Etched in my heart - thoughts of influence

Another beautiful reflection by Fr Jason Murphy in his popular column Let the Busy World Be Hushed...

The tour guide pointed to the magnificent splendour of the fan vaulted ceiling of the Lady Chapel, hewn out of stone by human hand some 800 years ago in this beautiful medieval Abbey of Westminster, which has stood on this site along the River Thames. We stopped at the graves of Dickens and Chaucer, Isaac Newton and Rudyard Kipling as we walked around and marvelled at the Gothic arches and majesty of the stained glass windows. But that which remained in my mind long after I'd left behind the Abbey and walked along streets of Whitechapel were the etchings left in stone, not for decoration or ornamentation, but little markings that have remained imprinted for nigh on a thousand years. Signatures, though not of writing but of those masons, who cut and placed stone upon stone.

These are known as Mason’s Marks, used by stonemasons to identify how much stone in a given period had been cut and assembled so they could get paid. It was the job of the Master Mason to check which work had been done by which stonemason by the mark that was laid on the stone.

Whole families of stonemasons lived within the walls of these great buildings during their construction, generations handing on their craft and their particular marking for hundreds of years.

All these years later, unless you stop and take notice, most often you will pass by and fail to see these little etchings- some of stars, criss-crossed lines, or triangles with a line through- all identifying those different families.

But no one now remembers them and no one today can tell their names, for in those days before the vast majority of people could read or write, these markings were all that remained to identify these craftsmen and women. Etchings on stone that catch the light of the sun through stain glass for the briefest of moments in a day and pay homage to these people whom time has forgot.

After we have gone and left behind this world whose cares and worries consume our days we might ask what will remain of us, what etchings will we leave in our wake?

As I listened to the stories of the new Pope Leo XIV’s life being told, I was touched by one from his childhood in the South Side of Chicago, of a neighbour who could see the potential within the little boy and told him with earnestness of heart that he would be the first American Pope. The word of an adult sowed a seed in the heart of that little boy. For as with us all there are etchings left on the walls of our hearts that tell of people who influenced us down through the years, but most especially in childhood, of people who gave of themselves and touched the heart of a little boy or girl.

I think often of a man who came to our town, a toolmaker from Glasgow. Michael Carlin came with his wife and settled here to work in a little company called Erne Tool and Die in the 1970’s. Over the years he used his talents outside the workplace to shape and mould the lives of little children.

For in the Palais Hall, all through the 1980s, he produced concerts and musicals- Guys and Dolls, South Pacific, Oliver et al. Because of him we were transported from the ordinary of life to the West End stage as we sang in lead roles and donned costumes. And in so doing our shyness evaporated, albeit for a while, and a mark was left on our lives by the giving of another on dark winter nights when he could otherwise have sat by the fire at home rather than spending endless hours with us in the cold of a hall after a hard days work.

And so be it for us all. We each have the power to influence the life of another, to leave an etching that will remain over time, an etching that will remind how we once passed this way. An etching not wrought by the money we have accumulated, nor the car we drove. But by the influence we have had. It is that which will change the course of a life long after we have gone, and bring to mind our memory enkindled in the midst of the ordinary to tell of the builder of stone in human hearts. These etchings will catch the light in the way beyond for the briefest of moments, and tell of how I too was once important in the life of a child.