Finding our “One True Authentic Swing”

Golf, it is said... well, there’s no game like it; ‘you don’t win, you just play.’ It is a character-defining activity. There is no better setting or metaphor then, for a motion picture on regaining our (lost) true self.

The motion picture, The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), highlights an important spiritual fact about each one of us--the authenticity that God’s got locked inside each one of us--and finding it is our unique journey.

Bagger Vance, the mystical golf caddy, is quoted whispering a breath from God:

“Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing... Somethin' we was born with... Somethin' that's ours and ours alone... Somethin' that can't be taught to ya or learned... Somethin' that got to be remembered... Over time the world can, rob us of that swing... It get buried inside us under all our wouldas and couldas and shouldas... Some folk even forget what their swing was like...”[1] (Bold used here for emphasis.)

We see it in people who’re ‘in the zone’; somehow they are just hooked in mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Then something happens. They go to war, or get broken somehow. They struggle and dip in life. They’re ‘out for a season.’ When they regain their ‘one true authentic swing,’ however, it’s not only the lost returned, but it’s a new, improved self.

Their subsequent actions speak in unison with the tagline of the movie, “Some things can’t be learned. They must be remembered.” Ever lost touch with something important? It’s as mysterious as it’s regrettable, perplexing... confounding.

Imagine having all our potential locked into us before birth. Psalm 139:16 (TNIV) says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” When we become truly one with God spiritually we can, as Bagger Vance says, ‘see the field’ and ‘feel the focus.’ We can ‘remember’ what can’t be learned. Life becomes intuitive. It’s then we can believe in miracles because we see them.

Truth is, we all need a “Bagger Vance” every now and then to remind us of who we really are, and what our potential is. We are no normal, everyday nobody’s. We’re fearfully and wonderfully made spiritual beings (Psalm 139:14).

s

We have to find our one true authentic swing... in golf perhaps, but certainly in life.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

[1] Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146984/quotes