The search for the holy snow and a Mormon Church

This weekend left me with many cultural experiences, on the way to church.  As I couldn’t figure myself staying in Butte this weekend when I just had figured out that Snowbird had their opening day on Friday.  On Thursday noon I started to cover the six hour drive down to Utah, didn’t really know what do expect of the upcoming weekend. The skiing culture hasn’t being rooted so deep among my skiing and snowboarding friends here in Butte, various excuses left me alone in my hunt for snow. I spend the first night at the weirdest hostel ever with the weirdo Arthur running the “Camelot Guest House” from his computer monitoring the whole place with Ethernet webcams and charging three different add-on taxes on the starting price.  After I drove the overslept violinmaker studying Ross Jones to his additional job I was only forty from Snowbird. Then after turning on to the last exit before the incline to the resort, there they stood a hitchhiking skier with his snowboard friend. A half second later I decided to pick them up. The rest of the weekend I skied with them and stayed at their motor home parked at Wal-Mart.  They had their own subculture in this RV, the Lindy from 79 with no heat, no bathroom, no electricity and I didn’t complain. I didn’t have to ski by myself for this weekend! With nothing else to do rather than converse the evenings through I got some god stories and they learned some new words…

I decided to leave them as early as possible Sunday morning to find a Church, , preferably a Mormon Church. After a quick lube service I maneuvered my car towards Salt Lake City’s church/temple area.  With the lack of google the past days I didn’t really have so much information about where and what time the Mormons had their masses. So after driving around in circles in the temple area searching for parking I ended up some mile away. I asked some well dressed people with liver spots but they probably thought I looked and smelled like a bum, so they pointed far up a hill for a church that I after some sweat drops later found out was a chapel with zero activates.  On the way back to my car I saw some people with worships agendas in their hands. They banged their car doors but when they realized that I was searching for a church the cooled off. With a new direction I headed towards some random church up another hill. Fantastic, they had a mass at eleven and I could get some coffee one staircase down.  A real bum used the restroom as his private bathroom. I realized that this was not a Mormon church. I got some free breakfast that I first tried to pay for but later did some donation for. I read on some announcement that this was a church for all, it was typed both in English and in Spanish. Much of the people seemed to be from the lower classes in the society. That fitted me perfect this day after living the past days without the normal day by day luxuries.  I went up to the nave of the Cathedral of the Madeleine some minutes before the mass started and it was already a lot of people up there. Before people sat down on the pew the touched the floor with one knee and did the sign of the cross. Later I figured out that it was a catholic church when I spoke with a friend and mentioned the steam that some guy followed the priest with. I could approximate the number of people to around thousand. I felt quite anonymous sitting almost at the back end. Even if I didn’t really participated singing and praying nobody noticed it. The completely opposite when comparing with The Church on the Rock where everybody knew that you were fresh.  A lot of people dropped in late to the mass and those ones also left minutes before it was over. I don’t really understand how you could do that. If you believe in God I think you should respect the ceremony to. Not only drop in and then leave before it ends and then check it off on the Sunday list.  The music was the most old school music so far. Some lady with grey hair singed opera style and it was impossible to hear her words.  At the end all the people walk by this pot of holy water and dipped their fingers and made the cross sign again. I did notice some similar things with this Catholic Church and the Catholic Church in back in Butte. The catholic ones seem to be more old school, not so much joy as in the Baptist or at the church on the Rock. 

over and out

/Rikard