a new doxology

I played my first round (golf) of the year last Saturday. It reminded me of something I wrote a few summers ago after playing a round of golf. It’s not completely finished yet, but I added an extended intro and wanted to share it anyway…

I am not good at golf. It is a wonderful and frustrating activity. The more I play, the more I realize that golf is a sport that you can never master - no matter how much you practice. But it is a game that offers moments when it’s possible to trick yourself into thinking you’re starting to figure things out, although you’re sure to do something (hit a shot into the woods, water or sand) and realize you have no idea what you’re doing just a few moments later. I’m convinced that I could play golf every day for the rest of my life and still be a terrible golfer. I’d still get frustrated and I’d still hit plenty of bad shots that make me want to yell bad words loudly. But I’d probably hit at least one “perfect shot” each round that would make it all worth it and keep me coming back to play again, not quite ready to give up the idea that I’d figure it out and finally be good.

Now that the Minnesota weather is finally starting to cooperate and it’s safe to assume winter is actually over (probably), there are a lot of people in this area of the country who are going downstairs to get their golf clubs out of the basement, practicing their swing in the back yard and making plans to fill their summer with days of chasing a little white ball around the woods. If you think about it, the whole idea of golf is a rather bizarre and backwards thing. Many people spend a lot of time and money on all the things involved in the game of golf (equipment, accessories, green fees, vacation time). At many golf courses you actually have to plan ahead and reserve a time to play. Coincidentally, the courses where “tee times” are required are also more expensive. Now, assuming I’m not the only person who finds golf to be a rather frustrating experience, doesn’t it seem strange that so many people are getting excited about days filled with frustration. And the whole making a tee time thing…what does it say about golfers that we take the time to actually schedule what time we will start getting pissed at ourselves? Shouldn’t those phone calls actually sound something like this…

Golf Course person: Hello, thanks for calling the golf course.
Golfer: Hi, I’d like to make a tee time for this Friday.
GC Person: Okay, what time would you like your attitude to start getting negative?
Golfer: I was hoping to start getting mad at myself around 9:00am.
GC Person: We have an opening at 9:13am, would you be willing to stay somewhat positive and optimistic for about 13 minutes later into the day?
Golfer: I suppose that would work.
GC Person: How many people will be getting angry and frustrated with you?
Golfer: There will be four of us.
GC Person: And would you like to get some exercise while getting disappointed?
Golfer: Excuse me?
GC Person: Would you like to walk or can we charge you a bunch of extra money to drive around in a glorified go-kart while complaining about how you’re playing?
Golfer: We’ll take two carts please.
Person: Great. We have you down for four people at 9:13 am this Friday. It will cost you each at least $50 of your hard earned money. See you then.
Golfer: Looking forward to it.

Like I said, I’m not a good golfer. But for some reason I keep playing, and every spring I get excited about getting back out on the course. If the old adage goes “everything I needed to know about life I learned from the game of golf” is true - and in some ways, I think it is - then every time I waste time and money playing golf I learn something…about life, about the world, and about myself.

I will admit that I don’t spend a lot of money on golf. I play most of my rounds each summer at my cabin. There is a decent 9-hole course less than a mile down the road and it only costs around $10 to play 9 holes, so my dad and I (and sometimes my brother-in-law) start most mornings on the golf course and then come back to the cabin to drink coffee, eat some breakfast (including bacon if we’re lucky) and then start another great day of life at the cabin.

I sometimes get the chance to go up to my cabin by myself and although it’s a place I associate with spending time with family and friends, it’s always nice to get away and spend some time on my own. Although my dad is a great golf partner (read: he’s not way better than me, although I’ve still never beat him), it’s sometimes fun to play alone without having to worry about anyone else seeing how bad I am. The problem with this of course, although it rarely happens, is what happens if I were to hit an amazing shot and no one was there to witness it. What if I got a hole-in-one and no one saw it happen, would anyone believe me? (If you’ve seen me golf, please don’t answer that question.)

I wrote the following thoughts after playing golf by myself one morning at my cabin.

