Temple of the Sky Father

Ominous clouds had been gathering in the afternoon, rising from the southwest, drifting across the canyon, and piling up against the north wall. A few fleecy clouds in the west partially obscured the sun until it neared the horizon, then a shaft of sunlight broke through once more, telegraphing its approach long before it reached us, the rays being visibly hurled through space like a javelin, or a lightning bolt, striking peak after peak so that one almost imagined they would hear the thunder roll. A yellow flame covered the western sky, to be succeeded in a few minutes by a crimson glow. The sharply defined colors of the different layers of rock had merged and softened, as the sun dropped from sight; purple shadows crept into the cavernous depths, while shafts of gold shot to the very tip-top of the peaks, or threw their shadows like silhouettes on the wall beyond. Then the scene shifted again, and it was all blood-red, reflecting from the sky and staining the rocks below, so that distant wall and sky merged, with little to show where the one ended and the other began. That beautiful haze, which tints, but does not obscure, enshrouded the temples and spires, changing from heliotrope to lavender, from lavender to deepest purple; there was a departing flare of flame like the collapse of a burning building; a few clouds in the zenith, torn by the winds so that they resembled the craters of the moon, were tinted for an instant around the crater's rims; the clouds faded to a dove-like gray; they darkened; the gray disappeared; the purple crept from the canyon into the arched dome overhead; the day was ended, twilight passed, and darkness settled over all.

Bolt after bolt strikes into the gorge. In the hot dry air sheets of flame light up the crumbling buttes and peaks. A second later, they have vanished, swallowed by a vacuous immensity of flame red and pitch black. It grows greater and greater to the echo of thunderclaps thrown back and forth from the remaining walls-an inferno bathed in fire, a chaotic underworld. This is the apocalypse, the most awful and most sublime sight you can experience. Before it you cling to a piñon, insensible to self, the shrieking wind, and the lash of rain.

Only still waters can reflect nature's splendor. Serenity is not attained by exertion-only in quietness of soul is it realized, for tranquility and peace are reflected virtues. How shall you learn to be still? Leave the disturbing moment where gusts of pain or drifts of weariness ruffle your spirit; go in memory or imagination to nature's still waters: some quiet pool where majesty is mirrored. Turbulence would erase the beauty and distort the reflection of surrounding loveliness. Sang the Psalmist: "He leadeth me beside still waters"... let the Shepherd of Serenity guide your thoughts, your mood, and you will attain the calmness that banishes distortion. All about you are the glories of life: the beauty and strength of the universe, the changeless love of God.

Never static, never still, inconstant as the passing moment and yet endurable as time itself, it is the one great drama of evolutionary change perpetually recapitulated.... In its depths whole mountains contract and expand with the changing shadows. Clouds ebb in and out of the gorges like frothy tides. Peaks and buttes change shape and color constantly in the shifting light. None of this seems real. It is a realm of the fantastic unreal.