Places where the faithful gather

[Editor’s note: We mistakenly ran only a part of this column last week; here’s the full piece.]

I’ve visited both the spectacular and the simplest of places where the faithful gather.

A visit to Angkor Wat near Siem Reap in Cambodia is probably the place I will always remember.

The complex is huge and the construction history reminds me of the pyramids in Egypt.

Angkor Wat was completed in 1110, and has many Hindu carvings in the complex. Sometime along the way it was taken over by the Buddhists.

The quarry where the stone came from is 50 miles away.

The earliest person from the West to visit the site stated that it was more spectacular than anything in Rome.

In the more modern times, it was discovered partially hidden by the encroaching jungle by the Frenchman Henri Mouhot who was collecting samples of butterflies.

Angkor wasn’t lost, just largely ignored. The complex is several times larger than Vatican City.

I visited Angkor before it became a destination tourist attraction.

I hired a bike taxi to take me to the site and was warned by some 10- to 12-year-olds that if I hired them to take me inside they would keep me from the cobras that roamed the site at will. I chose to go it alone. 

The temple is regularly used by Buddhists today.

Later, I visited the Shwedagon Pagoda in Burma, the place has been the site for religious gatherings for some 2,500 years. The pagoda, rebuilt in the mid 1800s,

is covered with gold. 

When I visited, you could purchase gold foil and place it on the structure. A huge diamond is atop the pagoda.

The pagoda was filled with devout Buddhists, and of course dozens of just visitors.

This is the place I forgot to take off my shoes before entering. I was confronted by a bunch of people who let me know. Off came the shoes and everything was okay.

On a couple of occasions my wife and I visited the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake, an outstanding architectural treat. I remember our guide said the acoustics were so pure that you could hear a pin drop from anyplace in the room. The Temple is widely used.

We lived in Boise when the Methodists opened “The Cathedral of the Rockies,” a temple that occupies a full city block in Idaho’s capital city. We took the tour and were fascinated with the stained-glass windows and the architecture of the building, a must experience.

But probably the most special was San Estevan del Ray Mission Church atop Acoma Mesa in New Mexico.

The mesa is some 350 feet above the ground below. At the time we were there, no roads took you to the top.  Everything had to be carried to the top via a small path that wound its way through the rocks.

The mission church was built by Spanish monks in the 1600s.

What struck me was the huge adobe church had a dirt floor. There was a small community of natives atop the mesa, and those who lived there were regulars at the services, plus visitors.

Buses regularly brought visitors to the mesa, and people had to gain entrance to the village via the path through the rocks. I have read that a movie company has since built a road to the top while filming a project there.

The point of all of this is that the truly devout don’t need the trappings of history, or architectural splendor, to satisfy their needs.