Of Death and Golf

Some people will know that my Dad's second wife recently died after a long struggle with Parkinson disease. After having a service to celebrate her life here in Ontario, my Dad returned with her ashes to St. John's Newfoundland for the internment. Upon his return my family and I went to spend a day with him to make sure everything was o.k. Its interesting to me people's reactions to death and while my comments aren't specific to my Dad, some do apply. How some people grieve outwardly and others internally; how some people get angry with everyone and everything around them from doctors and nurses to family and friends and ultimately with God. Angry with God. Even as a pastor it is difficult for me to grasp blaming God for someone's death. Why would it be God's fault? It seems to me that our anger towards God says more about how we understand God (our Theology) than about the Divine. Our belief that God inflicts harm on some people and not on others bespeaks a God of judgement who dishes out divine wrath with seeming indifference according to a set of guidelines to which we have little clear access. Of course people will say we have the bible and I would agree that with them to a point. My hesitation, however, rests in my observations that when people are angry with God it isn't really because their loved one has been "taken from them." Their anger is really rooted in their own suffering. Its rooted in their lament that God is making them experience these emotions; that God has taken their Mother, Son, Daughter, Wife, Husband from them and all too often it ends up with the question: "did I do something wrong?" In other words did I do something that caused God to kill – I could say end the life or bring home, yet those are soft ways of expressing this concern – my loved one? Where does one find the God of love in these questions? Where does one find the God of resurrection? Where does on find the God who says I will be with you always? Where does one find the God of compassion and strength? For sure there is a place for anger and its appropriate for people to be angry – especially when things happen suddenly and accidentally – yet we need to take care that we provide room for God to remain at the center of our lives offering us comfort, care, compassion, strength, and openness to the expressions of care and love from others around us. So what does golf have to do with death?

It just so happens that my Dad has been a semi avid golfer – some would say that's not possible: all golfers are fanatics; he would claim he's a recreational golfer – for about 15 years. Through all that time I've never, not even once, walked up to a tee with him. As a matter of fact I've declared, on numerous occasions, that I would never play golf let alone become a golfer. Well on Monday that all changed. When we arrived to visit Dad he asked if we'd like to go and play a few holes of golf. How could I say no to a grieving widower? So off we went. We played four holes, the five of us. Having more laughs than anything else. My one claim to fame resulted in driving a ball about 200 years down the fairway only to have it take a sudden left arc and go out into the trees where…well…where it bounced off a tree and back onto the fairway! Beginners luck! my Dad exclaimed after which he gave me a set of explanations as to how to avoid that from happening in the future. Golf, after all, appears to have its uses. I'm still not convinced that I could be a golfer, yet I'm now willing to say I'm more open to the possibility than I ever was before. And maybe that's the lesson around death that while its o.k. to be angry with God we also need to be open to the movement of God's Spirit in our lives that is doing something in and through us and others. We need to be open to that possibility as well.

And who knows maybe in a year or two or more I'll have caught the golfing bug and maybe by acknowledging that God still loves them in the midst of their anger and grief people will come to a deeper faith, maybe, just maybe.