The quest that is the 2022 Golf for Enlightenment Tour got under way this week with contradictions, irony and cognitive dissonance all around. The search for the unseen and the intangible, the spiritual and the ephemeral must begin somewhere and somehow, of course. And what better way than by loading up the Countryman, connecting our phones to the car's Bluetooth, and heading for the highway.
"Did you pack the hairdryer?"
"Yes, dear."
There's a lot to remember when you're trying to be present, to find your center, to let go of the impulses that too often drag us down. Seeing all the beauty before us requires lots of stuff and planning. The irony of the Tour and its design was never lost on its designers, mind you. How do you even begin to write about enlightenment when, as the snarky novelist Christopher Buckley recently reminded us, an egoless writer is the very definition of oxymoron?
So with all that incongruity around, we were ready to start our search for wisdom and light, a sweet golf swing and peace when it all disappears. But where to go? The Monastery of Christ in New Mexico and the Los Alamos Golf Course? Taliesen West and the great courses of Scottsdale? Coachella and Rancho La Quinta?
Being contrarians, we instinctively surmised that maybe there was no better place to start then one focused intensely on ego, control and success, and one touched by just a bit of darkness. If we are to find enlightenment, mustn't we be open to the beauty in the opposite. We are all one after all. Or at least that's what we're told. To genuinely let go of the ego, mustn't we actually find the beauty in it, along with its too often disabling and ugly repercussions, and only then make our choice to forego it, at least a little.
"Honey. Before we pick a place to go, I'm going to go set the DVR to record the Duke game?"
No sooner did the words leave my lips than I stopped, frozen in stunned silence. "That's it," I thought.
"Honey!" I turned and yelled up a flight of stairs.
"What?" she asked.
"Duke," I said. "I think we should go to Durham." As I stood there at the bottom of the stairs, ghosts of the past, of all kinds, rushed in. Is there really any place more of ego than Duke, a school whose two most well-known symbols are a soaring Gothic cathedral, the modern day equivalent of the Tower of Babel, and a top-ranked basketball program that has embraced one-and-done and whose fans favorite cheer is "Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell."
"Sure," she said. "As long as they've got coffee." Buckets.
I smiled. Yet I knew this wouldn't be easy. But if we could find even a little peace, awareness, and mindfulness in a place so focused on self, success, material wealth, physical pleasure, and a well-placed social status, we might be heading in the right direction. And so off we went.
- - -
If you've never been, there is an unmistakable announcement of power and wealth when you arrive at Duke. If you happen to come via Towerview Avenue and drive by the tent city in Krzyzewskiville on the edge of the campus, don't be fooled. It has only the most superficial similarities to the shanties of Oakland, San Francisco and LA. It is irony incarnate. For most visitors, the gateway to Duke is Chapel Drive and the shrine at the heart of the campus. The misnamed "Chapel" is unquestionably majestic and stirring. And its message is as clear as the Carolina blue sky it stretches toward on the day we arrived: you are now at a place of power, strength and wealth.
But unlike many cathedrals which are built to remind of us of our subservience to God, this one stands as much as a reminder of our subservience to James B. Duke and all the others who inhabit the top of the social structure. Duke stands on a seven foot pedestal in front of the Chapel, not in any homage to The Almighty, but rather with his back to the sanctuary, morning coat on, holding a cigar and swaggering with his cane in a pose that lacks any self-awareness almost as much as it embodies total and untainted self-confidence. He -- and the campus that surrounds him -- ooze hierarchy.
If it wasn't before, it should be painfully obvious my need for this enlightenment Tour. I move so effortlessly towards judgment of others and away from love. Bitterness comes so naturally to me. Pettiness too. There's so much work to do.
But don't get me wrong. I may have a sourness towards the Dukes, but I'm not against shrines. There are people who have done great things that should be commemorated. The shrines I care for, though, are a bit more modest. Like this one, in downtown Durham to "Mutt" and Sara Evans. A tree. A few shrubs. Four seats. And a written reminder of the great things people can do for their community.
