Gratitude for the Come-From-Behind Horse

A beautiful horse is a thing of such beauty as to be unmatched by almost any other element of nature. Who said that? I did. The power, the grace, the arches and curves and gleaming and sweep and long clean lines and colors and liquid eyes and velvet lips and drama of mane and flag of tail—breathtaking and majestic when still, quicksilver flowing in motion, what else is so massive and lithe both, daunting and compelling, as a horse. They call to us like the other large inhabitants of this earth with which we remain fascinated: elephants, whales, dolphins...and they are also of that class that inspired endless stories of loyalty and love and beauty discovered in a relationship between a person and an animal. Bellerophon and Peagasus, Alexander and Bukephalos, Billy and Blaze, Alec and the Black, Paul and Maureen Beebe and Misty of our own nearby Chincoteague Island, the modern partnershops of Eddie Arcaro and Citation, Red Pollard and Seabiscuit, young Steve Cauthen and Affirmed—the stories are endless, as is our imagination when it comes to these animals. They seize our minds and fill them with centaurs and Pegasus and unicorns and the white horses that are the crests of waves in the sea, the horses of Poseidon the sea god—all of unutterable beauty, all with strange, magical capacities and natures. In myth, in legend, in poetry and prose, in art from the beautiful frieze of the Parthenon with its caped knights on horseback, to the many equestrian statues that decorate our nation’s capital, the power of the horse over the imagination is eternal.

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 it is as often the underdog, the knobby-kneed hero like Seabiscuit, the tired old-cart horse in need of rest and oats, the young crazy-legged foals staggering about with gamin ineptitude, that holds our eyes and our hearts. Lucky are those who learn more than just what they see, who learn the character of a horse, especially the character of a good horse: the loyalty, intelligence, humor, charm—and especially the courage, what horsepeople call ‘heart’ that inspires all of us when we witness it borne out in what a horse does, or even attempts. Oh to be one of that fortunate few who know horses, especially the riders who know the truth of that saying by 19th century sportswriter R. S. Surtees “There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse.”

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, run at Belmont Park in New York, 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, the courageous, fleet, 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.

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 had a reputation for being playful, gentle, smart and sweet-tempered, and had 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 in 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 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 take the horse behind and then around all the other horses, giving him extra distance to run which can cost him precious 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, 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. What must it have felt like to be Turcotte guiding him, asking for the move and then being responded to with almost 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.

The 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, a long way behind even the 7th horse, in the beginning. 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, passing them all in seconds in a move that is still heart-stopping to see, 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, and besides 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 with his usual challenger Sham in a frightening show of slashing speed, building up a lead over the rest of the pack Then, midway through, Sham broke, exhausted and fell away to finish last. This left Secretariat all alone in front. We were afraid he too would drop off, perhaps get caught by the crowd of horses now passing 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 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.

Horseracing 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 2ooth 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 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.”

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 or denial or ritual or training or 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 offer 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 unfortunate phrase, transparent eyeball, also opened him up to becoming 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, the sum of his experiences in nature, his ultimate response to revelation, was itself as passionate as he was in all his smaller, more immediate experiences of revelation, walking across Concord common or feeling himself a transparent eyeball. He was a man of deep feeling, strong appetites, who knew great love and loss in his life, and who 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 or seas or 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 desirable 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 the 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. Perhaps I would have been even more moved if I’d been there on site, but while I was a little girl sitting in the living room, 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.

Still, 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 that 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, impossible, come-from-behind victories that were the most thrilling, 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 a hero, 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 even more staid than watching a race in a living room—he wrote those lines about finding a riveting new translation of Homer.

The lesson we need to remember from Emerson is 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 will 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, even in a car. 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.

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 our selves 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 pettiness and small-mindedness and selfishness that seem 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, but the very order of creation will not.

A racehorse, in such a contrived and tainted setting as American racing, could qualify as inspiring, as deep, as meaningful, as an emblem of Emerson’s religious vision. For me Secretariat transcended all that and drinking in the sight of him storming along fills me with wonder and excitement, even now, when I know how it ends. He was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. In such wondrous forms, life grows and fills this world, seas and sky with loveliness, scent, activity and richness that inspire us and our neighbors. Some of us hold power now, or will hold power one day and then it will be to us to honor all the good in the world with our own actions and forbearance and generosity. Therefore, let us seek out and recognize and remember the surprise and profundity of our own revelatory, inspiring moments. Be they a cloudy day or night, or the miraculous achievements of a come-from-behind-horses, 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 we honor the lessons of generations, the world slowly, unevenly, slipping at times, regaining its footing, becomes better. 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