Tuskar Lighthouse

Tuskar Lighthouse 

Tuskar Lighthouse shining bright 

Flashing warning through the night 

Built on rocks far out at sea 

Through the night my company. 

 When all the world is fast asleep 

Snoring softly between clean sheets 

When all the world is yours and mine 

Til dawn arrives and behind you shines. 

 Named ‘great rock’ by the Norse 

 You help the sailors keep their course 

 Away from reefs that sink the ships 

Your name is blessed on sailors lips. 

 Fourteen men in eighteen twelve 

 Built the lighthouse, gave their lives 

So sailing ships could avoid the grave 

That claimed one hundred boats before. 

 Above a sea resolute and proud 

Standing tall against the waves 

And everything the storm can throw 

 On winter nights when hope is low. 

But tonight is still and the sea 

Reflects an orange moon serenely 

The beam that shines for twenty miles 

Lights up my room and helps me while 

My lonely vigil across empty hours 

Til I return the world I borrowed.

Learning with Luke

This is a charming painting of St. Luke the Evangelist who is in turn painting Jesus and his mother. Luke is the most accessible of the Gospel writers because he was writing for a non Jewish audience and was addressing a reasonably sophisticated people of the first century who have a lot in common with us.

Tradition tells us that Luke was a colleague of St. Paul. He was a doctor by profession which might explain why his Gospel is regarded as the most compassionate. He also was a painter. The picture he paints of Christ in his Gospel is a compelling and haunting one. It is the Jesus of the poor, of the Gentiles, of a Jesus comfortable with women and children but withering in his condemantion of hyporcisy and empty religious rites.

God willing and with a bit of luck we will gather a number of people on Monday mornings interested to see what Luke tells us about Jesus Christ with the help of the excellent commentary written by William Barclay. My hope is to be able to read it like any other book for the first time, without the baggage of sixty years of half hearing and half reading it and to cherish it on its own merits.