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The Idea of Things
by Betty Sayers
Photos by Dan Christensen

My search for migrating warblers in the trees and shrubs along the banks of the Republican River led me into Orleans, a village of 250 people, and then to St. Mary’s Catholic Church. I’m a birdwatcher, but I’m also attracted to the architecture of the prairies and especially historic church architecture. I find beauty in things old and scarred with use.

St. Mary’s Catholic Church was built in 1878. The architect grasped the prairie landscape and the courageous, hopeful and stubborn people who made their life and living on it. The colors, the windows, the proportions of the church, and its design tell of a relationship with the countryside and with a people who were content with good health and the simple pleasures and purposes that had to do with the needs of their soul.

St. Mary’s served as a mission church, and according to the church history, times were hard for the approximately 50 families who belonged to the first parish. The history tells of draught, poor crops, a plague of grasshoppers, bitter cold winds and blizzards yet the generation of immigrants who built homes, public buildings, and businesses in Orleans in the 1870’s believed that hardship could be overcome, prosperity lay ahead, and that the future held great promise. Willa Cather, a Pulitzer prize winning Nebraska author who chronicled life on the Great Plains in the late 1800’s says in O Pioneers!, “A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.”

The church was built of dove-gray stone on the highest elevation in Orleans with a steeple that towers above the town. Stones for its footings and foundation were mined from a quarry near Woodroff, Kansas, a village on the Kansas, Nebraska border about 12 miles from Orleans. The men of the parish hauled tons of these stones with their teams of horses and wagons.

Sunlight glows through the wavy window glass, and the palette of the prairie shimmers across the chapel walls. The rich hues recall purple spiderwort flowers blooming in early spring, pearly clouds blowing across the summer sky, pink wild roses, silver green of the big blue stem prairie grass, rainy day gray, pale yellow of ripe wheat, winter sky in a frosty blue, and a vermillion prairie sunset.

Standard church symbols like the cross, a chalice, a dove, the crown of thorns are designed into the windows, but symbols common in an agrarian society, leaves, vines, clusters of grapes, and sheaves of wheat are mixed among them.

A pattern of blocks in relief adds decorative interest to the vaulted ceiling. The squares are painted in red earth tones and outlined in leaf green. The earthy red and forest green ceiling contrasts with the rich cream of the walls.

St. Mary’s looks and feels like a work of art to me, and I am reminded again of Willa Cather who wrote, “Art is not the result of ordinary moments.” The early 1900’s were far from ordinary times. The new residents overcame severe weather conditions, insect infestations, physical hardship among other things, and instead of hopelessness, their moments in history inspired industry and community pride.

St. Mary’s parish published a book in 1979 in celebration of its centennial. They dedicated the book “to those early pioneers who had faith in God, in others and themselves, and the courage that conquered the untold hardships of those early years.” I sit in St. Mary’s chapel and ponder the dedication phrase, “faith in God, in others and themselves.” Between the slow tock, tick, tock of the old clock on the back wall of the church, I slip into a pool of stillness and feel renewed and fresh with hope. What is healing but forgetting and the miracle of courage to start again?

Betty Sayers is a writer and one of the founders of Nebraska Rural Living. She writes about whatever catches her fancy from her home in Holdrege, Nebraska. You can email her at bsayers@nebraskaruralliving.com.

Dan Christensen owns his own photo studio, Christensen Photography, in Holdrege. Although he specializes in weddings and portraits, he has an extensive collection of personal work such as these of St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Dan can be reached at cphotography10@qwest.net.

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