As most of you know, I belong to a church in the midst of merger. That is not to say it will merge, but that it has been and continues to look at merger as an option. And I am sorry to say that I am one who, based on misinformation, stated that in business terms this "merger" seemed more like a "takeover".
One of the joys of my new job is that, although I am working my 40 hours a week, I don’t have such a backlog of projects that I feel I must work two hours before work begins and through lunch as well. So I've had some extra time to ponder and research. And last week I looked up the word merger, because the definition of that word seemed to be very important regarding how the two churches would function when they came together. And I had to sit back for a bit. In fact, it has taken almost a week for my response to the definition of merger to filter down from my brain to the keyboard.
According to Miriam-Webster, and I quote:
Main Entry: merg'er
Pronunciation: 'm&r-j&r
Function: noun
Etymology: merge + -er (as in waiver)
Date: 1728
1 law : the absorption of an estate, a contract, or an interest in another, of a minor offense in a greater, or of an obligation into a judgment
2 a : the act or process of merging b : absorption by a corporation of one or more others; also : any of various methods of combining two or more organizations (as business concerns)
Now, this set me thinking about absorption, and that set me thinking about chemistry, and that is why I’m writing this now. And I write not just to those members of the churches involved in the merger but also to others because this applies to more than just this instance of churches merging. It has application to other areas of our life as well.
Were I a chemist, I might be better able to explain what I’m about to say, but since I’m not a chemist, I’ll keep my insight rudimentary and the chemists who get this can gently correct me later.
It seems to me that a great deal of chemistry deals with mergers and what they produce, so I’m going to detail a couple of chemical mergers and what they do.
The first of these is the simplest. It is where two exactly similar elements or compounds are joined together. Imagine, if you will, two small buttons of mercury on a flat surface. If you push those two buttons together you get one large button of mercury. It’s mass will be the sum of the smaller buttons, but that won’t change the composition of mercury or any of the properties that make mercury what it is.
The next is, if not as simple then probably familiar. Most of us have probably, at one time or another, made a clay volcano, filled it with baking soda, and then added vinegar to it, making it "erupt". This is a transformation of one compound (baking soda) and the acetic acid in the vinegar transform into Water, Carbon Dioxide, and a salt (for those who care: NaHCO3+ HC2H3O2 -> NaC2H3O2 + H2O + CO2 (g) )
This may not be exactly true, however. If you have more baking soda than vinegar, you'll have some baking soda left over. If you have more vinegar than baking soda, you'll have that left over. It is only through trial and error that someone came up with the exact proportions necessary to make this merger work to its fullest.
But it's the third kind of chemical merger that interests me most. Those kind which use a catalyst. I recently tracked down an old teacher of mine to make sure I had this story straight. He had been attending a physics/chemistry conference and one of the presenters was showing off an experiment. In a sealed tank, he had mixed two gasses. In and of themselves, the gasses were there, co-mingling but not merging. As a requirement for this experiment, almost all of the lights had been turned off, because that would have "messed up" this merger, and everyone in the audience had been informed of this fact.
The presenter stood on stage, the most puzzled look on his face because this merger hadn’t happen. He muttered to the audience that everything looked right, all the proportions were correct. Finally, he asked if anyone in the audience had a camera. "I want to document this because it should never have happened." Someone loaned him a camera. Up behind the tank he went and snapped a picture, the exploding flash bulb seeming overly bright. Suddenly, there was something different in the tank.
The presenter had known all along that his merger was incomplete, but his audience, who knew that light would have an impact on the merger, had completely overlooked the light of a flash bulb. The presenter mentioned, after all of the oohs and ahs were finished, that he had seen some truly fantastic pictures from that instant of merger, when the camera captures what its light has given power to.
So, where is all this leading? What is the application to our daily lives? Well, it actually involves one more merger and a quote that I can not find and if any one else does and can forward it to me, I’d appreciate it. The essence of that quote was that if a bar of gold and a bar of lead are placed together and then pulled apart, there is no visible difference. The gold still is gold and the lead still is lead. On a subatomic level, however, electrons have been exchanged and part of the lead is now part of the gold and vice versa. As we interact with other human beings, we also merge and separate, taking pieces of the other person with us.
So, what I've been asking myself for the last week has been a simple question. When I interact with others, what kind of merger am I performing? Am I just adding to the mass? Am I, and the others I am interacting with, allowing a transformation to take place wherein the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? Am I willing to let Christ be a catalyst in these interactions and mergers?
I don't really have an answer to these questions. Each interaction needs to be answered as it occurs. Sometimes I find myself looking back and seeing the opportunity missed to have a catalyst make the transformation even more than it was. Just something to think about this week.
