- Dec 27, 2015
- 4,187
- 2,630
- 71
- Country
- Australia
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
GOING FOR A RUN
“I’m leaving!”
Bob called out to his wife, who was most likely lying on the bed. She’d had a knee operation not long before and needed to spend some time resting.
“Okay” she replied. He slid the door shut, and moved out the gate. He stopped as he prepared his Garmin tracker to record the event, and then moved off.
At 71 he didn’t enjoy running like he did when he was young. In his thirties he’d been a member of Wilston Presbyterian Church. They were a bunch of fitness fanatics! They even had a gym under the church and he liked going there.
His typical Tuesday and Thursday night routine had been to do an eight kilometre run followed by a gym workout, finishing the whole thing in about two hours. But that was half a lifetime ago. Now he was seventy one and not as resilient or as fit as he was then – nowhere near it.
He remembered his usual track – up Kedron Brook Road to Days Road and hang a left. He’d turn right onto Grange Road and then left onto hilly Raymont Road until he got to the Alderley five ways with South Pine Road and Pickering Street. Left again and up to Samford Road, Enoggera Road to Newmarket Road and along to Lamont Street. He’d cross the bridge over the railway, trot along two blocks, turn right and he was back at the church.
Long time ago now. He couldn’t do it these days.
But as the old pastor had predicted “You’ll still be able to run” and he could.
It would be a run-walk, which even a running guru like Jeff Galloway recommended for older runners. He stepped off and crossed the road.
The first kilometre was on roadside footpaths, and he didn’t get into the actual bush track, such as it was, until he reached the far corner of Bellevue Park on the side of Carlton Road. The Garmin would normally tick over the one kilometre mark just as he entered the shady part of the track out of the park.
Sometimes he would do a few “sprints” in the park before entering the track. His eventual goal was to be able to cover eight kilometres non-stop. If he got that far he thought he might go further but that would have to wait till he could comfortably cover that distance, which was going to take to some time.
The track itself was nothing to write home about. It was concrete and within twenty metres of a local stream for about two or so kilometers. When there had been heavy rain the first two parts between the park, Hilton and Birdsville Streets would take some time to dry out, but once he crossed Crest Road at about the half way mark the moisture was less evident.
The shade of the trees was welcome on hot days. When he walked he sometimes reflected on things. It was difficult when he was running as he was conscious of tight calf muscles and keeping track of his distance. For the moment he was doing 300 metre running stretches with longer walk intervals.
One of the things he was supposed to do as a Christian was to meditate, and one day hopefully contemplate. He had never understood the difference but a couple of people, one of them a retired religious sister said that we did the mediation. When it came to contemplation, God took over and a plodding walk in prayer turned into effortless flight.
One day he started thinking about mathematics. He’d done some maths at school, what was then called Senior Maths I, which took in calculus but not matrices and vectors or complex numbers. He’d had a go at trying to teach himself the basics of those regimes but he wasn’t consistent.
Still he knew the universe was highly mathematical. This got him to wondering if God “knew” the mathematics before He made it or if He dreamed up the maths before starting. After all what would have been the eternal use of developing maths if there was nothing to use it for? The question was a dead end as there was no way Bob was going to work out the answer. The only way he’d find out would be if God told him in one of those magical contemplation episodes he was supposed to aim for, but never did.
Which brought him back to that hoary chestnut, which was the prediction by the pastor that he would develop a “proof of God” based on zero. In a sense that would be the absolute negation of God since God was all in all, while zero was nothing.
There was some comfort in thinking the universe was a sum zero energy universe, as gravity balanced out the other three forces – electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces till they exactly canceled out. This meant that ultimately the universe was “nothing”, a yin and yang both sides of zero.
But that was a long way from a proof of God based on zero.
Saint Anselm of Canterbury had developed what was known as the ontological proof, which meant that there had to be something about which it was impossible to improve upon. Kurt Godel, the Christian mathematician, formalised the proof in terms of logic. But it seemed to Bob that just because we could think of something which could not be exceeded didn’t mean that it existed.
As he walked, sometimes thinking about these airy ideas and at other times concentrating on the practical matter of calculating how far it was to the nearest toilet for the sake of his septuagenarian bladder, he was taken in by the trees and how they happened to be there.
