Article January 16, 2012 Issue

Where the sun never sets

By Frederick R. Andresen

Don’t we all love the beauty of the setting sun? I do. I often walk to Inspiration Point, near where I live in California, to watch the golden orb slip beneath the ocean’s edge and the clouds turn to gold. Every evening it is different. My wife and I used to love to watch this sight, a great respite from housework and the computer. But when she passed on, I learned a lesson. When I went to the cliff over the ocean to watch the sun set, the truth hit me: It didn’t set. It didn’t go anywhere. We just turn away from it and call it a day—and darkness follows.

I sometimes think of The Little Prince, the widely popular novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. On his little planet up there in space, the prince could just turn his chair to see the sunset any time of the day. “One day,” he said, “I saw the sunset forty-four times!” To human sense, we don’t have that privilege—we have to take life one day at a time. Or do we? Science and Health says: “The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and gives ugliness to age. The radiant sun of virtue and truth coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun. As the physical and material, the transient sense of beauty fades, the radiance of Spirit should dawn upon the enraptured sense with bright and imperishable glories” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 246).

If we exist in our “eternal noon,” then can’t we exchange our dependency on a 24-hour day for a better understanding of the boundless, endless opportunity called “day”?

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