Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday October 3, 2006

During a Fourth of July program some years ago, Art Gress, then our music director did a skit set on a front porch of an old mountain cabin. Art was talking to a young boy and while they talked the boy found a penny. Art took the penny and explained that some future civilization might find a United States Penny and be able to glean some important knowledge about our civilization from the penny. He went on about how the penny would show we had a knowledge of metallurgy, of minting, of reading and writing, of art, and of economics. He then closed the skit with the statement that future civilizations would also understand that we believed in God, for stamped right on the penny is the statement, "In God We Trust." The skit had a great impact.

T.S. Eliot in his piece, "Chorus From The Rock" also has a line describing our civilization to future generations when he states;

"And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent godless people. Their only monument the asphalt road. And a thousand lost golf balls.'"

Personally, I like Art's penny story better, but Eliot's may be terribly true.

Get me right, I am not against golf or golfers. I just don't know why I am expected to conduct myself as a good Christian when I make my feeble attempts at playing the game.

I suppose the primary lesson from Eliot's message from the wind is that we Americans were a society that spent an inordinate amount of time rushing from place to place in order to engage in passing our allotted time in an ultimately meaningless pursuit.

Golf is a strange game in many ways. One noted aspect of the game of golf is the losing of faculties while playing. I have watched in wide eyed aggravated wonder as men worth millions of dollars cry like impoverished children over the loss of ball that back then cost one dollar. And conversely, I have watched in amazement as the same men would find a ball, that cost one dollar, put someone else's ball in their own pocket and sneak away like one of Kipling's Arabs folding their tent in the night. I never could figure it out.

I do recall that one morning years ago, the Great Blonde asked me why my son Jon and I never played golf together anymore. I asked her if she would like to play golf with someone who always complained about the course, the weather, who when a close shot was missed would have fits, even to the point of breaking a club around a tree. The wife of my youth loudly exclaimed, a horrified look on her face, "Well, certainly not!" I simply said, "Neither does Jon!"

I took the time today, early in the morning, to ask myself, "Larry, in some future time if relics of yours are discovered, what will there message be to the generation which discovers them? Pennies or lost golf balls?"

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit.

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