Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I have noted before that I am a person who likes words, more than charts, graphs or tables of numbers.

Thus, two main words in this blog headline caught my attention today as I read a piece in one of my on-line publications.

It’s called Links Players and, no, it’s not about golf.  It’s a reference to Bible study groups founded by the Links Players Group in the California desert that has now grown to more than 300 groups spread around the country in golf clubs.

I attend two of them, one in my home, Salem, Oregon, when I am there seven months of the year, and another in my winter home, La Quinta, California.

The good news in these two groups – as well as no doubt, in many others – is that Christians get together to study the Bible before heading out for another game of golf.

This time, one of the Links Players writers, Tom Berliner, is a semi-retired university dean and leadership consultant.  He wrote form his home in Tennessee and focused on this Bible verse:

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” which is found in Proverbs 16:18.

Here is how Berliner started his piece:

“The etiquette of golf is a beautiful thing to observe.  Waiting for your playing partners to take their turn, complimenting them on good shots, commiserating on the not-so-good ones, self-policing when it comes to rules, and shaking hands after the final hole are all excellent examples.

“The etiquette remains, even in the heat of battle.  Compare that with the chest-pounding, foul gestures, arguments, and what-can-I-get-away-with manipulations in so many other sports.”

Berliner is right. 

Golf is a sport with more civility and humility than most other sports.  Am I biased?  Sure.  I love golf, but I also love that it is a game where players call penalties on themselves, unusual in sports.  But it is one place where golf stands out.

Berliner goes on to note that there are many stories in the Bible that deal with pride — Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, Pharaoh in Exodus 7-12, Haman in Esther 3-7, and the prideful Pharisee in Luke 18, to name but a few.

Berliner asks, why is that?   He answers:  “Humanity’s undoing centers on pride, and God wants to encourage us to learn from these stories.”

And, then, he adds this:

“Are we genuinely helping others in a healthy way?  Do we recognize Jesus in people around us, both familiar faces and strangers?  Do we reflect on ‘What would Jesus do?’ or do we just pursue what seems good for us?”

When the word civility comes up, I often reflect on my professional life in politics when that word was beginning to go by the wayside and, after I left in retirement, I have watched it go even farther away. 

So much so that one of my favorite quotes in politics came from the late military General Colin Powell who, when he was encouraged to run for president, said he couldn’t do so because he “bemoaned loss of civility in politics.”

And, what happens in politics also happens in our everyday life.  Civility takes a back seat.

So does humility.

If all of us followed humility and civility, we’d better at golf, if not life.