A few minutes past 2:00 PM, there was little reason to believe we’d be getting a round in on Friday. In fact, any sane person would have scanned the ominous sky and headed for home. But golfers, it seems, are not entirely sane.
In a golfer’s heart, there is always hope. Hope that the sky will clear, to be sure. And that the course will be playable, post-deluge: the bunkers will drain, the creeks won’t flood, and every shot will land near the cart path to limit the trudge under “Cart Path Only” conditions.
All golfers at the course have such all-encompassing hope. Each golfer has a particular hope, too: that this will be day his (or her) swing behaves; every shot (or at least most of them) will fly true; and every putt rattle.
I have such hope myself. But it is not born of experience in recent years. Just the opposite, in fact: I’ve been struggling mightily with my swing – and have even resorted to practice … supported by esoteric instructional videos and weird training gizmos.
So of course I’m going to stay at the course after the deluge, and try to get at least a few holes in. Gotta test out my new “swing-thought” … give it a whirl … and see if I still have reason for hope.
But what if “hope” more closely resembles “apocalypse” when I’m out on the course? What if Bad Old Habits return, belying my New Practice Routines? Doesn’t that mean it’s time to give up golf, and maybe go read a book instead?
Any sane person might reach just such a conclusion. But a golfer never will. A golfer learns to pray, instead – pray along with Thomas Merton: “O God, teach me to be satisfied with my helplessness.” Which is to say, a golfer enters a mystical realm each time a ball is struck pure. In that instant of solid contact, the golfer gets a glimpse of something like God’s glory. And once he’s seen it, he always wants to see more.
Perhaps this is a little like the realm espied by the Evangelist in today’s second reading. “Then I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth … [and] I heard a loud voice from the throne saying ‘Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people.’”
Can God really be this close, I wonder? As close as a caddie is to a golfer? “God himself will always be with them as their God,” the Evangelist promises. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
Our God, it seems, is One who – like a golfer – takes delight in solid contact.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 