Where Angels Walk (25th Anniversary Edition) by Joan Wester Anderson

Author:Joan Wester Anderson [Anderson, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL010000, RELIGION / Christianity/Catholic, REL012040, RELIGION / Christian Life/Inspirational, REL012000, RELIGION / Christian Life/General
ISBN: 9780829444704
Publisher: Loyola Press
Published: 2016-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

A similar event took place in Covington, Kentucky. In 1938, the Reverend Morris Coers and his wife had traveled to the Holy Land, where they were deeply moved by a visit to a tomb reputed to be the authentic burial place of Jesus. Someday, Reverend Coers decided, he would build a replica of that sepulcher in America. It would be a sacred spot for people of all faiths who could not afford to visit the Holy Land site.

By the mid-1950s, Reverend Coers was a minister at the Immanuel Baptist Church in Covington, and he shared his dream with the congregation. The plan received enthusiastic support, and Reverend Coers found the perfect setting: a beautiful hill overlooking the Ohio River. Although the owner at first balked at selling the property, he eventually agreed. People from all over Covington contributed, and plans expanded to include a reproduction of a first-century carpenter shop, a chapel, and a bookstore. Coers named it the Garden of Hope.

The tomb and garden had been completed—and churches were already holding devotional services on the patio in front of the sepulcher’s entrance—when difficulties developed. During the winter of 1958, the hillside began to give way, causing expensive landscaping, walkways, and the patio itself to slip downward. “The following summer, the church borrowed forty thousand dollars to sink cement pilings into the earth and pour tons of concrete onto the base of the hill,” recalled one longtime parishioner. Workers rebuilt the patio and shored it up with more concrete.

But during the following winter, the entire area, including the patio, slid all the way to the bottom again. Distinguished engineers came to evaluate the church’s predicament, but their verdicts were the same: the Garden of Hope could not be safely constructed on this site. However, there was no money left to begin elsewhere. “It was heartbreaking,” Morris Coers’s widow said later. “The Garden of Hope had been a dream come true for Morris, and it looked impossible.”

On a hot August day in 1959, several church members stood in the garden, dispiritedly surveying the situation. What could they do? Take out more trees? Rebuild? Pour even more concrete at the hill’s base? Or should the project be abandoned?

No one took notice of a stranger making his way through the garden until he stood in front of them. “I’m looking for Reverend Coers,” the man said.

The others looked at him. He was huge, surely over three hundred pounds, and wearing bib overalls. Someone ran and got the minister.

“Hear you have a landslide going on here,” the large man began.

“We do,” Reverend Coers agreed. “The earth down there is full of concrete and steel pilings, but nothing seems to keep the hill—and everything on it—from sliding.”

“Show it all to me,” the man suggested.

Reverend Coers, impressed with the large man’s dignity and air of quiet confidence, did so, while the rest of the men continued talking and wandering around. But when the minister returned from the brief tour, he was excited. The man in the

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