be a single to right field, Carey said, “Take a look fans, take a good look. Remember the swing and the stance. We won’t see his like again.”

Costas closed by saying, “Harry was right, we never have, and we never will.”

But for the kid that remains in the hearts of some of us, we can still hope that the legend will live on, and that we will never stop dreaming about being our best and following our heart.

For when we do that, we are at least swinging in the right direction.

  

The unforgiving nature of the internet

The Internet, that daily source of information upon which so many of us depend for so much---from the daily news to updates on friends and their status---can not only be an avenue offering help for today and even hope for tomorrow, but also unfortunately, an escort to our demise, bouncing us along the boulevard of broken dreams, pointing us finally to the exit ramp that lands us in a parking lot bounded by past mistakes.

Was Manti Te’o duped by an online prank, or was he part of the hoax? In either case, his story will never be the same, although his career as an athlete can continue.

Not so for the young lady who until last week was a science teacher in a middle school in Oxnard, California. Stacie Halas is the victim of her own petard---the Internet itself serving as her grand inquisitor, revealing the intimacies of a salacious past she failed to elude. Apparently she wanted to close permanently the door to her brief stint in the world of pornography. The only problem was that some of the other teachers discovered on the Internet that Stacie Halas was at least for a time, a porno star.

Halas was fired. Not a surprise. She appealed. Last week, she lost her appeal. Not a surprise, either.

What is astonishing is that Halas apparently thought her past would go undetected, even though she had made not one but several films in her few months in the porn industry. She went by a stage name in her movies, but sooner or later the truth would out. It most always does.

Especially when it’s available to replay on the Internet.

Last April ABC’s 20/20 highlighted the story of Natalie Oliveros, a porn star, who now is intent on shielding her 10 year old son from knowing anything about her career in porn. "I've been trying to knock down all the smut and all the nudity when you Google me that comes up. It's not just about me but it's about Luchino (her son) and his friends," she said. "I still would be devastated if he saw this stuff on the Internet."

Eventually, either he will find it, or someone will show it to him.

Once again we should be reminded ( how long did those involved in the Manti Te’o hoax think the mythical online woman’s identity or lack thereof would stay under the radar screen?) that the  Internet doesn't forgive and forget: it simply reveals and remembers.

To be sure, Stacie Halas committed no crime. In response to the ruling against her, Ms. Halas’ attorney underscored that she “is more than just an individual fighting for her job as a teacher. I think she’s representative of a lot of people who may have a past that may not involve anything illegal or anything that hurts anybody.”

That much is true. And what about the biblical King David---as well as the modern Bill Clinton? Didn't they get entangled in embarrassing sex scandals and still retain their high positions as leaders in the land?

Indeed they did. But neither did Bathsheba or Monica film their trysts and post them on YouTube.

I don’t know if Stacie Halas thinks her involvement in porn was immoral; nor do I know if her seeking a new career path was accompanied by a desire for forgiveness: She may have simply wanted to start over and move on.

But the Internet will forever stymie that effort. The judge in the case concluded that Halas’ “pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague.” And the superintendent of the Oxnard school district said, “Maybe it’s not a crime as far as the penal code is concerned, but we feel it’s a crime as far as moral turpitude is concerned.”

Or As “Ulysses Everett McGill” told “Delmar O’Donnell” in the film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? when Delmar claimed he and Pete had been redeemed and therefore should be exonerated from their crimes, “Even if that that did put you square with the Lord, the State of Mississippi’s a little more hard-nosed.”

So is the internet.

As another movie character, Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) put it in the film, The Natural, “Some mistakes you never quit paying for.”

Especially those that can be viewed time and time again with a simple click of a button.