Today’s find: Champs

The Cup is coming home again, at last.

A handsome piece of hardware, it is – the St. Joe Golf League Championship Cup. And hard to claim. Indeed, there are more than a few really good golfers in our league who’ve never had their name inscribed on the base of the trophy. 

That’s one of the oddities of the Cup: It honors a team accomplishment, for a sport that’s generally considered a solo endeavor. An individual golfer, no matter how well he shoots, can never win the Cup on his own. The reverse is also true: a golfer can win it even if he plays poorly on a given day.

I should know. That’s been the case for me the last two times my team has won. I’ve contributed nothing to the success of our squad, at least not in the final match of the season. And on both occasions, I’ve discovered there’s nothing quite like “hoisting the Cup” to take the bitter edge off a terrible round.

All’s well that ends well, the Bard once wrote. A sentiment that’s especially sweet when sipped from the Cup, I’ve noticed. 

Sweet for me, anyway. Turns out, my Beloved is not particularly enamored of our Golf League’s traveling trophy. It doesn’t exactly blend in with our home décor, so she’d just as soon not have me give it prominent display in the family room for weeks at a time. Go figure.

And here’s the thing: I know that about my wife. I also know we’ll work something out, a compromise that will make both of us happy. 

Isn’t that a blessing? It’s the kind of thing I’m feeling called by this week’s scripture to contemplate. The first reading reminds us “It is not good for the man to be alone.” And in the gospel, Jesus celebrates any marriage in which “the two shall become one flesh.”

That’s not an automatic thing, is it – any more than being a really good golfer will get your name inscribed on the Cup. Married love is something we learn, something we live…both in our moments of joy and in times of utter failure or conflict. Indeed, as Pope Francis has said, family problems “are an opportunity to draw closer to others, to draw closer to God.”

It’s all about relationship in the end, I think. We lean on each other, depend on each other. We learn to cling – and in the process, discover that the one we’re actually clinging to … is God.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS