Gratitude for the Come-From-Behind Horse

Our hearts go out to them for more than their beauty. Beyond appearance, they have character that is apparent after minutes, even moments, in their presence. And this past summer the film adaptation of the book Seabiscuit reminded us that with horses as with people, it is as often the underdog, the knobby-kneed hero like Seabiscuit that moves us most. In that narrative of a dark time for our country and a strangely bright time in the world of horse racing, we were recalled to a sense of the relations between horses and people and dreams and redemption in a story way too corny to bear...if only we could dismiss it as fiction.

Horse racing fans such as myself will never resolve the age-old debate about the greatest American racer ever. No doubt Seabiscuit's adherents have their strongest position ever, with the glamour of the film to back up what they believe. And I would never want to take away from the power of his story in anyone's heart - he is one of my heroes too. But my message this morning is about a different horse, who has other adherents who laud him and a record that still stands from when he was younger than Seabiscuit.

American Horse Racing's Triple Crown is a set of the three races: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. Those three races are restricted to three year old horses. Like many human athletes these days three year old horses are not yet fully grown, but they are old enough to accomplish some of the toughest feats the sport offers. Only the very best horses or those owned by the wealthiest owners, can afford to run in these three races. The races get progressively longer. The last, the Belmont Stakes, is run at Belmont Park in New York, and is a full mile and a half.

In 1973, no horse had won all three races, the Triple Crown, since Citation in 1948. The first half of this century, and especially the years around World War II had been marked by a number of extraordinary race horses. Man O'War: big, beautiful, indefatigable; Seabiscuit, that courageous, gifted, knobby-kneed underdog; War Admiral, the gorgeous and glamorous son of Man O' War, Citation with his guts, intelligence and astonishing talent; crazy, unpredictable Whirlaway with his tail so long it swept the ground and who began his career inauspiciously, winning races to be sure, but insisting on winning them while running alone along the outside rail of the track ... all these horses with tremendous personality, heart, grit and a love of running and racing were national icons and heroes to more than one generation of Americans.

But in 1973 racing was in a slump. Twenty-five years had passed without a Triple Crown winner - some said such greatness would never come again. Races were won by individual horses, but no one came along with the quality to sweep the field, to stand out from the rest. The glamour, the power, the thrill wasn't there. In 1973, I was a girl, watching horse racing on television with my grandfather. We would bet a nickel on each race, and he had begun to give me books and tell me about the great horses of his heyday. The racing season began, and there was a horse everyone had their eye on. A big-boned, muscular, chestnut colt named Secretariat. He didn't have the Cinderella story of Seabiscuit. Or if he did, he was more like the prince in the story. He'd been well-treated from the first, and responded in kind. He had a reputation for being playful, gentle, smart and sweet-tempered, and had a glowing season as a two-year old. In fact, he'd been named Horse of the Year. But as with children, horses change a lot while they're growing and there were no guarantees that his third year would live up to his early promise, let alone offer lasting greatness.

I saw Secretariat on TV for the first time when he ran in and won his first great race as a three year old: the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky. Going down to the post I liked him because although our TV was black and white, the announcer said his colors were blue and white, and blue was my favorite color. I also liked him because he had a lady-owner, Penny Tweedy. And of course, I liked him because my grandfather told me to keep my eye on him. Grandpa said he was the horse to watch. He was big and chunkier than most of the other horses, less streamlined. It was a big field, fourteen horses going to the post. The bell rang, the gates flew open, the horses broke from their stalls and began racing away. Secretariat broke slowly, in fact he broke last, and settled into last place. The field of horses was so large that it looked impossible for any horse to make up all the distance of those horses, spread out along the rail in front of him. Other horses were jockeying for the positions that can make all the difference in a race. Head out too early and you burn the horse out too soon. Get boxed in along the inside rail, and you'll have to back the horse out and then around all the other horses, giving him extra distance to run which can cost him crucial seconds and strength. The other horses with any chance to win settled into places along the rail, 3rd and 4th place, waiting for the sprinters to burn themselves out and fall back out of the race. And there was Secretariat, laboring along like a plow horse in 14th place, still dead last. He already had a reputation as a come-from-behind horse. He liked it back there, liked to find his stride and avoid the early jostling. But still...this was really far back.

They went around the first turn, and Secretariat's jockey, Ron Turcotte, finally asked him to make his move. No one ever saw anything like it. The heavy, muscle-bound horse devoured the track. He had a gait that reached out and grabbed the earth and pulled it beneath him with such power and drive.... The other horses, the prime of their year, looked almost like they were standing still as he drove past them one by one. The 19th century sportswriter R. S. Surtees wrote, "There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse." What must it have felt like to be Turcotte guiding him, asking for that move and then being responded to with seemingly infinite strength and speed? Even the next best horse, Sham, couldn't keep beside him and had to settle for second place. Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby still pulling away, setting a new track and world record which stood for many years.

