Sermon in Phantasy

From the book of nature we learn of God's Power, His Wisdom, and His Greatness. No one who has ever stood on the Rim of the Grand Canyon can deny the inspiration attached to the splendor of the scene, nor can he think of anything but the mighty impress of the greatness of the Deity. Before I visited Grand Canyon, I had seen pictures which seemed to me must surely be overdrawn; I had heard the extravaganza of superficial tourists as they tried to describe it with ejaculations and exclamations; and I attributed that to the natural inclination of the untrained mind to deal in superlatives. But not until I stepped from the train at the quiet station and walked eagerly to the Rim of Grand Canyon for my first view, did the vastness and grandeur of it have any real meaning to me. Here, atop the world (for in any direction of approach to Grand Canyon, you climb 1,000 feet) the outside world is shut off. Timidly, I looked into the mighty chasm. I shrank from the scene and masked myself from its glory as some hide from the power of the Sun. Surely, the Psalmist had seen Grand Canyon when he wrote, "And the firmament sheweth his handiwork." As I watched and wondered and worshipped there, contemplating these majestic spires and temples, clothed in their ethereal garments changeless, yet ever changing-I learned the great lesson which Grand Canyon had to teach I learned the meaning of life and its underlying and eternal law, the painful whittling and wearing away and moulding by the hand of God until he has shaped us into the perfect and beautiful image which he wants us to be.

It is impossible to adequately describe the Grand Canyon. Its vastness overwhelms you. Its moods are marvelous. It rages and smiles,... it storms and sleeps. It lures and it threatens, it appalls and inspires.

From my window directly overlooking the Rim I watched the vast gray abysmal stretches awaken under the radiant touch of dawn, as the morning sun poured over it all like a thousand Niagaras aflame, filling its far depths with the glories of a new day. Late in the afternoon, I watched the kaleidoscopic panorama of color, as the sun boldly singled out the jutting bluffs to clothe them with a fiery red radiance which only enhanced the blue transparent haze which lingers in the canyons between. Then comes the fugitive beauty of twilight, flooding the uncounted temples, domes and spires, filling all with silence and darkness to the Rim and rolling its rising mists on the heels of retreating day. The great Canyon is then lulled to sleep, to dream in her deeps till dawn to brood on things eternal.

Like the sunrise or sunset the Canyon is never the same.

It changes while you look. I saw a distant pile, gray and weatherbeaten, like the ruins of some ancient pyramid or temple, and as I looked I saw the sun stretch its beam through a rift in the sky and touch it till it gleamed like a palace of gold. Under a leaden sky these mute memorials remind one of the somber ruins of the races that reigned in the ages of the world's morning, let down into a mammoth uncovered mausoleum with the centuries standing gloomily beside, while under the unclouded noon is revealed an irridescent dream of mighty mansions and palaces of mountains and quiet valleys of eternal peace between, with the high walls of eternity standing guard around the "city whose foundations are eternal, whose builder and maker is God."

I peered into the long labyrinths where old "Time" seemed to have left the palaces of dead dynasties and temples of hoary cults, battered and broken like outworn toys of the infant world and over this crumbling mimicry of the past a circular rainbow flung high a promise of the fruition of the countless hopes that lay buried there. I watched the waning light as it lingered arrestingly about these grim memories of faith as ideals and as I looked I saw the relentless hand of time closing the weary eyelids of dying day, leaving them dark, silent and alone like spectral visions in a land of memories and dreams.

Just as you enjoy the opera more if you know the story, the Ranger-Naturalists on duty at the Grand Canyon make your delight for Grand Canyon keener as they unfold before you in their nightly lectures in Bright Angel Lodge or on the Rim auto-caravans, the fascinating storý of earth's history as revealed in Grand Canyon. You travel back millions of years into time, as these geologists tell you that you are atop an ancient sea bottom which has risen up and that Grand Canyon was formed by the breathless drama of running water-by the Colorado River cutting down through the risen plateau. They tell you that five Empire State Buildings could be placed one on top of each other in the Canyon and they would just reach the Rim. And close to the great Shiva Temple, they say, the Washington Monument could be tucked away to keep it out of the rain.

