I'm reading Mark Patrick Hederman's Walk About -Life as Holy Spirit
the book is most interesting and full of synchronous occurrences, just
what I love to read.
Here is one inspiring story I read last night.
Two friends had invited him to meditate with them at 3.33p. m. on the
text of Jeremiah 33.3 ' Call me and I shall answer. I will reveal to you
great and hidden things you have not known .'
"Next day we were on the turquoise trail to Sante Fe New Mexico.
In the gothic chapel built for the Loretto sisters in 1878, designed
' a la Sainte- Chapelle a Paris' , there is a stairway which supplies
another dominant image of this journey.
When the church was finished it was discovered that no provision
had been made for access to the choir loft.
Because of the height of the loft a conventional stairway
would take up too room in the building beneath. A ladder would
have to be used or the whole choir loft reconstructed. The sisters
made a novena to St Joseph. Legend has it that on the last day of
the novena a grey-haired man with a donkey arrived. He worked for
six to eight months with only a saw, a hammer and a T square. When
he had finished his work he disappeared without payment.
The stairway is circular 33 steps forming two complete turns of
365 degrees, without a central support. The railing which now
exists was not part of the original construction but was added two
years later. The wood is spliced in seven places on the inside, and
in nine places on the outside, with each piece forming part of a perfect
curve. Samples from the wood show an evergreen spruce but neither
Engelmann nor Sitka which are native to New Mexico. The wood used
by this carpenter has not yet been discovered anywhere, certainly not in
this area. Climbing the stairs one can feel , according to Carl R Albach,
consulting engineer, 'a small amount of vertical movement , as if the the
two 365-degree turns were taken out of a large coiled spring ' ".