Our own Preakness Stakes in Maryland went much the same way. There was a smaller field, only eight horses, but Secretariat gave all us viewers heart attacks anyway. Not only was he last, but he was way last, out of touch with the rest of the field, a long way behind even the 7th horse. Even more than in the Derby, it looked impossible to make up all that distance. But he was a horse the likes of which I truly don't believe I'll see again. In the backstretch he poured on all his power and speed; he passed them all, literally, in seconds in a move that is still heart-stopping to see, that people still remember, and swept to victory again in record time.

The Belmont Stakes in New York was different. Secretariat's jockey decided to show people how talented the colt really was, so he took him out early. This shocked all of us fans to the core. Secretariat was a come-from-behind horse. The Belmont is the longest race there is for 3 years olds, 1.5 miles, way too long to start with early speed if you want to win. With our hearts in our mouths, my grandfather and I watched as Secretariat dueled beside his usual challenger, Sham, in a frightening show of slashing speed, building up a lead over the rest of the pack. You couldn't help but root for Sham just a bit. Any other year, he would have been the star. It was just bad luck that instead Sham would always be remembered as Secretariat's perennial challenger. And their pace was tremendous, storming, impossible. Then, midway through the race, Sham broke, exhausted, and fell away to finish last. This left Secretariat all alone in front. We were afraid he too would drop off, shortly get caught by the crowd of horses now passing valiant Sham. We held our breaths. How long could he last before the pace wore him out?

Incredibly, he began to lengthen his lead. Distance in horse races is measured in lengths, horse lengths. Even to finish by one or two lengths is decisive. Some races are won by the length of a head, or a nose or even a hair. Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by an astonishing 31 lengths, and set a world record that still stands today. I'll never forget that moment, standing, cheering, amazed, in the living room with my grandfather while Secretariat drew further away from the other horses than in any race I'd ever seen. The camera kept backing up, trying to keep the field in view. But in the end the others weren't even in the shot any more, as the camera tracked Secretariat to the wire.

Horse racing and a race horse may seem like a strange basis for a sermon. But they are essential to this sermon because this sermon is about the inspiration we find in nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher and Unitarian minister, whose 200th birthday is now being celebrated, wrote:

"As I walked in the woods I felt that I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standing on the bare ground, with my head bathed my the blithe air, and uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relation. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. I am the heir of unaccustomed beauty and power."

As Robert Richardson points out in his superb biography of Emerson, The Mind on Fire, Emerson's mysticism was grounded in his perception of nature as creation shot through with holiness and inspiration and yet earthy and everyday. Accessible to anyone who read his ideas and spent some time outdoors. Richardson writes, "We cannot speak of experience except as the experience of something, and that something, says Emerson, is nature. And the experience Emerson most values is the exhilaration that can arise sometimes from our presence in nature, though we cannot say quite why; ‘Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.’"

Part of what was revolutionary about Emerson's theology was the very everydayness of it. His is an experience that comes from a perfectly normal moment, available to anyone who has ever been outside on a cloudy winter night. Unlike many other kinds of philosophy and spiritual practice, Emerson's transcendentalism is not about experience arising from extreme circumstances of prayer, fasting, self-abnegation, denial, ritual, training, indoctrination, or practice. Rather, transcendentalism holds that reality is discernible by the study of the processes of thought and of experience, body and mind together, offering true insight into ultimate meaning of life and existence.

Emerson also wrote, "Standing on the bare ground - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all." Though this suggestively unaesthetic phrase "transparent eyeball" opened him up to become the butt of much academic humor and cartoon spoofs, it is central to his thinking. We all have within us the capacity to be or become for moments or hours at a time, a transparent eyeball. Feeling nothing in ourselves, perception focused entirely outward at a remarkable vision.

Emerson's philosophy was the sum of his experiences in life and nature, his ultimate response to revelation. He was as passionate as he was in all his smaller, more immediate experiences of revelation, walking across Concord common, each moment of feeling himself a transparent eyeball. He was a man of deep feeling, strong appetites, who knew great love and loss in his life. He lived on the radical edge of America's philosophical, religious and academic institutions, forcing all three arenas to react and respond to his powerful ideas and dynamic presentation in ways that changed American thought and intellectual traditions forever. His is a positive and important system of thinking for we modern religious liberals not only to honor with some pride as one of our own, but also to learn from and apply to our own lives.