It is the job of these Naturalists to "interpret" the Grand Canyon. They try to make you feel the beauty of the Canyon. They want you to look and see not merely oxidized mineral formations, but look and see a gigantic painting of deep unfathomable purples fading into ethereal pinks and lavenders, and over all a gauze curtain of pale transparent blue, clinging like an exquisite gossamer web of butterfly wings to the crags, spires and canyons between. You can read in numerous books on the Canyon of its scientific value as the world's greatest geological example. The book of your own soul only will record your ecstacy on beholding it.

To these Naturalists, the Canyon needs no introduction. It speaks for itself-you yourself must interpret it. It throws its challenge out to you. The shallow and superficial will look and run-those with a true reverence will linger and marvel-speechless with awe, and with a heart full of humility before this great masterpiece of God's handi-work, this mighty spectacle of the ages this Sermon in Phantasy.

The first of the National Parks to be discovered when in 1540 Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, a Captain in Coronado's army, looked into the gorge to report that there rose spires "as high as the highest cathedrals in Seville," Grand Canyon National Park comprises an area of one thousand and nine square miles. Three Indian nations dwell in the canyon region today; the pastoral Navajos, inhabiting the largest Indian reservation in the United States which is just east of Grand Canyon; the pueblo-farming Hopis, occupying three mesas in the Painted Desert; and the small agricultural tribe of Havasupais, living within Grand Canyon itself. There are three hundred cliff dwelling ruins within the walls of Grand Canyon-five hundred within the Park itself. Looking across to the North Rim, ten miles by airline, two hundred and fifty by car, we are told that here lies the greatest virgin forest in America, named by the Indians, "Kaibab" (mountain lying down.) Here a higher elevation causes a climate and vegetation similar to that of Canada and at the crest of San Francisco Peaks, one finds an arctic-alpine zone. Of the seven climatic belts of the world, six are represented in the Canyon region. And so, Grand Canyon is comparable to a stone in a ring, enhanced because of the beautiful setting in which we find it-which is known as the Grand Canyon country.

Don't miss the muleback trip down to the river if you want a thrill. You'll never get over it. You will ride a "storm at sea with big ears" (the trail burros) and live to tell the folks back home about it. You are a mile farther from the moon down at the bottom of the Canyon and in a climatic zone similar to desert Mexico. Here you can view the turbulent Colorado, which on a clear day may be heard roaring from the Rim, seven miles away. This mighty river, "too thin to plough and too thick to drink" to paraphase the old timers, carries one million tons of silt past a given point every twenty-four hours, its waves often reach fifteen feet high and only seventeen successful expeditions have been through the inner gorge.

At the campfire talks held out under the soft rays of a summer moon and quiet stars where you truly get the "feel" of nature, with only the sky for a canopy, a Ranger-Naturalist will entertain you for an hour or more with talks on plant and animal life in the Canyon area, with bird imitations, and will serve you Mormon tea, an old Indian beverage, and piñon nuts. If you are fortunate enough to be present at one of these fireside chats, you will take with you from the Canyon an unforgettable memory.

Even taking into account the theories of geologists that Grand Canyon was carved from a wilderness plateau, by wind, rain, frost and the Colorado river, the formation of this mighty gorge, in fact-its very existence, is still baffling to reason and imagination alike. Some claim that by the process of erosion and denudation that are now in operation it never could have been formed. The horizontal structure of its strata refute at a glance any theory of volcanic upheaval such as self-evident in the formation of the Rockies, they say.

And so the human mind, driven by the inexorable necessity of the law of causation, swings back over the lapse of eons and reverently lays its unanswered questions at the feet of the First Cause. Till He breaks the silence of centuries, mystery will shroud the spawning of her splendors.

The Canyon is truly God's own studio-it is here since time eternal; He has worked ceaselessly upon the sculpture which has defied man throughout the ages and it is here that man is now looking for the mysteries of Life. This sculpture is a majestic picture painted with myriads of colors on a vast abyss-the like of which is to be found nowhere else in the world. There are those who will always return to Grand Canyon for this sacrament. It calls you back again and again.

abyss-the like of which is to be found nowhere else in the world. There are those who will always return to Grand Canyon for this sacrament. It calls you back again and again.

"Is it the mould of some lost continent Or the lair of an empire that sleeps Is it the Mormatine of silences Or is it the destiny of deeps? Is it the bastile of all our splendors Or the tomb of the tumults of time Is it the cradle of the oceans that surround us Or a mausoleum of memories sublime?".