Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
I can do it. No matter what thousands of preachers say, I can indeed worship
God while playing golf. The experience of the swing, when it's right, with
body and mind working together as all the muscles remember their part of the
dance, is about as holistic an experience as most of us are likely to get this
side of hang-gliding or figure skating. The quiet but thoroughly deeply satisfying
experience of the "ping" when body, club, and ball connect right is a moment
out of time, a feeling that is always new. And so I remember the biblical words, "behold,
I am fearfully and wonderfully made."
To walk through a quiet green place for several hours is an experience most
of us seldom have, and if you allow yourself to play golf without feelings
of competition or performance anxiety, the reconnection with nature is truly
restorative. In those moments I remember that it is the Creator whom we meet
in the complexity and beauty of the world of green things.
Let me confess to one more thing. I am an introvert: I like being alone on
the course. I used to go to play golf in the late weekday afternoons, when
courses are least full. My favorite was laid out on Long Island's Great South
Bay, and it would take the rest of this column to describe its pleasures, especially
the pleasures it provides to the solitary golfer. That one can feel both energy
and peace at the same time was its principal revelation to me, as the ghosts
of the great whaling ships could be faintly detected on the gray waves.
As an introvert and as a contemplative sort, I suppose I could go on that
way forever, walking and managing my own clubs. The chances are, I think, that
if my calling in life had not been to ordained ministry, that reflecting on
nature and its God would be the total of my religion. In fact, I have the talents,
skills, and abilities, to live entirely unto myself in a largely artificial
state of mental comfort that permits me to forget how life really is for billions
of human beings.
And so, I think that by natural inclination I would be one of those who insists
that they can worship God on the golf course as well as they can anywhere else,
and there is a limited sense in which that claim would be true.
Speaking only for myself, it is precisely because I can get my religious needs,
at least what I think are my religious needs, met by a walk and the experience
of mind/body unity, that the weekly discipline of the liturgy is so important
to my salvation. Discipline. My salvation. The liturgy essentially says to
me, "you may have the other six days and twenty-two hours for solitary contemplation,
and there is nothing wrong with that, but for now you will pray with other
disciples of Jesus."
And what a community it is. By being gathered into the church I find myself
gathered into the most amazing company. Many are people whom I would not normally
seek out; many are people who would not normally seek me out. But here we all
are, not just in the same place, but, astonishingly, made kin to one another
by our single faith and our one baptism. Their burdens become mine as we pray
for all sorts and conditions of humanity.
Our mission, and God's gift of equipment for it, are made real to me as the
Bible is read and preached. As we enter the heart of our faith as the eucharistic
prayer is proclaimed and we share Christ's meal, I rediscover a wider world.
That world still has contemplation, golf, and music in it, to be sure, but
it has people and issues that call for words and acts of compassion, justice,
and reconciliation. It has slums, and office towers, and bedroom communities
in which the beauty of the flowers and our connectedness to the Creator and
creation need desperately to be known. Self-interest is in this discipline,
too: I have never dragged to church during vacation time without gaining a
heightened sense of connection to the gifts of God that can be received only
in sharing life with others.
After some years away with a shoulder injury, I will be back out there this
summer, come vacation time. I can almost taste how good that will be, how refreshing,
how cleansing, and I will thank and praise God for it all and during it all.
I will also allow myself to be kept in touch with the even deeper realities
of life in Christ, and with these two aspects of life working together, I expect
August's recreation to be re-creation for sure.
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Index)
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