A golf course somewhere in Northwest Wisconsin
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
6th Hole: Par 4, 289 yards, dog-leg left

I hit a hybrid 3 iron/wood off the tee. It was the perfect shot…higher than my normal drive with a slight hook that followed the turn of the fairway…everything about it felt right. It was about 9:30am, so the sun was still at a sharp angle facing down at me, forcing me to squint while watching the ball sail through the air…it was glorious! (Read that last part like Will Ferrel would say it in Old School, “it was glooorrriious!”) I gently put my club back and picked up my bag to start walking through the wet grass to find where the journey of my perfectly struck ball had ended.

Quick aside: There are two kinds of walks a golfer can have on the golf course, and many different variations of either: the first is the “I just hit a great shot and I want everyone to notice” walk (confidence, pride, puffing out chest and walking slowly to enjoy the feeling) and the second is the “that shot sucked and I want to get to my ball right now so I can improve things” walk (frustrated, head down, muttering words you wouldn’t say around your grandma).

Since I was golfing by myself this morning, I enjoyed the walk on my own…soaking in the wonderful feeling of every step. I noticed a grounds crew worker sprinkling fertilizer on the green. “I bet he’s impressed,” I thought to myself, assuming he had seen my ball drop onto the middle of the fairway behind him.

Because of the bright sun and wet grass, every clump of grass and leaf had a shine to it that could have been mistaken for a golf ball from a distance, but as I got closer to where I thought my ball had landed, I didn’t see a golf ball anywhere. Since I hadn’t actually seen where my ball ended up, I assumed it had either rolled just off the fairway or better yet, followed the hook and continued down the middle of the fairway toward the hole.

I checked both. There was no golf ball. Although I was a bit confused, I wasn’t worried, it had to be around somewhere.

I hit that ball perfect; it should be right in the middle of the fairway.

Another aside: Just like there are two ways for a golfer to walk, there are two ways for a golfer to look for a missing ball. You can look for a ball where you think it is or where you hope it is (where you think it is is often worse than it actually is, sometimes where you think it is is where you hope it is, and oftentimes where you hope it is is where it will never be in a million years no matter how much you practice). On this morning, where I thought it was, and even saw it land, was in the middle of the fairway, 100 yards from the hole.

I looked everywhere possible for that ball, but found nothing. I couldn’t believe it. How could I hit a ball perfectly and then not find it? My own pride crept into my mind as I continued looking. It must be up here. I hit the ball perfect, it has to be somewhere around here…and it has to be somewhere good!

What does any of this have to do with life as a Christian?

We often think we’re better than we are. We think we’re doing things perfectly, and even when we get lost or confused, we think we’ll find what we’re looking for and figure it all out. We assume people are impressed by us (grounds crew dude) and that we have reason to walk with a lot of pride, like we’re pretty special. We don’t want to admit that we really don’t know what we’re doing and we’re not nearly as good as we think.

Golf is intended to be fun and relaxing, so I’ve learned that it’s best for me to lower my expectations so I don’t end up frustrated and mad. Most people shoot for par. I am more realistic than most people. I realize that if I tee off on every hole with the goal or expectation of getting par, I will at best live up to my expectation and at worst fall terribly short of my goal and be real salty.

I am a double-bogy golfer. I know it’s true, so that’s my goal!

Sure, I’ll end up with an occasional bogey, par or a very rare birdie, but when the round is done my overall score will average out to a round of double-bogeys.

So too goes my life as a Christian. Everyday I wake up fully intending to do good and be good (call it living “par”), yet I stumble in sin and end up with a bunch of double-bogeys.

As a Christian, I’d say I’m about a 30 handicap.

I’ve golfed enough to know that a par for me is like an eagle for Tiger Woods, but a double-bogey for me is like Tiger getting a par. It’s more realistic to step up to the tees thinking I’m going to get a bogey or double-bogey than tricking myself into expecting I’m going to get a par or birdie.

As Christians, we often fool ourselves into thinking we can live life under par, the equivalent of being perfect…as if we have everything figured out and we’ve done something to be proud about; to walk around proudly. Yet, in reality, if there was a scorecard for our life, it would have a lot of scores with squares rather than circles (note: when scoring in golf you draw a square around a score over par and a circle for scores under par).

I am a double-bogey Christian, and if you were honest with yourself, so are you…and that’s okay. God’s grace is sufficient for me, you and all the other bad Christians (and golfers) doing their best to make it through 18-holes of life.

