The other day, I was running a somewhat new route down Pelham Road from my apartment during the middle of the day. This is unusual, because frankly, I like running much more so during the night, and haven’t really run in the day since my sprint-and-high-jump bout back in high school track training days. Well, as the sun beamed down on me, veritably sizzling my flesh, I was thinking of something: my newly-exchanged DVD, [1] π (Pi), the 1998 Sundance Film Festival winner and all that jazz. A review of the actual movie is a subject for another blog entirely. It was as though, while I was thinking of that movie, I thought of the piece of plastic on which it had been recorded, and all the materials that went into making the movie itself; and then I thought about the sun beating down on them. The disc itself, the computer on which I played it, the pressboard props, the soundstage in which it was filmed, the hot glue and the caffeine … in the relentless light and heat of the sun, all would crack, fade, corrupt. They would thus show their true natures: that is to say, they would return to dust and be found transient.

Thinking about that long enough will remind you of what really matters. Am I chasing the transient when I could breathe the free air and bask in the crisp sunlight, focusing my attention on that which proves all else false? (In case you don’t have it yet, I’m using the sun in this case as metaphor for God. )

The other day, I was running a somewhat new route down Pelham Road from my apartment during the middle of the day. This is unusual, because frankly, I like running much more so during the night, and haven’t really run in the day since my sprint-and-high-jump bout back in high school track training days. Well, as the sun beamed down on me, veritably sizzling my flesh, I was thinking of something: my newly-exchanged DVD, [2] π (Pi), the 1998 Sundance Film Festival winner and all that jazz. A review of the actual movie is a subject for another blog entirely. It was as though, while I was thinking of that movie, I thought of the piece of plastic on which it had been recorded, and all the materials that went into making the movie itself; and then I thought about the sun beating down on them. The disc itself, the computer on which I played it, the pressboard props, the soundstage in which it was filmed, the hot glue and the caffeine … in the relentless light and heat of the sun, all would crack, fade, corrupt. They would thus show their true natures: that is to say, they would return to dust and be found transient.

Thinking about that long enough will remind you of what really matters. Am I chasing the transient when I could breathe the free air and bask in the crisp sunlight, focusing my attention on that which proves all else false? (In case you don’t have it yet, I’m using the sun in this case as metaphor for God. )