Baboons and Golf Balls

Submitted by John W. de Gruchy on 7 October 2010 - 4:11pm

A few weeks ago I was playing golf with Barry at Kleinmond. For once I hit a great approach shot on the 3rd hole which landed on the green not far from the cup. I was elated! But then a teenage baboon suddenly ran across the fairway onto the green and stole my ball. I chased after him with a swinging club until he eventually dropped it some distance away. The question was: where did I have to play the next shot? Could I lift up the ball and place it back on the green, or did I have to play it where the baboon dropped it? I simply did not know the rule, though Barry soon informed me.

I told this story to a fellow golfer whom I visited recently in Kwa-Zulu Natal. He went off to his study and came back with a book with the title Play the Ball Where the Monkey Drops It written by an American pastor, Gregory K. Jones. The book begins with the following account of why he chose the title:

During colonial times the British living in India tried to play golf, only to be frustrated by monkeys who disrupted the game by chasing the golf balls and creating chaos. The British tried erecting fences and posting guards to keep the monkeys back, but eventually decided to play the ball where the monkey dropped it – as we often must do in life, to live as best we can with forces that are beyond our control.

Is it not true that sometimes when things seem to be going well, when your approach shot lands effortlessly on the green near the flag something beyond your control unexpectedly knocks you back on your pins forcing you to learn to live as best you can? Life, which seems so good, unexpectedly turns sour and sad. You can’t go back in time to the day before it happened, turning the clock back. You have to learn to play the ball from the place where the monkey dropped it. This is never easy because until it happens you have no or very little prior experience which enables you to play the ball where it lies, no matter how much you know in theory.

One of the most difficult aspects in dealing with tragedy is accepting the reality of what has happened. You just don’t want to acknowledge that your ball has been stolen and dumped in the rough. You get angry and resentful; you miss-hit the ball and land deeper in the rough. But sooner or later you have to hit your way out of the rough if the game is to continue. So it is in life. There is no alternative to facing reality and working through the pain. But there is one cardinal rule in golf that is helpful in such situations. Play one stroke and one hole at a time. Forget about past mistakes and successes, and don’t think about what lies around the next corner. The same rule applies for those whole follow the path of Alcoholics Anonymous. Don’t say that you will never drink again, simply say that you will not drink again today. In other words, to get our lives on track again after a crisis, we have to take one day at a time, and even though we may have to do some longer term planning, getting through the next day is the important challenge, and often about all we can manage. So Jesus tells us to “Don’t worry about tomorrow …today’s trouble is enough for today.”

As you struggle to play the ball where the monkey dropped it, you soon discover that many others share the same or similar experiences. Why, even during the Masters’ tournament or the Ryder Cup, the best players in the world hit their balls into the rough – though I have yet to see a baboon in action on such occasions. Yes, there are many who have journeyed along the same path and everyone will in turn at some stage in their lives. We are, as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses” who are cheering us on, supporting us in our time of need, sharing their wisdom drawn from painful experience and memory. You may have to play the ball yourself, but there is a crowd standing around you. You may not be able to move the ball, but you are given strength, insight, and encouragement from others in playing your shot. The truth is, within the body of Christ, as Paul puts it, “when one suffers, all suffer” together, and the same is true within the broader circle of friends. Without this solidarity of care in times of grief and crisis, the rough places would never become smooth enough again so that the game can continue even though you are aware that it will never be plain sailing – to change the metaphor.

The witnesses that surround us and support us often do so unknowingly and unwittingly by pointing beyond their own experience to the source of their own insight and strength -- to Jesus himself “who endured the cross.” In some ways the reality of that testimony is often beyond our grasp. Can God be present in our pain even though we are not always aware that this is so and too often experience absence rather than presence? But there is profound wisdom in Paul’s confession that in the midst of everything that went wrong in his life he discovered that God’s grace was sufficient for him. In other words, he discovered resources that he did not know he had, resources that came to him as a gift from beyond himself. For those who seek to live by faith in God, difficult as this may be in such times, grace somehow penetrates the darkness bringing light, joy and peace as we struggle to pick up the pieces of life. The truth is, you may not be able to stop the baboon stealing you ball, but by the grace of God that need not be the end of the game.

(John W. de Gruchy is Emeritus Professor of Christian Studies, University of Cape Town and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. This is a weekly meditation given at the Eucharist service at Volmoed Christian Community Centre, Hermanus.)