Please consider supporting the people and country of Haiti by joining others at the Third Annual Walk for Haiti on Sunday, June 1st at Normandale Lake in Bloomington, Minnesota. The Walk for Haiti is an awareness event put on by the Haiti Mission Project (HMP), an organization I have been involved with the past three years. There is no registration fee for this year’s walk, but instead we are asking people to make a donation to the Haiti Mission Project–in whatever amount they are able–to help us reach our goal of raising $5,000.

(The HMP is 501(c)(3) non profit organization, which means all donations are tax deductible, and thanks to a generous corporate sponsor, 100% of all the donations from the Walk for Haiti will go toward furthering the HMP’s mission of sharing God’s hope and love in Haiti.)

If you’re interested in attending the walk and/or supporting the HMP, the links below will take you to the appropriate pages.

• Walk for Haiti: online registration
• Walk for Haiti: registration form (print and send by mail)
• Walk for Haiti: event invitation (facebook)
• Support the Haiti Mission Project (make an online donation)
• haitimissionproject.org

This is a bit different than what I usually post, but I got an email from a woman at my church last night about a program her daughter has been involved with and it’s something I think you should all know about, and consider responding to, because taking just a few minutes out of your day could save someone’s life. Read on for more info…

Thanks Mom 2008
The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) helps patients in need of marrow transplants find a matched donor. May 5th marked the start of “Thanks Mom,” a national effort by NMDP to bring people to the national marrow Registry during the two weeks surrounding Mother’s Day (May 5-19). They need 46,000 people to join the Registry in the next two weeks.

How to join the Registry
Joining the Registry is incredibly easy - you can register online at www.marrow.org (click on the “Grow the Donor Garden” link near the top) and provide some basic health information, or there is a list of locations in your area if you’d rather register in person. (I just registered online and it only took me 6 minutes.) After registering, NMDP will send you a kit with directions explaining how to swab the inside of your cheek a couple times, and then you just send it back to them in the provided, postage-paid envelope.

Seriously, who doesn’t have time to do that? And during the next two weeks, the cost has been covered by generous sponsors, so now is the time to join the Registry!

What happens after I join?
If you are ever identified as a potential donor, NMDP will call you. Donating marrow can be as simple as donating blood or plasma. In case you’ve never done either, that’s okay. Here’s a video that shows just how easy it is.

“Thanks Mom” will help patients across the country who need a marrow transplant to live. Many don’t yet have a possible donor on the Registry, and many will die while waiting. Every day, 6,000 patients across America - that’s 6 THOUSAND people EVERY DAY - are searching the Registry for a match. Imagine if one of these people was your mom, dad, brother, sister, husband, wife, child, friend….or you.

Visit www.marrow.org to register today…or, if you really don’t have six minutes to do it right now, please make sure you register before May 19th.

Pass this on to friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, or anyone else you can think might register. Every bit of awareness about how easy it is to help save lives will make a difference. You can even become a fan of NMDP’s “Donor Garden” on Facebook.

Still not sure?
Watch this video to meet Matt & Alexandra, a brother and sister who are alive today because someone like you took the time to register with NMDP and donate when they were called.

Some of you may remember this post I wrote back in February about my regrets over not seeing Coldplay during my senior year of college, along with my hopes that the tour that accompanies the upcoming release of their new album (Viva la Vida, June 17th) will include a stop in Minneapolis. Well apparently Coldplay’s management reads anewdoxology; either that or they know I’m not the only Coldplay fan in the Twin Cities who would pay whatever they want to charge for tickets in order to see them live, because while I was driving around yesterday the new Coldplay single “Violet Hill” came on the radio (sidenote: this song was offered as a free download on coldplay.com last week and it was reportedly downloaded by over 600,000 people in the first 24 hours), after the song the DJ made a comment, no, make that a promise, that Coldplay would be coming to Minnesota this summer as part of their tour. How awesome is that? I was so pumped I sent a text to my friend Tim (the same one who invited me to come with him to the Coldplay concert during college), but because I was texting while driving (not recommended, and probably illegal) it ended up saying “Cokeplay is coming this summer!” Oh well, typos and unsafe driving aside, I’m pretty excited about this. I just hope that the tour schedule is released soon so I can make sure I’m in town for the show.