Christ said “Unless a seed falls upon the ground and dies, it bears no fruit.” He was talking about spiritual fruit, but it wasn’t quite true in the physical world. For a seed to germinate it had to be alive. Live seeds were actually in a state of deep dormancy, and in some extreme cases could last for centuries. Some date palm seeds from Herod’s Masada fortress were planted nearly 2000 years after the fortress had been abandoned, and they germinated. They still had life in them.
Some of the bigger trees along the run could have been saplings when Captain Cook sailed up the coast, or when Matthew Flinders explored Moreton Bay in 1799, after Cook discovered and named it in 1770.
They just grew day in and day out, oblivious to what was happening around them unless it affected them in some way – fires and flood being the main threats.
Fire was an obvious menace, and floods less so. But when the ground was water logged and the rain was accompanied by storms and strong winds the trees sometimes blew over. But even then they often survived with some branches taking on the role of small trunks.
Most days though he was mainly concerned with how far he had to go to get back home. What would have been a mere jaunt in his youth (sixth in the cross country) was now more demanding. When he was at school, he could have run the course in seventeen or eighteen minutes. Now he walked the five kilometers in an hour.
Sometimes he wondered what God made of all this human activity. Precisely what was in it for God watching someone striding along a concrete path, or doing anything else for that matter? Granted God could see the walker, hear his words if he said anything, and read his mind of all and any thoughts. If so, how interesting would that be??
You know the sorts of things that might have crossed his mind – “Middle Road’s getting busier!”; “Any cars coming?”; “Is this bloke going to stop or not?”; “Better stop at the fountain – turn the watch to stop first”; “What time do I need to head off to church for the reading roster?”; “Struth, a snake tail! That was unexpected!”; and occasionally “There’s those kangaroos again!”
What exactly would God see in all this, as He also monitored Bob’s brain function, heart and lungs sun damage to his skin (he normally didn’t bother with sunscreen); and noted the things Bob didn’t hear with his hearing loss.
Multiply this by 8.5 billion people or thereabouts, and God was watching a lot of very ordinary activities. Was He excited by it? Bored by it? Indifferent to it?
Who knew? Bob got back to running – he could do that much and leave the rest to God.
“I’m leaving!”
Bob called out to his wife, who was most likely lying on the bed. She’d had a knee operation not long before and needed to spend some time resting.
“Okay” she replied. He slid the door shut, and moved out the gate. He stopped as he prepared his Garmin tracker to record the event, and then moved off.
At 71 he didn’t enjoy running like he did when he was young. In his thirties he’d been a member of Wilston Presbyterian Church. They were a bunch of fitness fanatics! They even had a gym under the church and he liked going there.
His typical Tuesday and Thursday night routine had been to do an eight kilometre run followed by a gym workout, finishing the whole thing in about two hours. But that was half a lifetime ago. Now he was seventy one and not as resilient or as fit as he was then – nowhere near it.
He remembered his usual track – up Kedron Brook Road to Days Road and hang a left. He’d turn right onto Grange Road and then left onto hilly Raymont Road until he got to the Alderley five ways with South Pine Road and Pickering Street. Left again and up to Samford Road, Enoggera Road to Newmarket Road and along to Lamont Street. He’d cross the bridge over the railway, trot along two blocks, turn right and he was back at the church.
Long time ago now. He couldn’t do it these days.
But as the old pastor had predicted “You’ll still be able to run” and he could.
It would be a run-walk, which even a running guru like Jeff Galloway recommended for older runners. He stepped off and crossed the road.
The first kilometre was on roadside footpaths, and he didn’t get into the actual bush track, such as it was, until he reached the far corner of Bellevue Park on the side of Carlton Road. The Garmin would normally tick over the one kilometre mark just as he entered the shady part of the track out of the park.
Sometimes he would do a few “sprints” in the park before entering the track. His eventual goal was to be able to cover eight kilometres non-stop. If he got that far he thought he might go further but that would have to wait till he could comfortably cover that distance, which was going to take to some time.
The track itself was nothing to write home about. It was concrete and within twenty metres of a local stream for about two or so kilometers. When there had been heavy rain the first two parts between the park, Hilton and Birdsville Streets would take some time to dry out, but once he crossed Crest Road at about the half way mark the moisture was less evident.
