caught with our blinds down

I have long thought that The Salvation Army had, somewhere in its roots, a bit of the catholic spirit. That somewhere along the line, a former catholic must have been pretty high up in it’s ranks. How else do you explain the fact that we have versions of the pope (General), Cardinals (Commissioners), and so on and so forth. And, while our pope doesn’t have quite the power as THE pope, he’s a pope none-the-less. But yesterday I realized that, as much as we might want to be catholic, we’re actually a ghetto version of the catholic church.

On my way into church today, I picked up a copy of the Salvationist. For my Baptist friends, think “Baptist Messenger”, for my Scientology brothers and sisters, think…kidding, for everybody else, you’ll have to translate this one on your own. Anyway, I never read this thing, but felt compelled to check it out this morning. So I’m reading through it and there’s this whole long article on the nomination of the new General. For those of you not in the know, the Salvation Army just elected a new general. It’s this whole big deal. In fact, there was actually a live webcast of the event that lasted for several days. I chuckle when I think of Salvationists all over the world, glued to their computer screens, but not as much as I chuckled when I found out the following.

When a new pope is finally elected, the cardinals doing the electing burn some sort of chemical paper that allows a white cloud of smoke to rise from the chimney of the Vatican. Guess what we do? We put the window shades down in the chapel where the voting just took place. Hahaha. So people are sitting out in the garden, anxiously awaiting the vote. All of CNN is tuned in. Will the commanders be unified in their vote? Will we finally have a new General? Yes! There go the blinds! We HAVE a new General! : )

Oh man, that makes me smile.

And oh, btw, I had a Coke today with lunch.