Two Paths Converged in the Woods
Preface: Whenever you do something remotely challenging, you can be sure someone is watching. Knowing you have an audience changes the equation, calls into question the outcome, and likely lowers your odds of success, unless you learn how to hold steady.
I happen to be a preacher and a golfer. These distinctly different tests of skill and focus continue to shape my life, as they have for over 30 years. The preaching path felt unavoidable, a necessary surrendering to a weekly, arduous undertaking in hopes of rendering something of value in service to others. The golfing path was random and volitional by comparison. A bag of clubs not sold at a church yard sale happen to sync well with a nearby municipal golf course charging $5 for nine holes, which together offered an altogether new way to have some fun.
For years, I walked these two paths separately, with nothing in common between them except for my modest hope of becoming incrementally better at both. I can also say, after all these years, that both are notoriously resistant to being mastered. Making peace with this truth is how for me these parallel paths first began to merge into one and the same path.
PGA golfer Vijay Singh is featured in a golf advertisement in which he is about to tee off. What we see coming at him from every possible direction are the otherwise unseen myriad of swing thoughts, potential hazards, and legitimate concerns related to the outcome of his tee shot, each one clamoring for his attention. We can see here the inner game of golf, an invisible landscape more demanding to your presence of mind than reading the contours of an uber-fast putting green or blasting out of a deep bunker to within a reasonable putting distance of the hole.
The inner game of preaching takes place upon a similar, invisible landscape where the importance of technique and mechanics become secondary to sustaining an inner peace and spaciousness. The lead up to teeing off my sermon every Sunday feels oddly similar to what I imagine a professional golfer faces every Sunday during the fourth and final round of their tournament.
As numerous thoughts and feelings arise and begin to fly all about me with increasing frenzy, in anticipation of what might go well or what might go poorly, I remind myself to hold steady at the center of the storm. From that calm place, accessible to you and to me anywhere, anytime, good things flow forth. Maybe not always, not with any guarantee, but with far, far greater reliability and grace than when I am elsewhere, not centered, for having allowed myself to be caught and swept away by some worry or concern, however legitimate.
Postlude: In the beginning, these two paths ran parallel to each other, one a calling and one a fun diversion. Over time these two paths merged together by my having recognized that each, when played at a more advanced level, require a shift to an inwardly-focused discipline or practice by which learning to hold steady an inner peace leads us further down the path. Now I find each one of these two paths makes walking the other that much more rewarding and fulfilling — each a path for walking humbly with God, each a path for learning to accept and celebrate a good walk spoiled.