Lighthouses

Time, Light, God

This past week I visited Liverpool for the first time.  A dense city, Liverpool’s arteries teem with hosts of players; karaoke stars in Irish bars drown out ghosts of industry which lord over anchors of grand architecture; the River Mersey reflects ancient tales whilst snaking around contemporary New York styled skyscrapers.  It is a place wherein every turn some other strand makes itself evident, a shifting picture, like a prism.  I found it fascinating and comforting both.  It reminded me how changing, precious and inconsequential this moment is in the hourglass of time. Liverpool’s history is one of endless migration, titans of shipbuilding, international trade and a crazy worldwide musical sensation, The Beatles.   And me.

In 1902 my Great Great Grandfather George Percival Deeming boarded a boat here for the ‘New World’ starting a family that would eventually include my Father, myself and my son.   Standing at New Brighton overlooking the lighthouse where the River Mersey meets the Irish Sea I am minded that this is the last sight of England my Grandfather would see. 

Outside of his name, I know little of George Percival Deeming and yet I remain the legacy of his hopes and dreams.  As I bask in the shadows of my history I am reminded of how fleeting it all is, and yet how caught up we can get in the whirlwind of our moment. Time: an hourglass of human stories- of struggle, winning, losing, blindness, beauty, greed, generosity, fear, hope and an infinite supply of all else.  The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley comes to mind:

"I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Shelley reminds us that regardless of the monuments we construct in our lives, regardless of the importance we draw to ourselves in the moment, all will return to dust.  Mortality in this world is given.   It is easy to be hypnotised by digital moments, thinking we can ‘capture’ our souls and gain some foothold on something substantial.  It is easy to be fooled that we can control life and cheat death with science.  But in fact all life remains a mystery even with our best efforts.  We will all turn to dust, and even the heroes of lore are but postcards of the true space they inhabited.    

It is in this space we find God or we are lost.  

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