Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 13, 1994 TAG: 9408150022
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Traveling with my husband and 22 others, we naturally experienced God's presence in the Mormon center of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. Fragrant flowers, clean streets and young parents trailing flocks of small children greeted us as we arrived in the evening from a trip across the desert.
The next day we moved on to Nevada, where the lifestyle was as different from Salt Lake City as nature was. Gambling is such a way of life that young families in restaurants play Keno as part of the meal.
Seeing God in the wonders of nature is easy in the West, although in the tiresome deserts - with towering mountains, sage brush and solitary livestock - it is as easy to see his adversary. Many places, in fact, bear such names as Devil's Canyon.
But in Virginia City, Nev., - a little town of 700 people, down from the 25,000 that once caroused there in the 1870s - stands the oldest Episcopal church in continuous use in Nevada. A larger and more ornate Roman Catholic house of worship is next to it.
There is nothing like Yellowstone Park to cause a visitor to reflect on God's wonders. The Creator may have laughed when he made the fascinating geysers that erupt more or less regularly from hundreds of boiling holes in desert. Natural lakes like Yellowstone and Tahoe, as blue as the turquoise in the gift shop jewelry racks, and the Yellowstone Canyon with its 1,200-foot drop rival anything we have seen for natural beauty.
And there's Pike's Peak, where one can celebrate the composition of "America the Beautiful," or marvel at the mind of the engineer who designed a cog railroad more than 100 years ago that has enabled riders to reach the top without an accident ever since.
Marveling at the power of God came naturally, too, at Mount St. Helen's, the volcano not far from Seattle that erupted in 1980, killing more than 50 people.
We were reminded sharply of the church's role in social justice as we spent a day in South Dakota. Though many know of Mount Rushmore's four presidential faces, we did not know that the Sioux Indians strongly resent the monument, which is on the tribe's ancestral burial grounds.
The modern Indian-rights movement has developed its own martyr, Chief Crazy Horse. Though said to be peace loving, Crazy Horse masterminded the Custer massacre in 1876 when his people were betrayed by broken treaties.
The sculptor creating a giant statue of the legendary chief on horseback refused government funds out of sympathy with Sioux who commissioned his work.
Another facet of social justice - helping the poor by teaching them to help themselves - was evident at Boys Town, Neb., where more than 500 young people, now both girls and boys, still live at the home popularized more than 50 years ago in a Hollywood movie starring Spencer Tracy, as Father Flannagan, and Mickey Rooney. The home boasts elaborate churches for both Catholic and Protestant youth who need a temporary home.
High in the Cascades in Eastern Washington state, our bus took a rest stop on a Saturday afternoon. Refreshed by cheap coffee and homemade cookies, we discovered that a retired-people's group from two small Episcopal churches used the money for a Spokane soup kitchen. A Girl Scout troop carried on a similar mission in Idaho.
Other signs of God in the West could be found in the telephone listings of churches in the communities we visited. Mormons abounded in Idaho, Wyoming and Oregon as well as in Utah. Lutherans held prominence in South Dakota. Everywhere there were Baptists of several stripes, with the familiar Southern variety being in competition with equal numbers called Conservative, Free Will, Regular, Independent and American. Assemblies of God also showed remarkable strength in both large and small places where we spent the nights.
We might also say that God was present in the people around us - ranging from the young waiter who gave us extra good service in a fast-food spot at Lake Tahoe, where he worked in the winter for Campus Crusade for Christ, to St. Louis, where we rode to the top of the 600-foot Gateway Arch with a group of Young Life teens headed to their summer camp in Colorado from Winston-Salem, N.C.
Religion is a many-splendored thing.
by CNB