The Golf Course and the Trinity

I’ve never had any doubt that God can be accessed on the golf course, even on a Sunday morning, a claim I’ve often heard absent parishioners make.  The question I have is more about accessing oneself than God.  

Being fully human, it seems to me, is about doing two things at the same time.  One is being able to be confident enough in who one is to stand alone, to take a stand, to do what one believes is right, whether or not it is popular and whether or not anyone else agrees.  It can be lonely being human.  Maybe this is what people find on the golf course.

The other, though, is to stay connected to others.  Part of it has to do with loving and acting on love.  Part of it has to do with appropriate attachments.  Part of it has to do with knowing where one person ends and another begins.  A lot of it has to do with what it means to live in community, to seek the common ground, to be part of something larger.  Equally important to being fully human is being together with others.  It is not good, God said, for humans to be alone.

Now anyone can do one of these things or the other.  It is also relatively easy to do each at different times, sometimes being a strong self and sometimes being together with others.  And, between the two, I’ll admit that the ability to be a strong self, able to take stands and withstand the forces of togetherness is the rarer ability.  So the golf course is not to be dismissed lightly. 

The real trick, though, is to do both things simultaneously, which is exceedingly challenging.  And it gets to the difficulties of living in a fully human way in the world.  It is the nature of being human because it is also the nature of God.  That is what the Doctrine of the Trinity is about.  Trinity Sunday, which is this week, is a good time to be reminded of it.

God is demonstrably capable of taking stands.  We know them through the law and the prophets.  And we know them through the teaching of Jesus.  The Spirit guides and leads.

God is also inherently connected.  Even within God’s own self, God is inherently communal.  The Father stands alone.  The Son stands alone.  The Spirit stands alone.  Yet the Father is connected to the Son, the Son is connected to the Spirit, and the Spirit is connected to the Father. 

Because it is God’s nature, it is ours as well.  We are, after all, created in God’s image.  God on the golf course is real enough.  The questions is are we?  It takes, I think, a threesome.  Then there’s every reason to think there could be a need for a taking a stand.  Whose rulebook is that in?  How many strokes did I really take?  Mulligans are a matter of grace.  At the same time, there is every opportunity to stay connected.  That’s why there’s a nineteenth hole.

Peace,