c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(AT)interpath.com.)

UNDATED _ Tiger Woods _ now there’s a name made for greatness. He should have been a boxer.

But when the 21-year-old Woods strode to the pinnacle, it was as a golfer, playing that quintessential white man’s sport at the most elite of white America’s private golf courses, Augusta National, in Georgia.

Sportswriters struggled for superlatives. Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated called Woods’ 12-stroke victory at the Masters”the greatest performance ever seen in a golf major.” Tiger Woods is everything golf hasn’t been about. He’s young _ in a sport where 50-year-olds are still drawing big crowds. He’s brash _ in a patriarchal subculture where paying one’s dues means more than annual fees. And, of course, he’s a man of color _ bearing African and Thai heritage, from the side of the racial divide where men wear white jackets at Augusta National, not green blazers.

Woods reminds me of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Michael Jordan, arguably the two greatest basketball players ever. If you work at it, you see their blackness. But when Kareem spun for a sky hook, who noticed his color?

Black Americans cheered when Woods won. Harlem kids told an interviewer they, too, were taking up golf. Public courses will be crowded this summer.

But I am left wondering: how extraordinarily well does one have to perform in order to be accepted as oneself?

When pros who missed the cut at Augusta began following Tiger Woods around the course, it wasn’t to see”the first black man”to do something. It was to see sheer greatness.

Is that what it takes? Greatness? Must one be the best at something in order not to be seen as black or female or disadvantaged or handicapped? What would it take simply to be accepted?

Of all the ethical questions hovering over our divided land, that strikes me as among the most critical. Matters of sex and race may rouse our fears, but I think our hearts are breaking over something far more profound, namely, being accepted and treasured as persons.

Look at the justice movements of our century. Women have said,”Let us be who we are, let us live free from projected lust, let us dream our own dreams, and let us make our own decisions.”Blacks have said,”Let us stand tall, let our children learn, let us have work, show us respect.”Latino immigrants are now saying,”Let us live and work among you.” It’s not just minorities. When layoffs swept legions of white men out of the corporate nest and into home offices, the visceral cry was,”Tell me I still matter!” Life transitions make us feel unacceptable. We look around anxiously. We buy what we don’t need, hoping it will win a smile. We stay indoors, rather than risk rejection. We fight to lose weight, in order to be more attractive. We prowl aisle after aisle of self-help books, looking for answers.

They say low self-esteem is our national disease. Maybe the issue isn’t that our self-esteem is low, but that it is derivative, determined by others. We let others tell us who we are.

I recently led a leadership training event. Rather than teach skills and make plans, I asked board members simply to tell their stories. Instead of using board business as an indirect way of expressing themselves, I gave them permission to tell it straight. The stories weren’t especially deep; this wasn’t group therapy. But the fact of being known transformed the group. When we did get to”business,”they worked smoothly and efficiently.

The ethical morass in our political arena isn’t money. Politics is about power, after all. The morass’ sign is poll-taking. Our leaders spend too much time wondering if we like them. They seem to have little sense of themselves. Rather than speak truly, they watch us watching them. You can see them asking,”How is this coming across?”Their insecurity makes us nervous, for it is the insecure who become mean and deceitful.

When Tiger Woods entered the clubhouse at Augusta National, members stood and applauded. So did the waiters. In that heady moment, I wonder if it was important to Woods that he was being applauded. I hope not.

END EHRICH