Article

Culture

Easter

Sport

16 April 2025

4 min read

Rory McIlroy’s pilgrim’s progress

The golfer’s relief at finally laying his burden down.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A golf clutches his face after winning a competition

McIlroy's moment at the Masters.

Simon Bruty/Augusta National.

It's Sunday evening. Along with most golf fans, I'm still up around 1 am, gripped by the drama unfolding on the famous course at Augusta, Georgia. Despite being one of the world’s best golfers, for the past eleven years, Rory McIlroy has been carrying around three big burdens. One, he has never won the Masters, one of golf’s iconic competitions. Two, he last won a ‘major’ eleven years ago and inexplicably has kept missing out on winning golf’s biggest tournaments. Three, there is the ‘career grand slam’ – winning all four ‘majors’ (of which the Masters is one) – something only five golfers in the history of the game have done before, none of them European. Rory has won three of them, but this one – The Masters - has always eluded him.

After four agonising days, with his fortunes switching this way and that like a drunk driver careering down a road, Rory stands over a four-foot putt on the final play-off hole, one that even average amateur golfers like me would expect to make. Heart pounding, he nudges the ball forward. As it rolls into the white-ringed hole, his knees crumple, shoulders shake, as tears of relief and joy pour down his face. You can almost see all three burdens roll away in that moment. As he put in in a post-round interview: “This is a massive weight that's been lifted off my back.”

As a self-confessed fan of Rory, who seems genuinely humble and likeable, with a golf swing as smooth as butter, I punch the air, probably like most golf fans around the world. Watching the post-round interviews, you can sense his elation and liberation. As Scottie Scheffler, last year’s winner, clothes him in the coveted green jacket, awarded to all winners of the tournament, Rory cannot stop grinning, wandering around the Champions’ Locker Room, which he has had no right to enter until this point, like a kid in a sweet shop.

Now I’m sure the golf committee at Augusta National never thought for a moment they were drawing on rich religious imagery for their award ceremony and the emotions generated in winning their tournament, but Rory’s relief made me look up a moment in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The parallels in this old tale of Puritan faith were even more striking than I expected.

In Bunyan’s dream-story, the main character, Christian, having been through years of tests, trials, ups and downs, reaches the climax of the tale as he reaches Calvary, the place where the cross of Jesus Christ stood:

Just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

Then there was the tearful joy and relief:

Then was Christian glad and lightsome. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks.

There was even the celestial equivalent of the green jacket. Three angels appear, and one of them:

…stripped him of his rags, and clothed him with a change of raiment. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.

Burdens rolled away, tears of joy, dressed in new clothing. It’s all there.

Yet this comparison tells of a difference.

Bunyan’s relief was about forgiveness. Rory McIlroy’s came from winning a game of golf. His Twitter / X self-designation delightfully used to read: “I hit a little white ball around a field sometimes.” (It now reads ‘Grand Slam Winner’ - not so good in my humble opinion).

The lessons drawn were all about persevering, persistence, getting there in the end. Looking across at his young daughter Poppy, Rory said:

‘Never, ever give up on your dreams. Keep coming back, keep working hard, and if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.’

Yet of course there was nothing inevitable about his victory. It could so easily have gone the other way. His putt might have slid past the hole, Justin Rose, his play-off opponent might have sunk his, and Rory might never have won the Masters, never won the Grand Slam. That is the nature of sport. However strong your dreams, however good your skills, winning is never guaranteed. Not everyone’s dreams come true. It's simply not true that “if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.” Ask Justin Rose.

Bunyan’s relief is something completely different. It's not the relief of having achieved something. It's the relief of receiving something - a totally undeserved gift - more like a prisoner receiving news of an unexpected release, or someone owing huge debts receiving a windfall which enables her not only to pay off the debts but to live comfortably in the future.

The relief of the winner who finally achieves their dream is wonderful to watch. But for those whose dreams don't get fulfilled, for the likes of Justin Rose, who at age 44 seems destined never to win it, that kind of joy remains tantalisingly out of reach.

Christian’s tears of happiness are not the tears of the winner but of the loser. They are for those whose dreams never come true as well as those whose do. They are for those who fall short yet are given the gift of forgiveness, peace and hope. They are - potentially at least - for all of us, winners or losers.

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War & peace

3 November 2025

4 min read

Keep calm and don’t cry: does Remembrance have emotional limits?

