Chaplaincy | Prayer and Golf

Long before the Chapel of the Resurrection was built, even before Peninsula Grammar was founded, the land upon which our school now stands was a place of prayer and spiritual connection. For millennia, Indigenous communities conducted sacred rituals, calling upon Creator Beings and ancestral spirits to care for the land and keep it fertile.

When Mrs Bakker kindly gave me a tour of the grounds in my first week in 2024, she mentioned that part of our property had once been the Mount Eliza Golf Club. It comprised 38 acres of land. When the founders of the School were negotiating its purchase in 1959, the asking price was £1,000 per acre.

I suspect that numerous and varied prayers were offered up on that golf course.

There would have been prayers of desperation – the default position for hacks like me. Prayers of pure exaltation and praise for the lucky few who fluked a hole-in-one. Also, silent prayers seeking forgiveness, for those whose consciences were pricked, having been less than honest with their scorecard. Perhaps there were prayers of thankfulness and wonder as golfers communed with nature.

At its heart, Christian prayer is an acceptance that we have little control over our lives and our future. God graciously hears our prayers, but the nature of His response and its timing is often unexpected. As a group of scruffy theologians sang in the late 1960s, “You can’t always get what you want, but you might just find you get what you need.”

We remain dependent upon a loving and faithful God, in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’. This is actually a liberating paradigm, and a tonic for anxious times. As Jesus said, if our worrying cannot add a single hour to the span of our life, why worry at all? God has it under control, despite the struggles and setbacks. Yes, we still need to strive and plan for tomorrow, but in the knowledge that we are ultimately subject to the will of a merciful Father who redeems and sustains His creation.

Like golf, prayer benefits from regular practice and focused intent. It does not come naturally. In our time-poor existence, a good place to start is the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples. Say it regularly, take the words to heart, and you may start to experience a calmer mindset. Notice how the opening lines acknowledge God’s sovereignty, with the request that His will (and not ours) be done:

Our Father in heaven 

hallowed be your name, 

your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread. 

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and for ever. Amen.

Malcolm Woolrich

School Chaplain