Tiger

I don't like golf. Don't play it. Never think about it. Except when Tiger is playing. Tiger playing golf must be what it looked like when Babe Ruth walked up to the plate, John D. Rockefeller sat down to negotiate a deal, or Thomas Jefferson took pen in hand.
We now know that Tiger isn't as good at some of the other parts of life as he is at golf.
What a shock.
A rich, handsome man took advantage of the situation when women made themselves available to him, even though he was married.
What a shock.
I have been at my job long enough to know that people with none of Tiger's advantageous adjectives get themselves into the same predicament on a fairly regular basis.
And yet, a great many wise (heavy sarcasm intended) people want to tell Tiger what to do now. Some say take a break from golf (Hey, Rick Reilly: I genuinely cannot wait until you get caught doing whatever it is you do! Your piety over Tiger is way, way, way past getting on my last nerve). Tiger announced today he will do that. Others suggest he perform the Great American Penance, go on the Oprah Winfrey Show and grieve over his hideousness. No such appearance has been announced. I hope it isn't forthcoming.
Others just want him to appear in public and own the whole problem. I don't think he can do that.
I don't know anything about Florida law, but in Tennessee, if the cops arrive and see any evidence of violence on the person of one spouse, the other is arrested. The last thing Tiger is interested in right now is causing Elin to be arrested. So we will see him when his injuries from (ahem) "the car crash" are healed, and not before.
I am the father of two grown young women. Truth be told, I kind of hope Elin did take the three wood to him. She's entitled.
The rest of us aren't.
May I remind all of us that we are in the season of Advent?
Advent is the time of preparation for Christmas, the birth of our Savior. As in, the One Who Saves Us. As in, We Need A Savior. As in, We Are Sinful. As in, All of Us Are Sinful!
I mentioned Schadenfreude a few posts back. May I suggest that any of us who are taking delight in Tiger's very, very public confessional (not sought, but inflicted), should be very grateful that we are nobodies? May I suggest that the only difference in Tiger and you and me is that we aren't headline news when we screw our lives up? May I remind us all that what Tiger did doesn't matter in sin terms. He decided to make himself God in this particular issue, just like you and I do in our sins. That's why Tiger's behavior, and yours and mine, is sin. And may I remind us all that this is the very season when we of the Christian faith affirm that God had mercy on all of us, took the initiative that we wouldn't/couldn't, and acted to save us in spite of everything?
Good News, Tiger! Good News, Self! Good News, the Rest of You! God knows, but God loves you/me anyway! And in Jesus Christ, wants to save us from ourselves!
Merry Christmas!

29

December 8, 1980. 29 years without John Lennon in the world. Could it have been so long? It remains tragic for Yoko, Sean and Julian. But we're all poorer for what we lost in that moment, in a still-young life, and for all that hasn't been heard, and never will be, from the spectacularly gifted composer.
John Lennon, Public Figure, was everything we all wanted to be when we grew up. Imagine if those dreams still lived in us...

Midtown Huey's Sunday Night, Part 2

Midtown Huey's Sunday Night, Part 1