On God, we can rely

I am sitting in my office. My old trusted wedge, now retired, persuades my attention. My eyes are drawn to the worn spot in the center of the clubface and I savor all those good shots.

Then, I see the wear around the edges and I remember the missed opportunities. Drawn to the connection arousing my feelings, I raise my focus toward the grip. I see the worn spots where my hands fit. I grab it. It is comfortable, reassuring, hopeful.

Retired golf clubs, like old friends, bring forth feelings from good days and bad, but also the persistent sense it never let you down when you needed it the most. A good wedge, like a good friend, never leaves you even when you are absent.

There is a feeling one gets standing on the first tee before a golf tournament. Golfers call it nerves. Nerves are good. It means we are breathing. For some, this is the start of a great round and for others, a prelude to humility. When one faces the unknown, when promise is absent, fear is a natural reaction to uncertainty. There is always a tinge of doubt amid confidence. A good grip calms the fear.

No one knows what the next moment brings. No one really knows gravity will behave just the same because it always has. We cannot explain life’s harsh and unequal treatment. The outer life never fully represents the inner life.

That old grip taught me self-reliance. After all, who intends to disappoint himself? I hold it with a certain belief in my ability knowing my only teammates are me, my club and my ball. I hold it and am connected to something inside me. My thought, my intention, my habit, my doubt and the struggle within remind me a golf swing is as much an act of faith as a learned habit.

Only through life do we learn on what and whom we can rely. If we live wise or long, we learn the what and who we rely on are few. Living life reveals us with brutal honesty. It is a vicious cycle letting light into our dark corner, the place we know with certainty we cannot rely on our self.

There is this moment, at the end of Jesus’ life in the garden of Gethsemane, when to any reader, Jesus is clearly scared, experiencing a dark corner. He asks God to let his certain death pass. He has serious nerves, with real consequences and real pain. Death will do this. Then Jesus reveals himself. He says, “but Lord, thy will be done, not mine.”

Imagination is often more tangible than memory and hope even more. It is the place we dream our lives to be. God lives there and in our dark corners, waiting for us to acknowledge his presence and his grip.