From Dungeon Lane to the Road to Glory

Dungeon Lane is a dump, merely a dreary track. 

I’ve passed over it many times, always at about 20 metres – it runs alongside the southern boundary fence of John Lennon airport over which planes land. It goes nowhere, except to the airport viewing area #2.  Beyond that, just some scrubland and a boggy shoreline.  That’s all. 

And yet, no doubt, it will be pulling in the crowds from all over the world, just like Penny Lane. 

Paul McCartney is about to release his 18th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – its title a reference to the route from the Speke council estate to the muddy shoreline, the area where the former Beatle spent his young childhood.  It’s nostalgia for a bygone past.

See the boys of Dungeon Lane

Along the Mersey shore

Some of them will feel the pain

But some were meant for more

It’s a lovely song and the lyric video is worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n1IhyF6R0U&list=RD2n1IhyF6R0U&start_radio=1

Of course that was over 70 years ago:  the lane which McCartney recalls is no longer there, maybe it never was.  Will Hodgkinson writes in this morning’s Times: “The beauty of this intimate and rather unassuming ballad, however, is in its capturing of something everyone must go through, famous or not: growing older."

As it happens I encounter my childhood along the Mersey shore whenever I run the Crosby ParkRun.  Strangely the start line is exactly where I ran my very first race, way back in 1959, when St Nicholas’ school was in Warrenhouse Road.  

I recall running past the concrete pyramids scattered in the sands to deter German landings and the prominent landmark, now long gone, where we turned.  For the record, I came second, an early regret – if only I had taken the race seriously

Nostalgia can be a dangerous temptation, especially for we baby-boomers.  The way we remember  our past, especially our childhood, can quietly shape how we live now. And how we trust God for what lies ahead.

The Israelites in the wilderness provide a striking example. Under Moses, they had been delivered from harsh slavery in Egypt, yet it didn’t take long before their memories softened. They began to look back with longing: “We ate fish in Egypt at no cost… the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic…” (Numbers 11:4–6). In truth, they were remembering selectively.

Nostalgia can so easily distort the past.  It has a way of editing history. It softens the hard edges, brightens the colours, and quietly removes the struggles we once complained about at the time. The danger of nostalgia is not that it remembers too much, but that it remembers too little.

So the prophet Isaiah speaks to a disheartened people, maybe speaking directly to us,  “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18).

For the disciple of Jesus, the focus is always forward. Because of his resurrection, we are invited to live in hope—drawn not simply by what has been, but by what is yet to come.

The Christian life is not rooted in replaying what once was, however precious, but in trusting what God is now bringing into being. The resurrection of Jesus does not simply give us something to remember—it gives us somewhere to go.

It may be that for some of us, the “Dungeon Lanes” of our past feel far more attractive than the uncertain roads ahead. The past is settled; the future is not. The past is known; the future requires trust.

Because He lives,

I can face tomorrow!

Because He lives,

All fear is gone.

Because I know He holds the future,

And life is worth the living,

Just because He lives!

The Christian life is just like the ParkRun – it is future-focussed as we long for the finish line.  So the apostle Paul encourages us:  “But I do concentrate on this: I leave the past behind and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of being called by God in Christ.” (Philippians 3:13)

That goal already lies ahead of us, calling us onward—beyond the shoreline, beyond the familiar, into the new thing God is doing. And it is the risen Jesus who assures us, in the words of the other Paul:

I stand by what I said

The promise that I made

Will never be broken

Not Dungeon Lane but Road to Glory.