The Legend of Bagger Vance

OK - I am preparing for a presentation this next weekend, and so I have been searching for material to "round out" the topic a bit.

Somewhere in my other literary wanderings a pair of weeks ago, I found reference to "The Legend of Bagger Vance," so I checked it out from the library. I finished it today.

I'm really not a golfer - I golfed a few dozen times in high school, and can count on my fingers how many times I've been out since then. I get amused at how metaphorical some of my golfing friends will wax at times...but this book takes the cake.

The subtitle is "Golf and the Game of Life." This book is similar to "The Celestine Prophecy" in that it is a handbook of cosmic post-modernism clothed in a novel. It is well-written. The story is set in 1931 near Savannah; a three-man golf championship consisting of two well known national champs and a local unknown. Bagger Vance is the caddy of the local unknown. He is also a mystic.

I realize that life is about more than just these experiences that we have from day to day. God is seeking to mold us and move us to a higher plane of thinking. I don't think that it requires these eastern mystical methods to achieve, however. Plus, cosmic post-modern proponents tend to go out of their way to marginalize conservative views on morality. Achieving the higher plane is morality, in their worldview.