It turned out to be anything BUT a masterpiece, my golf round played in Forest Park … under the discerning gaze of the St. Louis Art Museum.
I suppose that was only to be expected. I was playing with but a single club in my bag – 13 clubs fewer than with which I typically begin a match. Now, I won’t pretend a full complement of equipment really makes that much difference on any given day at the course. I’m more than capable of screwing up a shot, no matter how perfectly spec’d is the club I’ve chosen to attempt it. “It ain’t the arrow,” as they say. “It’s the Indian.”
On this day, however, the whole point of the charity event was to present an atypical challenge: make your way around the course with nothing but a 7-iron to rely upon. And honestly, it sounded like fun. A 7-iron is usually one of my favorite clubs to hit – generally predictable in distance and trajectory and outcome.
Alas, all too frequently yesterday, I found myself “overswinging” on the tee boxes and in the fairways: trying to force extra yardage out of club that oughta be dialed into a pretty specific number – 155 or so. And on the greens, I discovered that its loft and lie-angle and weight dispersement pretty much made putting an ordeal.
Some fun, eh? Fortunately, the tourney organizers set an 8-stroke limit per hole, so we all managed to finish before dark. And I was left to ponder how a normally reliable stick could provide such meager consolation on this overcast day.
In the end, I guess, there’s no real mystery here. Like the Pharisee we meet in today’s gospel passage, I was relying on a house of cards – overconfidence in my “goodness” … a sense of pride, of self-sufficiency, that all-too-often left me blind to my tendency to “overswing.”
A better set-up, a better “swing thought”, might have been more like the humility of the Tax Collector. “Let’s just make good contact, take the 155 yards, and move on.” But that’s not the way we’re wired, are we?
God promises that “the prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds,” that we will be heard when we approach the Holy One in all humility. Still, we tend to rely on our own devices to get the job done.
Perhaps a better strategy would be to join our voice to that of the Tax Collector: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It’s a beautiful prayer, one that in my experience is always answered.
It equips us with the one thing we really need: to find ourselves held tenderly, and relying entirely on our loving God.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 