On Faith, Luck and Four-Leaf Clovers

Yesterday on the golf course, I found a four-leaf clover. Walking along through the dewy grass (it was about 8:00 in the morning), I looked down and there it was, peeking up at me through the tangle of grass.

Every spring and summer, I look for four-leaf clovers and I find them. It’s simply a matter of looking - one of those “seek and ye shall find” things. And I always take it as a sign. Of what, I’m not sure. It certainly didn’t improve my golf swing yesterday. But it does remind me, in a funny sort of way, that I am not alone and for me, that’s the big thing.

After my mother died, I found several 4’s and even some 5’s. She is still with me, I concluded. On the golf course where my grandfather used to play, I frequently find them. He is there, I say to myself. And what’s so good about not being alone? Like faith, it reminds me that I’m part of a greater whole, connected to something beyond myself, even if it’s just a part of nature, that’s enough, too.

I have a neighbor and she believes in luck and God. She believes that God is overall and she believes she is held in His will. She also believes in the wheel of fortune – that sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. I told her how to find 4-leaf clovers and she found a patch of four and fives behind her house. Almost forty of them. Talk about luck and she is, in fact, one of the luckiest and most giving and most thankful people I know. Now she finds them everywhere.

Four-leaf clovers are everywhere if you just know how to spot them. Someone actually taught me how. “Just look for the anomaly,” she said and there they were. Four leaves sticking out from among the their three-leafed brothers and sisters. It’s not about luck really – luck is the meaning we attach to the exception or the coincidence. Perhaps faith is the meaning we attach to the ordinary, day-by-day stuff of living. It’s about meaning and that’s what I’m still looking for, on the golf course and everywhere else.