As most of you know, I belong to a church in the midst of merger. That is not to say it will merge, but that it has been and continues to look at merger as an option. And I am sorry to say that I am one who, based on misinformation, stated that in business terms this "merger" seemed more like a "takeover".
One of the joys of my new job is that, although I am working my 40 hours a week, I don’t have such a backlog of projects that I feel I must work two hours before work begins and through lunch as well. So I've had some extra time to ponder and research. And last week I looked up the word merger, because the definition of that word seemed to be very important regarding how the two churches would function when they came together. And I had to sit back for a bit. In fact, it has taken almost a week for my response to the definition of merger to filter down from my brain to the keyboard.
According to Miriam-Webster, and I quote:
Main Entry: merg'er
Pronunciation: 'm&r-j&r
Function: noun
Etymology: merge + -er (as in waiver)
Date: 1728
1 law : the absorption of an estate, a contract, or an interest in another, of a minor offense in a greater, or of an obligation into a judgment
2 a : the act or process of merging b : absorption by a corporation of one or more others; also : any of various methods of combining two or more organizations (as business concerns)
Now, this set me thinking about absorption, and that set me thinking about chemistry, and that is why I’m writing this now. And I write not just to those members of the churches involved in the merger but also to others because this applies to more than just this instance of churches merging. It has application to other areas of our life as well.
Were I a chemist, I might be better able to explain what I’m about to say, but since I’m not a chemist, I’ll keep my insight rudimentary and the chemists who get this can gently correct me later.
It seems to me that a great deal of chemistry deals with mergers and what they produce, so I’m going to detail a couple of chemical mergers and what they do.
The first of these is the simplest. It is where two exactly similar elements or compounds are joined together. Imagine, if you will, two small buttons of mercury on a flat surface. If you push those two buttons together you get one large button of mercury. It’s mass will be the sum of the smaller buttons, but that won’t change the composition of mercury or any of the properties that make mercury what it is.
The next is, if not as simple then probably familiar. Most of us have probably, at one time or another, made a clay volcano, filled it with baking soda, and then added vinegar to it, making it "erupt". This is a transformation of one compound (baking soda) and the acetic acid in the vinegar transform into Water, Carbon Dioxide, and a salt (for those who care: NaHCO3+ HC2H3O2 -> NaC2H3O2 + H2O + CO2 (g) )
This may not be exactly true, however. If you have more baking soda than vinegar, you'll have some baking soda left over. If you have more vinegar than baking soda, you'll have that left over. It is only through trial and error that someone came up with the exact proportions necessary to make this merger work to its fullest.
But it's the third kind of chemical merger that interests me most. Those kind which use a catalyst. I recently tracked down an old teacher of mine to make sure I had this story straight. He had been attending a physics/chemistry conference and one of the presenters was showing off an experiment. In a sealed tank, he had mixed two gasses. In and of themselves, the gasses were there, co-mingling but not merging. As a requirement for this experiment, almost all of the lights had been turned off, because that would have "messed up" this merger, and everyone in the audience had been informed of this fact.
The presenter stood on stage, the most puzzled look on his face because this merger hadn’t happen. He muttered to the audience that everything looked right, all the proportions were correct. Finally, he asked if anyone in the audience had a camera. "I want to document this because it should never have happened." Someone loaned him a camera. Up behind the tank he went and snapped a picture, the exploding flash bulb seeming overly bright. Suddenly, there was something different in the tank.
The presenter had known all along that his merger was incomplete, but his audience, who knew that light would have an impact on the merger, had completely overlooked the light of a flash bulb. The presenter mentioned, after all of the oohs and ahs were finished, that he had seen some truly fantastic pictures from that instant of merger, when the camera captures what its light has given power to.
So, where is all this leading? What is the application to our daily lives? Well, it actually involves one more merger and a quote that I can not find and if any one else does and can forward it to me, I’d appreciate it. The essence of that quote was that if a bar of gold and a bar of lead are placed together and then pulled apart, there is no visible difference. The gold still is gold and the lead still is lead. On a subatomic level, however, electrons have been exchanged and part of the lead is now part of the gold and vice versa. As we interact with other human beings, we also merge and separate, taking pieces of the other person with us.
So, what I've been asking myself for the last week has been a simple question. When I interact with others, what kind of merger am I performing? Am I just adding to the mass? Am I, and the others I am interacting with, allowing a transformation to take place wherein the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? Am I willing to let Christ be a catalyst in these interactions and mergers?
I don't really have an answer to these questions. Each interaction needs to be answered as it occurs. Sometimes I find myself looking back and seeing the opportunity missed to have a catalyst make the transformation even more than it was. Just something to think about this week.