Continuing the Peper thread, for"the modern-day"
An excerpt from "An Inch from Belief"
"Just then, a curious thought occurred to me in the occult state of mind that weary grief and loss brings: maybe God will do something for us mourners, maybe he will send a sign and alleviate, in some measure, our depression, and make lemonade out of the capricious bushel of lemons he dropped on our head this week.
To even think this way exposed a lot to my inner judge. Who was I to look for the “deus ex machina” quotient in this depressed tragedy? I, who enjoyed a rich background of Christian parents and their sound refracted philosophy, and turned it into a most complete agnostic sophistry; who was I, to seek evidence of a God to unburden my trampled spirits? I felt like both sinner and saint to even begin the syllogism – a hypocritical believer and denier - believing when it suits and denying when it doesn’t. Where had my logical, rational, Sagan-like evidences and proofs gone now? Where was my easy dismissal of the religion as “man’s creation,” now? Nearly a lifetime of self-conditioning and training in the discipline of rational thought were vaporized as I slowly drove down the hill to observe Sheingold’s group finish on the 8th green and assemble to tee off on the 9th.
Even in less turbulent states of mind, the scene of the 9th hole is a stirring one, filled with a painter’s beauty. This short, par-3 golf hole covers some 170 flat yards over the expanse of a sunken watery glen; all perfectly posed under the majesty of the clubhouse silhouette on top of a western hill. It is a broad and bucolic scene whether you observe it from the tee or, as I was stationed this day, from behind the kidney-shaped green target on the far side of the water. Positioned there, in my elevated balcony perch above stage left, my worn and wearied mental state grew more poetic and entangled with the fracture of my religious belief systems.
I began to construct an examination and test for proof of the existence of God, the Judeo-Christian Lord and Master whom I so often denied, and of whom I spoke profoundly two days ago in eulogizing our friend. Did I even believe any of that? Did I think that God actually grants “peace, and eternal rest,” as I had said over sniffling tissues and honking coughs on Thursday night? If for nothing else, but to re-gather my fragmenting beliefs, I had to find out what it is that I really, truly believe.
After rummaging through possible tests and their possible level of proofs, I thought I would meet God on his own terms, and simply make a wish - a prayer. The instrument of Pete’s death, an arbitrary aneurysm, was outlandish in our world, perhaps our comfort and alleviation might come from something just as outlandish. To conduct this examination, I had to engage a primal laboratory bias - acknowledging a God in whom I do not believe, to prove God does exist.
Even though this “test” would derive its conclusion from its construct, it would be foolproof – no “outs” or “do-overs” for the invisible spirit in the sky. If my prayer was answered, there was no doubt that a rational God exists and if it was not, life was just an absurd mess of poorly understood misfortunes.
The test I devised was so penetrating to the purpose and so miraculous in both its inescapability and rigor, that I quickly convinced myself to commence its execution, before the opportunity was lost forever. Simply put, if Rich Sheingold, about to tee off on the 9th hole, were to make an “ace,” a hole-in-one, I would accept the existence of a God. This may not seem so fantastic to those far-removed from the world of golf, but I will further explain.
The odds of the finest, most-practiced professional golfers in the world making a hole-in-one on any given, “one shot” hole are about 4,000 to 1. The odds of a very fine amateur doing it are about 10,000 to 1. The odds of either party doing it on command at the behest of a prayer from me to an invisible God at one precise 15 second window of time of arbitrary designation are about a Gazillion to 1. For Rich Sheingold and his earnest but average 14 handicap, the odds are about ten times that, roughly 10 Gazillion to 1.
So yes, the test I designed for the Almighty to show himself in a godless, grief-stricken world was indeed rigorous, but very straightforward. God didn’t have to make it rain, or hurt other people to comply. God didn’t have to make my Powerball ticket a winner, nor cure my friend’s cancer, nor vest some other voodoo into His Divine Order to satisfy my examination. This was just between me and Him (or Her, or It). All God had to do was move a silly little ball into a hole a mere 500 feet away. All God had to do was shed his grace on me.
Though armed with great confidence in the precepts of my test and its likely result (“No God Exists”) I still grew anxious as Sheingold teed his ball up on the far side of the vast pond, readying his shot towards my beliefs. I began to feel an irrational dread at the prospect that he would – impossibly and implausibly - make a hole-in-one (“God Does Exist”) and where would I be then; so rigorous was the test I devised, that I would not be able to avoid this conclusion should an ace be registered.
I began to wish against the ace, hoping that Rich would shank his 5-iron harmlessly into the pond and I could go on with my comfortable secularism, denying morality, championing humanity as I, and not some unconquerable, unknowable God, sees fit. This dread of being shaken further, during a week that already was an earthquake, was rising in my chest and Rich addressed the ball, drew back his club and made to strike.
