At this time of year, Powell Gardens in Kansas City, Missouri, becomes a green botanical oasis a few miles outside the city. Recently a new glass and redwood chapel designed by architect Fay Jones was built there beside a tranquil pond. The chapel is dedicated to Marjorie Powell Allen of the Powell Family Foundation, and offers visitors an extraordinary place of peace and renewal. At the dedication ceremony one evening in late April, David Holmstrom, a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, was invited to give a talk. Here are excerpts:

POWER OF THE TRIANGLE

Several years ago, as a journalist, I attended a conference in upstate New York. One of the workshops was conducted by Thomas Crum, a man who practices aikido—a form of nonaggressive martial arts. He was there to offer a perspective about being in control, and understanding the positive aspects of conflict through meditation.

There were at least one hundred people in his active workshop. The way he regained class attention after each lively exercise was to strike a steel triangle; he held it up and struck it hard once. The transcendent, lovely sound —really a perfect, echoing note—was so piercing and resonant, and yet so gentle, that it was an instant attention getter.

Above the voices, the sound carried its message: be still, listen. An immediate hush fell over the class each time he used the triangle. To me it was quite remarkable—immediate control over a crowd. But the method intrigued me as much as the result. I've since learned that striking a triangle is a fairly common method for teachers in some schoolrooms to bring quiet to a class.

So it seems wholly appropriate to me to praise the power of the triangle, because this evening we are celebrating the much deeper architectural equivalent of the triangle's power. This boldly serene chapel, and the generous impetus that has created it, are a powerful invitation as well as a reminder that we need to be still. Not ought to be still, but need to stop and be still.

SPIRITUAL TRANQUILLITY

In the simplest rationale possible, our hearts and minds need this chapel. Through the clarity of the vision of those involved in its creation, we are invited to be refreshed in the spiritual tranquillity that holds us in this structure of hope. ...

As much as we love being here, we all know that outside this chapel there is in many places a different presence, not one of tranquillity. Through the trees, away from Powell Gardens, beginning along Highway 50 and reaching as far as international television and radio news services can reach twenty-four hours a day, there are places where my little triangle story won't wash. There is too much dissonance out there. Too much violence. Too much war and hatred. Too much corruption. Too much hopelessness.

My view is that we are pretty well pushed into believing this about mankind. The evidence is brought to us so quickly by the mainstream media—TV, radio, and newspapers—which are all suggesting this to us continually and powerfully. Each day we are told how bad things have become. It is as if we are in the middle of contending forces, all defining us as not too bright in a collective, social sense.

And our tendency, after all the bad news, is to conclude that so many people in the United States have become separated from morality and individual values—that such values are simply weak options in a lineup of lifestyle choices. Values appear to be no longer fundamental. Instead, gaining an advantage is, or winning the lottery, or suing your neighbor, or cheating on your taxes.

And because technology accelerates the changes around us, it has become more difficult for people to agree on fundamentally what is good in life. In this confusion, does evil appear to be gaining an advantage? In this dilemma, I tend to favor the William Faulkner view of man. In his book The Mansion, one of Faulkner's characters says, "Man ain't really evil; he just ain't got any sense." ...

SPIRITUAL RESONANCE

We have a tendency to forget that indefatigable people of hope, driven by heart and convictions, turn up in the oddest, sometimes most dangerous places, and often in the nick of time. ...

With this kind of hope in mind, I wanted one time to write a science-fiction short story about a mysterious and wonderful chapel that had been so constructed acoustically that the voices and memories of anybody who visited were retained there. Any visitor could enter, sit quietly, and hear the thoughts of people sixty or seventy years ago through selective hearing. And then they could contribute their own ideas.

I had read that large churches have what is a called a "sympathetic note." This is a region of pitch in which tone is held and reinforced by reverberation. If the tone of the priest's voice, for instance, were close to the "tone" of the church, the Latin vowels would reverberate on and on. My fictional story was to be based somewhat loosely on this fact.

So, let us first acknowledge that this chapel will be here in one hundred years, and in the year 2096 a visitor—a man or woman, or maybe a child—will walk in the wonderful doorway back there for the very first time. I give him or her the name Jesse. ... Jesse will stand there, looking up in awe, the visual feast preceding the spiritual resonance to follow. Jesse is here to listen to us.

Perhaps confused and saddened, Jesse may have slipped away from a dangerous place or situation, seeking renewal or at least refugee. In the words of naturalist and writer Annie Dillard, Jesse may not "understand the risk of prayer," but may well understand the far greater risk of doing nothing at all.

Thus, Jesse arrives here, troubled, but primed to sit and listen quietly for grace and hope. Or maybe—and this is the best possible condition—Jesse is already quick-witted, whole, full of love and humor, and arrives with an appreciation for the spiritual benefits to be gained here. Yet in 2096, Jesse faces unimaginable challenges, just as our challenges seem so formidable. Whatever the problem, Jesse sits down there in the back, humble, listening to what we are saying today. So, we talk to Jesse:

"Jesse, you should know that mankind's precedents for hope are legion. Our record up to now is impressive, if we can brag a little, despite a few wars to the contrary. Even in 2096 our hope for you is that you know the part you play in your own destiny. You have stopped here, in this serene chapel, for help. And to kindle more hope in you, we want to share with you some examples of people who changed a limited sense of destiny into something wider and deeper."

[At this point, Mr. Holmstrom related stories that helped to define hope, including a television feature in which a woman described how she had survived a childhood of brutal abuse.]

MORE LOVE THAN HATE

"Jesse, although the woman admitted that she sometimes struggles with terrible memories, she said her triumph was evidenced in a successful eleven-year marriage and her ability to hold a responsible job requiring advanced degrees. Those of us who never had our childhood darkened by abuse need not try to imagine the struggle to free oneself from such wreckage.

"But, Jesse, here is the heart of the matter. When the woman was asked why she thought she had not only survived but triumphed, she answered, 'I had more love than they had hate.' She said it just that way, direct, firm, with chin turned up a little. 'I had more love than they had hate.'

"Rottenly as her parents acted, they failed to destroy their own child. The woman did not say she loved her parents no matter what, but that love was hers as a life-saving resource no matter what.

"Jesse, I have no doubt that this woman is the kind of person William Faulkner had in mind in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He said: 'I decline to accept the end of man. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.'

"Look kindly on us, Jesse. It may be that our courage and hope in 1996 ring with a quaint sound to you in 2096. Even the sound of the triangle may seem old-fashioned. Perhaps, like trying to guess the number of crickets in Powell Gardens, we can't imagine the challenges growing out of the dynamics of your time. But the consensus here favors continued usefulness for humanity animated by spirituality. Everyone here today wants you to know there are answers, and solace, and love in this peaceful chapel.

"Just remember, Jesse, the pew back there is yours anytime you need it."

JEREMIAH

Blessed is the man that trusteth in
the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.
For he shall be as a tree planted by
the waters, and that spreadeth out
her roots by the river, and shall not
see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green;
and shall not be careful in the year of drought,
neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7, 8