Like the Dukes, the Evans' were business and faith leaders of Durham, but of a very different sort. Mutt Evans served six terms as Durham's mayor, from 1951 - 1963, a difficult time in Durham and in the South. The Evans' Department store had an integrated lunch counter in the 50s, well before it was mandated by law and well before it was a safe thing for a merchant to do. His mayoral campaign slogan was "Equal Representation for All People," and he earned and embraced the support of the Black community of Durham. As mayor, Mutt oversaw desegregation of the police and fire departments. And he served as President of Durham's Beth El Synagogue [trust me, that's not an easy job]. Sara spent World War II fighting for Holocaust refugees, guaranteeing jobs for them so they could get visas. They both -- and their accomplishments too -- ought to be remembered.
But as Luke Powery, Dean of the Chapel, reminded us at the University worship service, loving the righteous is easy. If enlightenment means anything, it means loving our enemies and those who embody the Gothic envelope of horror and darkness. It's no feat, no act of grace, to love those who show us light and joy.
- - -
Over at the golf course, the Hurricane Junior Golf Tournament was just getting underway as we arrived. There were kids from ten to seventeen everywhere, all looking to make their mark so that they might someday play college golf. There must have been a hundred of them, all decked out in Duke gear and all going off the front nine. They would just play one side today, because of cold weather in the morning. Watching the parents straining to develop these young minds and swings -- some with a hug, others with a stern talking to -- was frankly more than I could bear. So I headed out on the back nine to see if I could find something good in my game and in my mind.
The first few holes were joyous. The sun was out, the fairways were golden and slick with dormant Bermuda grass cut pretty tight, and the breeze was up just enough to make it interesting. I hit some good shots, with the ball squeezing out right just a bit. I was moving laterally towards the hole a few inches at impact rather than keeping centered, but it didn't matter much. As fate would have it, my golfing partners were of my very same graduating class, and one had even married a woman who lived down the hall from me as a freshman. We caught up a little, and they were impressed with my game.
As we approached number 12, the signature hole on the course, a 130-yard par three over a small lake, I was feeling pretty good. I checked my yardage, and hit an eight-iron to about 30 feet. It had squeezed right too. But no harm.
"That was a good shot, Cole," one of the guys said. I two-putted for a tap-in par.
"Great par," they said. I smiled to myself, with a bit of pride.
I had the honor on the 13th tee and smacked a gently fading driver down the middle of the fairway. When I got to the ball, I looked at my Garmin watch and saw that I was 145 yards to the middle of the green, which runs diagonally away and to the right and is fronted all along by another lake. The pin was tucked in the back right, about 160 yards from me, at the narrowest portion of the green. "A sucker pin," I said to myself. "I've got this." So I pulled my seven iron, thinking it would take the ball 150 yards to the middle of the green. I would have another 30-footer for par. I know what I'm doing.
I stood behind the ball and picked out a tree behind the middle of the green to aim at. I took my stance, confident as hell. And when I swung at the ball, it was perfect. There is a sound the club makes when it stays on plane; when the centrifugal and gravitational forces of the Earth meet flawlessly with human will, forged iron, and thermoplastic resin. It is sweetness to the ear. And there is also a feeling to the swing too when those moments happen, a lightness and an ease that comes when physics is embraced, and not fought.
In the split second after the ball was struck, a rush of ego and adrenaline ran through my body. I looked up and there it was soaring towards the golf Gods in that Carolina blue sky. "I'm damn good," I thought. And then I looked down at the green to get my bearings. "Oh, no." The ball had squirted right as it had on the previous holes, maybe just a little more this time. I didn't think of that. I had lost my center, again. The ball was soaring through the sky, but it was heading toward the pin and over the middle of the lake. I instinctively knew in a flash that I didn't have enough club to get it there. I should have hit a six. "Blow wind," I yelled in painful desperation, just as one of my classmates said, "great shot." "No!" I thought with my anger now directed at him. I watched as the ball landed on the bank of the lake, and as it rolled down the slope into it.