The shade of the trees was welcome on hot days. When he walked he sometimes reflected on things. It was difficult when he was running as he was conscious of tight calf muscles and keeping track of his distance. For the moment he was doing 300 metre running stretches with longer walk intervals.
One of the things he was supposed to do as a Christian was to meditate, and one day hopefully contemplate. He had never understood the difference but a couple of people, one of them a retired religious sister said that we did the mediation. When it came to contemplation, God took over and a plodding walk in prayer turned into effortless flight.
One day he started thinking about mathematics. He’d done some maths at school, what was then called Senior Maths I, which took in calculus but not matrices and vectors or complex numbers. He’d had a go at trying to teach himself the basics of those regimes but he wasn’t consistent.
Still he knew the universe was highly mathematical. This got him to wondering if God “knew” the mathematics before He made it or if He dreamed up the maths before starting. After all what would have been the eternal use of developing maths if there was nothing to use it for? The question was a dead end as there was no way Bob was going to work out the answer. The only way he’d find out would be if God told him in one of those magical contemplation episodes he was supposed to aim for, but never did.
Which brought him back to that hoary chestnut, which was the prediction by the pastor that he would develop a “proof of God” based on zero. In a sense that would be the absolute negation of God since God was all in all, while zero was nothing.
There was some comfort in thinking the universe was a sum zero energy universe, as gravity balanced out the other three forces – electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces till they exactly canceled out. This meant that ultimately the universe was “nothing”, a yin and yang both sides of zero.
But that was a long way from a proof of God based on zero.
Saint Anselm of Canterbury had developed what was known as the ontological proof, which meant that there had to be something about which it was impossible to improve upon. Kurt Godel, the Christian mathematician, formalised the proof in terms of logic. But it seemed to Bob that just because we could think of something which could not be exceeded didn’t mean that it existed.
As he walked, sometimes thinking about these airy ideas and at other times concentrating on the practical matter of calculating how far it was to the nearest toilet for the sake of his septuagenarian bladder, he was taken in by the trees and how they happened to be there.
Christ said “Unless a seed falls upon the ground and dies, it bears no fruit.” He was talking about spiritual fruit, but it wasn’t quite true in the physical world. For a seed to germinate it had to be alive. Live seeds were actually in a state of deep dormancy, and in some extreme cases could last for centuries. Some date palm seeds from Herod’s Masada fortress were planted nearly 2000 years after the fortress had been abandoned, and they germinated. They still had life in them.
Some of the bigger trees along the run could have been saplings when Captain Cook sailed up the coast, or when Matthew Flinders explored Moreton Bay in 1799, after Cook discovered and named it in 1770.
They just grew day in and day out, oblivious to what was happening around them unless it affected them in some way – fires and flood being the main threats.
Fire was an obvious menace, and floods less so. But when the ground was water logged and the rain was accompanied by storms and strong winds the trees sometimes blew over. But even then they often survived with some branches taking on the role of small trunks.
Most days though he was mainly concerned with how far he had to go to get back home. What would have been a mere jaunt in his youth (sixth in the cross country) was now more demanding. When he was at school, he could have run the course in seventeen or eighteen minutes. Now he walked the five kilometers in an hour.
Sometimes he wondered what God made of all this human activity. Precisely what was in it for God watching someone striding along a concrete path, or doing anything else for that matter? Granted God could see the walker, hear his words if he said anything, and read his mind of all and any thoughts. If so, how interesting would that be??
You know the sorts of things that might have crossed his mind – “Middle Road’s getting busier!”; “Any cars coming?”; “Is this bloke going to stop or not?”; “Better stop at the fountain – turn the watch to stop first”; “What time do I need to head off to church for the reading roster?”; “Struth, a snake tail! That was unexpected!”; and occasionally “There’s those kangaroos again!”
What exactly would God see in all this, as He also monitored Bob’s brain function, heart and lungs sun damage to his skin (he normally didn’t bother with sunscreen); and noted the things Bob didn’t hear with his hearing loss.
Multiply this by 8.5 billion people or thereabouts, and God was watching a lot of very ordinary activities. Was He excited by it? Bored by it? Indifferent to it?
Who knew? Bob got back to running – he could do that much and leave the rest to God.
