The Church at San Lorenzo

The Black Range is the closest bunch of "real mountains," located about 80 highway miles from our home. We've always enjoyed visiting the pine trees and sparkling mountain streams for a change of pace, and have gone there many times over the years. The first town on the other side of the Black Range is San Lorenzo, which has a wonderful little church that's always open during the daytime. Whenever we go over there, we stop in, meditate on a pew for a few minutes, and light a candle. It's a nice little ritual.

Here's the altar, flanked by Jesus and San Lorenzo (Saint Lawrence).

Here's the candle room, filled with statues of different saints, the Virgin Mary, etc. You pay your $2.50, light a candle, and put it in front of your favorite statue. There are wooden stands so you can kneel and pray if you want. The candles put out a lot of heat; the room is very warm during the summertime.

Here's a close-up of an icon in the candle room.

BTW I'm not Catholic, don't believe the ideology, and consider the Catholic Church as an institution, like most large institutions, to be irredeemably corrupt. With its anti-birth control policy, it is helping to destroy the planet, and consigning its peasant faithful to miserable lives of poverty.

I relate to the more primitive aspect: the little old ladies praying in the pews with their rosaries; the mothers lighting candles for their soldier sons or sick relatives. This is behavior I can relate to. I may be different from them, but I'm still a primitive myself.