The parallel wave breaks cresting in periodic precision and trailing sea foam tails.  Viewed with some accuracy from the heights.  Long before the trailhead, a sand path carried feet to the foot of the lighthouse.  Along the path a crooked cross lilts to open the way to a mariner’s prayer station on the way to sea. The prayers of the mariners were often as perfunctory as our worship rituals.  Yet, in the last 100 steps before the waters edge a prayer focused attention on the division of labour and on how much work both the sailor and God were responsible for before sunrise the next day.

The sand trails end at the beach.  A few hundred steps along the tide line and the trail begins again.  This time the journey takes a climb for the worse.  The trail solidifies into solid granite stones.  Each stone of the path, hand hewn into square blocks and placed to form a 150 step staircase with tropical drain gutters on both sides.  Climbing was a heart-rate elevating challenge even with the goal in site at every turn.

With every elevating step the goal kept moving further out of reach.  Yes, we had stopped at the chapel, but this was no mariners’ crisis.  The goal was getting to the top.  Here again the coupling of self-will and a higher power’s direction turned the lights on!  Climbing to the top was not the goal.  Seeing a whole world of wonder in the valley below was the gift.  On turning around to launch the descent, a moment of fear.  No hand rails.  Slowly we descended from the lighthouse knowing the stones were cut with a precision reserved for tablets under foot.