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The sermon for Tuesday, Apr. 09, 2002 is: Sunrise
4:09 a.m. The sun's rising. It's like someone's spilled a pale blue bottle of lapis lazuli across the blank floor of sky; little fingers of colour dart through the sky, pointing here, pointing there. The clouds are feathery, insubstantial shadows hanging in the sunrise's fishbowl, delicately hinged together like the fine bones of fish. And the birds are singing. I remember when I was a froshling, spending nights in the computer lab IM'ming the world, to hear the laughter of this birds, laughing at this idiot who had wasted his evening with computers instead of masturbating like a normal person, and now had to face all these classes without benefit of relaxation and self-confidence that constant masturbation gives. And I remember the first time I stayed up all night: I was four or five years old, and a cousin of mine was visiting from Pasadena. He was maybe six or seven: his name was Eric, I remember, and his parents were doctors. Let's stay up, Eric said, and being four years old and stupid I stayed up and watched my first sunrise, at least the first I remember, and heard the song of those invisible birds. I said, Let's play another game, let's hide beneath the blankets where it's dark. Eric said, If you do that for a long time, you'll die. Because if you stay under the blankets, you'll run out of oxygen, and you need oxygen to breathe, and you have to breathe to live. I remember thinking him a spoilsport, and pouting because he wouldn't play. Eric and his parents left that day, and, on the way back to Pasadena, were killed in a car accident. I think about them when I pull the covers over my head when I go to bed, I look at the transformed light that radiates through my thin bedclothes and wonder how much oxygen I've left before I fall asleep and die.
 
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