I’m not sure how many of you watch 60 Minutes regularly, but every once in a while me and my roommates see previews for something interesting that’s going to be on and we set the DVR to record it. I just watched a segment from last night’s episode while eating lunch today and it was really great. The segment was called “Dr. Farmer’s Remedy” and it tells the incredible story of Paul Farmer, a doctor who has literally helped save millions of lives by providing free health care for people throughout the world, many of them who were suffering from treatable illnesses like malaria, tuberculosis, aids and women who die in child birth. Along with a few others doctors, Farmer helped start Partners in Health around 20 years ago. Today, Partners in Health has hospitals and provides care in nine countries including Peru, Russia, Mexico, three countries in Africa and the country where Farmer was first inspired to begin doing what he does, in Haiti.

Please watch this video segment from 60 Minutes. It’s only 12 minutes long and it offers an incredible glimpse into the life and perspective of a person who sees hope where others only see hopelessness. (I couldn’t embed the video on this page, but click HERE to watch it on cbs.com.) The images of people, poverty, landscape and roads in this short video look incredibly similar to what I’ve seen in Haiti.

By the way, a few days ago I bought plane tickets to go to Haiti at the end of June to make a documentary that will hopefully create some more awareness of what is going on there and the need for more people to join Paul Farmer in believing that the persistent efforts of committed people over time really can make a difference.

[If you haven't been following the emails I've been sharing between me and my friend Jenny, you can click HERE to read Jenny's first email and then go through and read the rest in order (they are all linked together). You might notice from the time stamps at the top of each email that we seemed to stop writing after only about 3 days, but we have actually continued writing (although not as regularly) for the past six weeks, and we brought a few other people into the conversation as well. After struggling to coordinate schedules, four of us actually got together at a friend's house last week to have dinner and a really interesting conversation about a lot of the questions in these emails. I sent Jenny an email a few days ago to thank her for bringing everyone together for a great conversation and ask her if it was okay to share some of our emails here (her response is below). I want to thank her for allowing me to share these with you, not only because it is a bit of a window into her life and faith (and that can be a scary thing to share with people, especially in a space like this), but also because I think her specific thoughts and questions express the way many people think and wonder about God's role in their lives and the world. Although I realize I don't have any of this figured out any better than the next person, I hope someone got something out of reading all these emails. If you have thoughts you'd like to share (or questions you'd like to ask) in response to anything in particular, or even about the conversation as a whole, please leave a comment.]

From: Jenny
To: Andy
Subject: Re: Can I share?
Date: Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 1:22 PM

Hey Andy. I don’t mind at all if you use portions of our emails on your blog, and thank you for taking time out of your night to meet with us. I think one of the biggest things I came away with last night was the fact that faith is more of a journey, and not a destination. I think I kind of already knew that, but many of the things you shared really drove it home for me. I know life is very busy, so I really appreciate you taking the time to meet last night!

Thanks, Andy!

Jenny

______________________________________________________________________

If you would like to continue reading or thinking about the questions and issues raised in these emails, I would highly recommend the book Letters from a Skeptic by Greg Boyd. Boyd is the senior pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota and this book is a collection of letters between he and his father (who was not a Christian at the time). In the relatively short time I have taken issues of faith and theology seriously, I have found very few people who are as knowledgeable and understandable as Greg Boyd. If reading a book - or even buying a book and putting it on your bookshelf with the intention of reading it someday - seems like more of a commitment than you’re ready to make right now, I gave a 20-minute sermon on the question “why keep believing?” at Journey a few weeks ago (responding to several of the questions and doubts that often trip us up in our faith). You can listen to it here. (Note: In no way am I trying to imply that my short message summarizes Boyd’s book or even compares to his level of communication, but it’s just an option for anyone looking to think more about all this — I suppose it’s also a shameless plug to get people to listen to my sermon, but I can live with that.)

Whether you listen to my sermon or not, there’s something I’ve been wishing I had said in that message, and even though it doesn’t necessarily fit here, I’m going to share it anyway…

I believe God loves the whole world (John 3:16 says, “for God so loved the world”). I also believe God is present and active throughout the world; even in remote villages that missionaries haven’t visited yet, or nations where people aren’t waving the flag of Jesus Christ. God loves the world and God is doing the best God can do–given the current situation of the world and who God has to work with (us)–to make positive changes in the world.