We gather to grieve—but only in ways that won’t make others uncomfortable

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

King Charles, Remembrance Sunday, 2023.

The Royal Family.

In the coming days across Britain, the poppied public will gather around cenotaphs. Polished boots, flapping scarves, bowed heads, fidgety Brownie-Guides, regimented Cadets – all will pause in hushed reverence as the Last Post echoes in the cold air. It’s a scene that’s meant to unite us, a national ritual of grief and gratitude.

But for one close friend of mine, it is a ritual that is almost unbearable. She doesn’t go to local remembrance events anymore. Not because she doesn’t care, but because she cares so deeply that she weeps. Real tears - big ugly ones. And while the music is designed to evoke poignancy, and the silence is meant to be solemn, she fears that her public displays of emotion are perceived by those around her as a bit over the top. Surely the British stiff upper lip ought not to tremble, let alone cry? We are the nation of Keep Calm and Carry On after all. So, she stays away.

Philosopher Sara Ahmed, in her book The Cultural Politics of Emotion, offers some profound insights into why we act the way we do about our feelings. Ahmed writes that emotions are often cast as a kind of weakness – a betrayal of our ability to reason. They are something messy and animalistic, something we are meant to control. In this view, to show emotion is to reveal that you have been shaped by something or someone outside yourself. It reveals that you are vulnerable, only human after all.

And yet – isn’t that exactly what Remembrance is about? When we gather at a cenotaph, we are not there to demonstrate the stiffness of our upper lips. We are there to grieve; we are there to be moved by the stories of young lives cut short, families broken, sacrifices made. The very design of the ceremony – the bugles, the silence, the laying of wreaths – is intended to stir emotion. Yet, paradoxically, there is a hidden social code of conduct that seems to say: but not too much.

Ahmed explores several ways in which the social world shapes our emotional lives. Emotions, she argues, are not just private feelings bubbling up from within, they are also social, and they can be contagious. The atmosphere of a Remembrance service is just that – carefully crafted to invoke communal feeling: solemnity, pride, sadness, reverence. The power of such rituals lies in the way they gather us into a collective “we.” But that same collective can turn cold when someone expresses too much, breaks the silent script, or cries too loudly.

In one of his letters to the first Christians, the apostle Paul wrote: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” It’s a call not just to feel one’s own emotions, but to enter into the emotions of others, to share in them and show solidarity. And this, in essence, is what the cenotaph service is all about. It is a physical and symbolic place to “weep with those who weep” – to acknowledge that loss and grief are not individual experiences, but shared ones. A soldier’s death, whether in historic conflict or in the present day, is not just a family’s burden. A death on behalf of all of us belongs to all of us.

So why do people seem uncomfortable when someone like my friend weeps openly in this space? Perhaps it is the long shadow of British wartime stoicism. At one time, the slogan “Keep calm and carry on” was intended to protect a struggling populace from giving in to despair, it was intended to create a shared emotion of resilience. But perhaps an unfortunate side effect is that it has perpetuated a notion that dignity lies in restraint. This is a cultural script, and it isn’t universal. In many parts of the world, public mourning is expected, even encouraged. Wailing, keening, clutching each other in grief – some cultures see these as honourable ways of expressing sorrow. They honour the dead by fully feeling their absence.

We need to ask ourselves: what is lost when we suppress this kind of mourning?

When we limit how people are allowed to feel – or, at least, how they are allowed to express their feelings – do we risk losing the very power of the ritual? Do we risk turning the cenotaph into a site of performance rather than connection, excluding those who feel too deeply to fit inside a narrow band of “acceptable” solemnity?

This is not a call to abolish the dignity of Remembrance Day. But perhaps it is a plea to broaden our understanding of what dignity can entail. Sometimes, it looks like silent contemplation. But perhaps sometimes it looks like messy tears streaming down your face in front of strangers. Both can be powerful; both can honour the sacrifices of war.

As Ahmed notes, shared emotion can create a sense of “we.” It is why we go to movies together, cry at weddings, laugh at sitcoms in the company of others – emotional moments bond us. In this way, emotions are not just personal, they are political. In the context of Remembrance, they remind us that war is a human tragedy, felt in human hearts. Even though today, fewer families have direct ties to the armed forces, and fewer people personally know someone who has served or died in uniform, yet, the cenotaph ceremony still calls us together and asks us to care, to remember, to mourn – and it gives us permission to cry before we carry on.

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Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
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