A TRUE VISIONARY: POW MAJOR SPENT SEVEN YEARS MENTALLY PREPARING HIS GOLF GAME

Major James Nesmith was a man who had a vision for improving his golf game.

Just an average player, he developed a unique method of transforming his vision into reality. But for seven years he didn't play even a single hole of golf. He didn't touch a golf club or step onto a course. Ironically, it was during this seven-year break that Major Nesmith came up with his amazingly effective technique for improving his game — an approach we can all learn from. And the first time he set foot on a golf course after his seven-year layoff, he shot an astonishing round of 74. 

Using only his mind, he slashed 20 strokes off his previous best score of 94.

While that accomplishment alone would pique the interest of any golfer today, the truly remarkable part of the story is that Major Nesmith spent those seven years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. During those seven years, he saw no one, spoke to no one, experienced no physical contact with anyone. And during those dark, dark days he realized he needed to occupy his mind or he would lose it. So he learned how to visualize.

In his mind, he had a vision of a splendid golf course and began playing a full 18 holes every day -- right down to the smallest detail. He mentally dressed, smelled the grass, and surveyed the trees. He experienced different weather conditions, and, in this creative mode, he followed the course from hole-to-hole. He felt the grip of the club. He practiced his downswing and his follow-through. It was as though he was physically on the course. And, it took him just as long to play the virtual course as it would in reality. Seven days a week, four hours a day, 18 holes, for seven years! In a very real sense, we can say Major Nesmith was a true visionary who spent seven years as a prisoner of war preparing for the day he would be released from captivity.

Shifting gears slightly, perhaps for some of us, one way to have prepared appropriately for the current Advent Season would have been to spend some time in the "penitentiary." I use the word "penitentiary" in its original sense, not in the sense Major Nesmith experienced it. 

For a long time in certain churches, there was a strong emphasis on the need for repentance. A person working on repentance in his or her life was given some form of penance to perform. It might have been fasting for two or three days or a lengthy period of prayer. It was understood that it would be difficult for the person to perform the penance amid his or her usual routine and consequently, the Church was equipped with a room where penitents could be apart from their busy lives and concentrate on the work of repentance. The place provided for this purpose was called the "penitentiary." It is obvious how our modern use of the word evolved. 

Perhaps we could use a penitentiary in today's Church.

Ordinarily, we think of the Lenten Season as the time to concentrate on repentance, but if we are true to the Gospels' spirit, we can see that it actually begins with Advent. 

It has been said that nothing in the entire Biblical Message is more thoroughly resisted and rejected by modern man than its insistence on the need for repentance. All the Biblical authors agree that repentance is the first step into the fullness of our humanity. 

Unfortunately, we have trouble accepting the need to repent because we have taken the bait of some contemporary psychiatrists and others who tell us that repentance is a form of illness or weakness. As a result we become adept in the art of burying the past before we actually claim it and come to terms with it.

All of which takes us back to my previous post on Wrights Lane, "You Can't Move Forward While Fixated on the Past" (see below).