The
Mountains are Singing:
Beauty
and Devotion among the Red Rocks
Sedona,
Arizona
by
Mark Ogilbee and Jana Riess
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He may be right, but many pilgrims come to Sedona with neither the enthusiasm of Peter nor the strict convictions of Daniel and Susan. They're seeking, but they're not certain what, if anything, they'll find. They come to the rocks with a deep curiosity and a genuine, perhaps unarticulated, spiritual yearning. These kinds of pilgrims may represent most of us—faithful but not certain of our beliefs; wanting to touch the holy more than we actually do; looking for a place that's familiar enough to keep us grounded but open enough to let us make that connection with the holy in our own way, in our own time. Many of these kinds of pilgrims gravitate toward the Chapel of the Holy Cross, built in 1956 a few miles outside of town.
From the beginning, the chapel was intended to inspire seekers of all, or no, spiritual convictions. “Though Catholic in faith,” wrote Marguerite Staude, the chapel's designer, “as a work of art the chapel has a universal appeal. Its doors will ever be open to one and all, regardless of creed.” She intended that the very architecture and artistry of the building would be “so charged with God, that it spurs man's spirit godward!”
Her vision was realized. The chapel is built directly on a red rock formation so that it appears to be almost an extension of the rocks themselves. Striking in its simplicity, compelling in its setting, the chapel looms above you at a precarious angle, as if it's shooting from the earth, like a diamond thrust up from the rocks. The spectacular red rock setting and the spirit of the chapel itself soothes you, slows you down, and encourages you to respond to the beauty all around you.
Tom, an American man, and Molly, his Irish girlfriend, came to Sedona because they'd heard so much about the area's beauty. They weren't religious, they said, but they found that Sedona, and the Chapel of the Holy Cross in particular, was an ideal setting to reconnect to the spirituality that was latent in them.
Molly, who expressed serious reservations about her own religious upbringing, nevertheless found herself inspired once inside the chapel. “As I was meditating there, I was able to block everything out. So I said, ‘I'll just light a candle.' But then I hesitated, because I wondered if there's anything to it, you know? Is there any significance?” But she did light it, and said she felt “as though the prayer, the intention I lit it for, is being continued there until it burns out.”
It's cool inside the chapel where Molly lit her candle. It's not a large space. Backless wooden pews wait for worshipers to sit and meditate or kneel and pray. The walls themselves are of simple, rough, large-pebbled concrete—the reddish hue recalling the dramatic red rocks looming just behind the chapel. A small altar is constructed of simple metal rods. Near the altar sits a sculpted face of Christ—“Anima Christi”—a kind of metal, modernist primitive mask, mildly unnerving with its smooth cheeks, closed eyes, unformed mouth—yet also somehow comforting in its simplicity and calm. The front of the chapel is composed of large windows looking out over the desert valley below. Integrated into the windows is an enormous concrete cross, which is not merely decoration, but—running from floor to ceiling and bisecting the window in three dimensions—is also an integral architectural component of the chapel.
A couple from Alberta, Canada also encountered something spiritually compelling about the chapel and its setting, despite not being particularly interested in anything religious or spiritual. “We had no intentions to stop here,” the man said. “We were just passing through. But then we saw the chapel, and boom! Even as I was walking up here, I said, ‘I think that's a holy place. I can feel it.'”
They may have come to the chapel spontaneously as tourists, but their frame of mind changed. Instead of clicking a few photographs and leaving, they entered the chapel and lingered. Soon they found themselves beginning to dwell on grief and the recent loss of a friend. “We lit a candle and said a prayer for a friend who's a very big rock climber up in the Canadian Rockies,” the wife explained.
“A couple of months ago her fiancé was climbing, and he fell twenty meters and died. So I said a prayer for him, but more for her, the survivor, in the hopes that she'll find peace soon because she's really going through a traumatic time right now.”
Contemplating death and grief isn't what this Canadian couple had in mind when they journeyed to Sedona. Yet beauty has a way about it—it can transition you with ease from rushing tourist to contemplative pilgrim. Whatever faith-language you might use to describe or understand its power, beauty helps you surrender distractions and timetables and instead explore with gentleness what's really going on in your own heart. Beauty invites you to expansiveness.
Indeed, natural beauty has the power to touch our spirits as do few other things. It can work a near-magic in its ability to slow our minds, change our perspective, and reconnect us to the sublime realization that we are a vital, but comparatively small, part of a very large creation. Our language struggles to express this; we resort to words like “splendor,” “majesty,” and “grandeur”—but such nouns only trivialize the direct experience of nature's song which, if you ignore words and go up into the red rock mountains near Sedona, you will be able to hear for yourself.
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Copyright ©2006 Mark Ogilbee and Jana Riess
Reprinted from AMERICAN PILIGRIMAGE: ELEVEN SACRED JOURNEYS AND SPIRITUAL DESTINATIONS published by Paraclete Press, May 2006.
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