Lighthouses sometimes shine farther when positioned lower

When cloud or fog tends to hang low, a lighthouse closer to the sea can throw its beam further to the ship than if it was high up on the top of the land.

When the clouds and fog of deception hang low, as they often do in these dark days, it is more effective to put a lighthouse of truth low down near the waves. A low lighthouse can be seen better by benighted sailors who are trying not to hit the rocks.

Here’s the science. Frequent low clouds can obscure the light of a tall lighthouse. In such cases, a lighthouse is positioned nearer sea level, rather than up high on a cliff or a tall tower. If the light is too high, the clouds will absorb the light’s beam. In England, one of the big lighthouses is at the bottom of a 200 foot cliff, not the top of the cliff. My dad knew this, which is how I learned about it; dad loved to teach scientific facts to anyone who would listen. 😊 My dad also liked to entertain his audiences, and he could embroider or massage the facts to make the story more entertaining! So I did a fact check, and Wikipedia confirmed¹:

Where dangerous shoals are located far off a flat sandy beach, the prototypical tall masonry coastal lighthouse is constructed to assist the navigator making a landfall after an ocean crossing. Often these are cylindrical to reduce the effect of wind on a tall structure. Smaller versions of this design are often used as harbor lights to mark the entrance into a harbor.

Where a tall cliff exists, a smaller structure may be placed on top. Sometimes, such a location can be too high, for example along the west coast of the United States, where frequent low clouds can obscure the light. In these cases, lighthouses are placed below the clifftop to ensure that they can still be seen at the surface during periods of fog or low clouds.

I think this blog is one of the low-positioned lighthouses. It gets little traffic on cyberspace. Almost no Christian advocates and whistleblowers share my work. Many of them pay zero attention to my work. But the few survivors of abuse who come to this blog seem to find it a helpful lighthouse.

Archie Roach was a brilliant singer-songwriter. He’s an icon in Australia, one of our national treasures. Here is his song Lighthouse. I find it very moving, and I think you will too. Archie and his wife Ruby were both Christians, and were both part of the stolen generation.

Lyrics and mp3 of Lighthouse² (Unfortunately there are errant apostrophes in the lyrics; maybe that’s because AI had a hand in it. 😊)

***

Further reading

¹ Lighthouse [Internet Archive link] — An Internet Archived link, not only in case the original link (above) gets broken, but in case the information on the Wikipedia page is updated with new or different information.

² Lighthouse (Song for Two Mothers) [Internet Archive link]