- - -
The gospel for the week was Luke 6:27–38. Jesus challenges his disciples to live a costly love that extends beyond neighbor and friend to one’s enemies. "This love is rooted in the love that God has shown even to the wicked," said Pastor Powery, Dean of the Chapel. Jesus commands those who follow him to love, to do good, and to be merciful. But why? Where are the riches for following his commands? Where is the reward? "No, my son. It will be not the riches of the Dukes, but a reward even greater as 'children of the Most High.'"
"Oh, c'mon, Pastor," I thought.
I tried anyway. I tried to imagine what suffering the Dukes themselves must have suffered, even as they caused suffering on others? What would drive them to create such a shrine? What beauty was in each of them that drove them not just to build a palace to themselves but a place intended for intimacy with the Christian God? What shared humanity can we find with the Dukes that will allow us to be more generous to them and others.
The lesson from the Old Testament was from Genesis. It told the story of Joseph revealing himself to his brothers after they sold him into slavery years before. Though the brothers were distressed by this revelation and feared retaliation, Joseph shows them mercy, choosing to see how God had worked for good, in spite of their bad intentions.
After services, I saw Pastor Powery, blessing everyone as they were leaving the Chapel. When I reached him, I said, "may peace be with you, too. But may I ask you something."
"Yes, my son," he said.
"Joseph was not only a steward in Pharaoh's court when he offered his magnanimity, he was a trusted advisor to the Pharaoh himself," I said. "His generosity towards his brothers came rather easily, didn't it, as he was sitting on top of wealth and the social ladder."
Powery looked at me. "What is your name?"
"Cole. Cole Black."
"Oh, c'mon, Cole," Powery said. "We can set aside our judgy ways just this one time, and approach things differently, from a place of greater compassion."
As I walked away from the Chapel, down the few stairs towards Mr. Duke, I felt a pain shoot through me. This was a lot harder than I imagined. My wife saw it all and then put her arm around me. She said it was ok. Then, after a few more steps, she reminded me of the wonderful Buddhist teachers Robert Thurman and Sharon Salzberg who we had listened to on a podcast just a few days earlier. Thurman and Salzberg wrote the book, Love Your Enemies, and they remind us that the demons are around us but they are just as much within us. They urge and teach how to transmute the consuming energy and obsession we often feel towards ourselves and others, one so often of anger and hatred, and why letting go and finding love towards these feelings and these others is the righteous way.
"Don't you remember the TikTok?" she said.
"No."
"Your daughter texted it to both of us," she said.
I sat down at the benches at the bus stop a few yards away. I was still feeling awful. Better, but awful. She was playing with her phone, and then after a few minutes, she shoved it in my lap. [Place your cursor over the TikTok box and it may reveal itself. If it doesn't click here.]
I laughed. Who wouldn't. We got up and began walking towards the Duke Gardens. As we did, the clouds breezed by, and my thoughts turned to the beauty around. The Gardens were lovely, even in February, especially the Asiatic Arboretum. She loved them especially. We stayed for a while. And as we left, both the Gardens and the weekend, there was just the slightest new understanding of the demons inside and out. And of a new way to face them; one as old as time, and as fresh as the morning air. It is perhaps captured best by the Irish poet, theologian and philosopher John O’Donohue, in his poem, Beannacht (Blessing) --
May the nourishment of the earth be yours
may the clarity of light be yours
may the fluency of the ocean be yours
may the protection of the ancestors be yours
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
And so with everything I have in me, I wish it for Pastor Powery
For all the kids at the Hurricane Junior Golf Tournament
For the Dukes, and the Vanderbilts, the Bezos' and the Musks
For the people of East Durham, who live with too much violence and injustice
For the people who live in the tent city on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Oakland
For the family of Mutt and Sara Evans
For the people of Ukraine
And for all of you.
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