As soon as the tiny white orb began its flight, a lifetime’s worth of sentient agnosticism began to dissolve like a stale communion wafer in my mouth. The ball was struck clean and perfect, launched in a majestic arc that I could immediately calculate as trouble for my secular rubric. Dropping out of its frozen apex, I began to grow certain that God did exist; he heard my private thoughts; he was smacking me for my silent prayerful tests, and the sophomoric doubts behind them.
When the ball hit on the green some 30 feet beyond the pin, I felt momentary relief as the ace had gone from an absolute certainty to 99.9% unlikely, in that 10 yards of miss. The ball, however, was not done with its journey.
Spinning violently from its aerial descent and purity of Sheingold’s connection, the ball grabbed into the green and after a forward hop further away from the end of my agnosticism, reversed and drew back, as if on a yo-yo string. Now the ball was meandering back down the slope of the green, closer to the pin…and closer…and closer. It was fifteen feet away and gravity and spin brought it to twelve…and closer…and closer… It was ten feet away and still full of impetus…and closer…and closer. It was five feet away and looked to be nearly exhausted…yet closer…and closer! My mind was a screaming mob though my face revealed blankness and I covered it and my un-wishing eyes as it was now just one foot – 12 inches – away, and closer…and closer!!
Everything was everywhere, and all at once too, . I suppose this is the true state of rapture - joy and death, belief and denial, magic and science; all of it welcome. I was laughing and weeping, not wanting to believe, but having to do so if I ever wanted to believe in anything again. The inevitable and private proof had come and I removed my hands from my eyes to witness it – and there it was.
Rich Sheingold’s “Titleist 3” did not roll into the hole for an ace. It did not score a “1” and thus prove the existence of God. It did not become a holy relic, or a sign of God’s mercy. All it did was come to rest, three grass blades, two revolutions and one inch short of all that proof, hanging over a small golf cup as if it was a bottomless pit.
I began to laugh, my first laugh in six days before I sent Pete out on his last caddying assignment. I laughed so heartily and so fully that some observers later reported they thought I was drunk. I laughed and laughed and laughed. All my sorrow, all my grief and regret and all my pain just fizzled off into the burning June air, which was no longer Hell, but simply summer again. "
Now friends, is when I think of George Peper's piece. I bear him no malice, not on the merits, nor on his right to opinion, though I found his analogy of 1963's $5 to today's $38 to be pretty revealing as to insouciance and petty disregard for what that really means to the person earning it. (Or as he would put it...trying to earn it)The fact that he thinks someone can afford to be a 300 day a year "valet," is also a bit revealing as to his value system. I suspect the man who paid it and played that much golf at posh clubs, could have paid triple those rates and not one thing would change about his life, god bless him.
On behalf of the millions who have caddied and the thirty thousand who caddied today, we are sorry Mr. Peper that we have ruined your round, your precious, precious game. Many of us thought we were doing good, we were doing right by you, but it turns out that we were not. The best and most capable of us actually thought that if we were good at what we do, and serviced your golf that we would make it better. In our houses and course of worship, we are fairly well-received and fairly well rewarded. Not all of us, but many if not most of us. Perhaps with 5 clubs in Scotland and I fairly certain a few here in the states, you are playing too much golf to see the forest for the trees
My only prospect of solace to buoy the circumspection - nay disdain, nay, contempt - with which an important award-winning voice of Golf expresses for our service is that "this day and age" will not include you for much longer and perhaps in a future day and age, the pen will not be so mighty as the sword, or the yardage gun, or the green-read.
If the reverse is true, and your opinion lights a path to a caddie-less world, I'm glad I'll be right behind you.
I'll be glad I'm not being born today and was born when I was, for that future age will necessarily see a day when bums like me never once mingle with US presidents, kings of distant lands, sports heroes and great guys like Rich Sheingold, Peter Weisbard, Dick Olstein, Buddy Sertner - who are merely the quanta of the stem of a cherry atop an Empire State Building-sized sundae of all the richness Golf has given me and hopefully I contributed a colored sprinkle or a dollop of whipped cream or two back.
In the meantime, as you visit those dusty old places that still have mandatory caddie policies, you had better hope this piece doesn't circulate to very many of those yards; I don't see good things for your round if it does. There is fine line between a ball that is visibly plugged, from which relief can be properly taken, or just screwed with my foot less than a 1/64th of an inch into the turf...from which a duff, top, whizzer or the like cannot be avoided.
that is, of course, if we can find it at all.
cheers
vk