When the pope comes by, the world remembers what should never have been forgotten in the first place. The palace belongs to the people, not to the prince.
Calling the called
Whether he is meeting with the once young and restless Fidel Castro in Cuba, addressing America’s fractious congress in Washington, or addressing the United Nations in New York, Pope Francis continues to prove himself a being of deep insight. For one thing, he understands fellowship and fellow-feeling like no other world fi
gure of our time. And he continues to remind us of things we forget all too often. Idol worship is foolishness
- The pope reminds us that stuff is only stuff; that we can claim all the space to pack our laurels but that time is sure to unpack all our transient treasures to make room for higher order purposes.
- The pope says that having been called to a higher purpose, we must work consistently and tirelessly to keep averting the danger of majoring in minor things and neglecting what really counts.
Decoding the pope’s call
If we read the pope right, his message seems to resonate across all cultures and persuasions. Ordinary people and their lives matter. People should matter more than governments, and the governed should matter more than the governors thereof. As such, the people’s pope beckons democrats and republicans everywhere to find dignity in alternative points of view, to become less dramatic and divisive in their methods so that they can rise to the call to become people-centered bridge builders. He calls on the religious everywhere to become less hypercritical and militant, so they can put on the armor of mindfulness and mercy. And he wants to see the rich and the privileged across the world wrestle down greed and grandiloquence so they can become more generous and focused on lifting up the less privileged.
The pope on leadership
In essence, the pope gives us reason to resume the age old art of seeing God’s face beyond our hostile tribes and territories so we can lay down our arms, burrow out of our fortified self-interest trenches and find our way back home to our common humanity. To leaders, both seated and aspiring, who may have adopted crooked ways, bigotry, gridlock, aggression or outright violence as their religion, the pope leaves a sobering message. “A good [political] leader is one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism.”
Look again and look hard! This is what Pope Francis appears to be saying. Look at the people’s faces and see if you don’t see yourselves in that quintessential mirror of essence. Look at the millions of fellow human beings caught in the middle of the consuming firestorms repeatedly being created by forgetful leadership and tell me that God loves oppressors more than he loves the oppressed. Look! Look at the most vulnerable victims of politics (or commerce, or religion…) run amok; scared big time, starving, suffering, getting displaced and dispossessed, dying, … “A good [political] leader always opts to initiate processes rather than possessing spaces.”
Above and beyond swagger
Like the wise grandpa who is too old to be boxed in with the pigeonholing of transactional politics and punditry, and yet young enough at heart not to be bamboozled with the bling-bling hum of modernity, the pope seems to transcend bluster. Why?
The Pope is pope because he thinks beyond the buzz of convenience. So too can we, if our thoughts expand beyond self. The pope thinks in both human and divine spectrum. So too can we, if we remember that the color of God is
neither black nor white. And, did you pick up on this one? The pope travels light; engaging the world on ideas that nourish the better angels of our nature, while explicitly refusing to be caught in our ego-trip enterprises of winners and losers. Give me the pope any day!
Pope’s call to conscious religion
To all who seek a world where the people must cease to be victims of their leaders’ wayward ways, this is the time to pay attention. Yes, this is the time to pay attention to the difference between worshipping and warring. Religion is the business of divine worship; while prejudice and violence are the trademarks of those who seek, by hook or by crook, to be worshipped. Bigotry and violence seem like religion only in minds that have become their own gods!
Here is one reason we need to pay attention to Pope Francis, from Africa to the Americas and from Asia to Europe and beyond. The pope leads the worship of that which we only begin to approach when we hunker down and lift others up – the Almighty. The pope is Papa because he loves to surround himself with worship-centered and welcoming people of faith, not closed-minded dream killers.
Here is another reason the pope gets it and we should. He leads from a down-to-earth place; rallying both the faithful and the skeptical upward to what makes us at once human and divine. That’s the pope for you; The People’s Pope who says of our critical and judgmental prodding; who am I to judge?
The politics of suspended nobility
In their own ways, politicians too love to surround themselves with ‘worshippers’. Beyond this entry point though, the contrast between the pontiff and the vast majority of our political titans forms a dizzying chasm. Unlike the pope, too many of our mighty men of the political stage make such fabulous fakery of their otherwise noble calling. When such actors surround themselves with ‘worshipers’, they quickly orchestrate a coup d’état and become, at the very least in their view, objects of worship. Not surprisingly then, they begin to trade peace and clarity of thought for the sycophantic adulation of their ‘worshippers’. Often times they fib for the love of power. Soon, stealing and killing in order to hold on to this self created illusion of ‘power and might’ quickly ceases to be a farfetched notion. They forget that tomorrow is fast on its way, and that the day of reckoning is not something in their power to put off. We all know this from cradle, so why do they choose to forget? Life begins without our command, and so begins the countdown to the day of reckoning, no matter how all powerful we imagine ourselves to be. Not that we are not powerful, mind you. The pope says that we are very, very powerful when we are fuelled by grace.
Subtle substance
Even Pope Francis’ symbolic gestures are also packed with substance. If the pope seems joyfully at home in his modest Fiat car, the mighty without the grounding of grace find little rest even in the cozy opulence their private jets. They may rouse and rally their armies to wars, but notice the contradiction; they never fight alongside except with words that never stand the test of time. They command their flock to blow up the world with themselves as the bombs ‘for God’s sake’, but these unwary followers fail to see that they (the armchair commanders) are the gods in reference.
While the pope talks about God’s unchanging love of the poor and the dispossessed, the world’s Goliaths who have forgotten that this life is a journey, talk only as to voraciously feed their ego’s love for positions and possessions. When the pope speaks, he calls on the faithful to open their eyes and hearts to the things that matter to the least of us, and consequently to the Almighty Shepherd of our planet; love and the labor of love. Not so with too many of the mightily flawed Goliaths in positions of leadership. They are increasingly appealing only to their core constituents’ base instincts, raking in and relishing only the uninformed votes and cheers of the gullible.
The final analysis
After all is said and done, the pope will return to the Holy See (Sancta Sedes), better for having touched lives in a very big way. The United Nations will remain in New York, as a solid symbol of a world whose best hopes rest in its unity of purpose. The United States Congress will wake up to many new Washington days of opportunity to unite around the things that make the dream of a better world the summary job description of leadership. This much is in the plan. And barring the unforeseen, leaders across the world will be presented all the opportunity they need to carry on with the humongous task of shaping the days and lives of their fellow men and women.
Beyond the plausible and the certain, here are six questions, the answers to which are not as certain.
- Will the tears of joy and visceral connection stirred by the pope’s message lead the world back to the sanctity of life and the sanity of true stewardship?
- Will leaders STOP passing the death sentence on their people with decisions they make or fail to make?
- Will the real and urgent labor of love that lends strength to the fact that tears are not enough be reenacted and sustained in our world?
- Will the deep awakening inspired by the pontiff’s message enjoy a long shelf life in the hearts and minds of political, business and religious leaders who seem to have become radically wired to return to their voters and ‘worshippers’ in certain familiar coded speech patterns?
- What dreams will come into being to make the difference that the world’s most vulnerable need right now?
- Will the excluded still be waiting when the pope comes this way again?
Nothing needs to be any clearer on this one front nonetheless. The pope is with the people. And he is clear on the message that love will prevail.
lightnigeria 