In his writing, Emerson usually speaks of nature and the natural world in terms of flora rather than fauna, earth and sky rather than wild or domestic animals and insects and fish. He was after all a theologian, not a naturalist. But his thought applies as much to the inspiration we may find in animals as in any other manifestation of nature. The issue is not what in nature inspires, it is that anything in nature may inspire each of us. Some of us are unutterably moved by flowers and gardens and seedlings and trees. Some are filled with joy and delight by rivers, seas, mountains, or deserts. Some are awed and exalted by cliffs or snow. Or the sweetness of young animals; birds and lambs, in spring. Or magnificent old animals; moose and whales, with size and scars that tell the story of a lifetime. There is infinite variety and wonder available to us in nature, not least because, as the essayist Annie Dillard wrote, "Nature will try anything once."

Whether or not one feels it is appealing to conceive of ourselves as a transparent eyeball, it is necessary for our souls to be able to be a transparent eyeball at least once in a while, and to remember those instances for what they offer us. Perhaps this context more readily introduces the value of a walk in the woods for all of us, but my topic this morning is the stirring of spirit that comes with perceiving divinity that apparels and animates the elegance and spirit and marvel of a horse. Television is a strange variation on Emerson's "transparent eyeball" concept, but a camera is perhaps as close to a real transparent eyeball as they come. Offering such a gaudy and tainted setting as American horse racing as a context for natural wonder is, at best, a heck of a stretch. Perhaps I would have been even more moved if I'd been there in person. But while I was a little girl sitting in the livingroom, as indoors and suburban as one can get, even there I saw nature in the form of a horse explode in beauty and strength and almost infinite capacity across a black and white screen. Some things are so beautiful and riveting, they fill you with wild joy and delight almost to the brink of fear. They may seem almost proofs of divinity.

Ultimately, the conclusions we each draw from our minds' processing of our separate experiences are our own, and need compel no one other than ourselves. For all my painstaking description, probably no one who is not already a horse or racing enthusiast would share the feeling that has stayed with me all these years. Seeing Secretariat run was a transcendent experience, one that still gives me chills and moves me to tears when I see old footage of his races. And even for racing lovers, some may not share my own feeling that spectacular as that final 31 length victory was, it was his trademark, the impossible, come-from-behind victories that were the most thrilling and inspiring, especially to a little girl who was shy and self-effacing and slow to find her own place in this world. However you liked him winning, he was courageous, true and beautiful, in 1973 to a country that was reeling with domestic and international turmoil: Nixon, Watergate and Vietnam.

No one else needs to share those feelings, just as I do not need to share the feeling a gardener has for their flowers, or a climber for mountains, or a hiker for the woods, or an entomologist for their bugs. Whether or not we share the instance, we understand the feeling of wonder and wild joy that comes from the instance. It is the same feeling expressed by the English poet John Keats,

"then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken; or like stout Cortex when with eagle eyes he star'd at the Pacific - and all his men look'd at each other with a wild surmise - silent upon a peak in Darien." And Keats was speaking of something far more staid than watching a race in a livingroom - he wrote those lines about reading a riveting new translation of Homer!

Without the capacity to see things truly and deeply, without the capacity to look around and beyond ourselves at the larger world and its realities, none of our dreams can become a reality. The capacity for true perceptions beyond ourselves is the beginning of selflessness. With those, all hope is realistic, and all dreams possible. Especially in this dark time, when I know many of us are struggling with despair for the world and for our own country, against the violence and simplemindedness and selfishness that seems to absorb and dominate the shaping of our days. We must honor and nourish our ability to perceive beauty and inspiration in the world around us. Our leaders may disappoint, even betray us, and goodness and hope and even joy, but the very order of creation never has.

That is the foundation for Emerson's injunction to treasure each instance. Ponder it, remember or record it, and draw strength and inspiration from it in the times of darkness or delight that come again and again into our lives. Life is exhilarating, not only on high seas or cliff walks or mountain tops, but in the middle of a village common, along a daily walk, on a city sidewalk. We are never too old, too routinized, too busy, for wild delight. Therefore we must never be too old, too routinized, to busy, for wild delight. And this is not simply for our own satisfaction or fulfillment. The implications of such awareness are profound and can extend far beyond an individual life. Earthily and every day, mundane and marvelous, creation tells us: this is not all there is, you are not all you will be, there is more for all of us, dark is succeeded by light, death by life. As humanity honors the revelations of generations, the world slowly, unevenly, slipping at times, regaining its footing, becomes better. Therefore, believe not in the odds of fear and misgiving. Cast your lot with the miracles and hope that is all around us, awaiting only our eyes and ears and touch and faith. Amen.