Ghost tracks behind us. Sounds spooky doesn’t it? Just right as we approach Halloween. It isn’t graveyard or “Stranger Things” kind of spooky though, it’s very real and very evident.
Let me explain. On Sunday mornings during the church worship service, I go in and change the camera view of our service in order to provide online viewers with the best view possible. I’m the camera man as well as the minister and sound engineer on Sunday mornings.
There are several different pre-set camera views available to us. During most of the worship service the camera view is on the whole front of the chancel with the Lay Reader on the left-hand side of the screen and the pulpit on the right-hand side. It provides a “big” or macro view of the front of the chancel. During the anthem or special music, I switch the view to the “Lectern” view which gives a close up of our music director as he sings the anthem. Then, following the anthem I switch the camera view again to show the pulpit so that as I speak the view is a closer up view of the pulpit. Each view has its own advantages and disadvantages. So, what does that have to do with “Ghost Tracks”? Good question.
The cool thing is that because of electronic lag in the video the timing of the camera switching views and the live images on the monitor are just a few milli seconds off. This means there is a seemingly “live” image of me or whoever is moving as the camera moves from one view to another right behind us. This results in an milli second image leaving an image of our “ghost” walking behind us. It’s pretty cool actually.
What it suggests to me has nothing to do with ghosts or any of that spooky stuff but of how we leave tracks wherever we walk, wherever we go, whatever we do. That’s right, it’s a visual reminder of how we leave something of ourselves behind us all the time.
Acts of kindness leave a legacy image of the kindness we may have extended someone. Acts of meanness leave a legacy image of that meanness. We can’t avoid, we can’t deny it, we don’t always see but it’s always there. Our actions leave “tracks” whether we see them or not. WE leave something of ourselves behind us wherever we walk. When we leave a place something of us stays there, even though we go on.
I remember acts of kindness or support or positive feelings or love and generosity that others have extended to me and whether they knew it or not those tracts keep showing up in my life, in my actions, in my memories. It’s kind of like they are leaving their tracks behind them, and they follow me all the days of my life.
How about you? Do you believe that we leave tracks behind us? The tracks we leave have nothing to do with video lag but with real time impact in other people’s lives. Think about that the next time we say something unkind or thoughtless or unnecessarily harsh. Ghost tracks behind me; that is a scary thought now that I think of it.