Last Sunday I was in San Diego, covering the final day of the San Diego Birding and Nature Festival in Mission Bay Park. In the morning I made my yearly trek out the length of Point Loma to Cabrillo National Monument. Cabrillo sits high above San Diego Bay, at the tip of the point that forms the northern and the western boundary. Off one side of the point you see the full reach of downtown San Diego, and off the other you see, on a clear day, well out to sea beyond the Coronado islands.

The old light is on the grounds of the Monument, perched at the top of the point, where it must have been visible about as far out to sea as any light in North America.

It was not, however, overly helpful to ships trying to avoid the rocks off the very tip of Point Loma, and it was replaced long ago with a taller light right on the shore at the base of the point.

To me, the Coast Guard Reservation on Point Loma, seen here in a moderate telephoto shot from the top of the point, is about as tropical as you can get on US soil.

There is a small museum in the outbuilding of the old lighthouse, an its primary display is a duplicate of the huge focusing lens enclosure for the light itself. These 6 foot tall lenses are what made the light effective at such great distances, and are certainly testaments to the glass and lens-makers art.

The color you see here is light refracting through the various concentric lens surfaces ground into the single massive piece of glass.

And for the Sunday thought: I live right diagonally across on the other coast from San Diego, but we are just as caught up in the romance of lighthouses in Maine as they are in California…maybe more-so. I live right up the road from “The Lighthouse Shop” which caters to lighthouse aficionados traveling up historic Route 1, and, through their catalog and web-site, all over the world. I am pretty certain if I stopped by there would be a model of the Point Loma lights, or a post-card at the least.

And, of course, the lighthouse appeals to more than our sense of romance. In any community in the US you will find at least one (generally non-denominational) church that has taken the name of Lighthouse. And I don’t think it is the sense of warning that speaks to our spirits…though every lighthouse was primarily a warning device…so much as it is the sense of home, fellowship, safety. The lighthouse warns of the last dangerous passage this side of home, this side of land and safety, but it is home we hear…home that holds our hope and our joy.

And there is the sense in which each one of us is called to be a lighthouse…our bodies temples of light…our faces focusing lenses which beam home, fellowship, safety so brightly that we can be seen far across the seas of self that separate us, through the storms of self no matter how they rage.

Ah…but you are thinking I am getting caught up in the romance of the lights again…stretching the metaphor. I am certain I am not.