09/03/2026
Pause for a Moment, Wayfarer
On life’s journey
Let the beauty of holiness
Restore your soul
May the harmony of sky and water
Leaf and rock
Nourish the creation and growth
Of your inner being
As you fare through this life
And onto the life beyond
The original architect for Wayfarers Chapel, Ralph Jester, was excited by the donated site for its construction. In May of 1938, he wrote that the “long axis of the plot (east-west) allows the arrangements of elements so as to provide both sweeping views and a feeling of protection and shelter…warmth and intimacy are emphasized in the projected use of materials and their color, stone pews, redwood beams and red tile roof. His comment also suggests his original intentions to build in the Spanish Mission style so indigenous to California.
At this point the second World War intervened, and access to the coast was closed to the public. It was not until 1945 that the Chapel dream would be rekindled. By this time, Ralph Jester had become disenchanted with his own design and suggested soliciting the services of his friend, Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The approach came at an ideal time in Lloyd Wright’s life. Like so many of that period, he had become disillusioned by the waste of the war and was in need of a challenge to lift his spirits. By chance, he had recently traveled up the coast of California and had stopped for lunch at a restaurant in Monterey County that was surrounded by redwood trees and roofed with glass. As he looked up, he would see the trees towering overhead and the sky above the trees. He felt a spiritual aura about the room, even though it was just a restaurant, he felt deeply moved.
After the Chapel was constructed, someone brought to Lloyd Wright’s attention a passage from Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia, where Emanuel Swendenborg, described a temple he had seen in the spiritual world:
It was constructed of trees, not cut down, but standing in their place
“They had been planted in rows as saplings and grew to be of tremendous growth and height Their trunks served as porticoes and arbored walks while their branches formed the walls of the ground floor. While still young, they had been artfully trained by pruning to intertwine with one another. As the trees grew, other branches became the upper walls while others, higher still, bent into lofty arches to form the roof…The light of their sun is let in through the openings between the branches and everywhere transmitted through crystals…Such is the architecture, which they prefer to the most magnificent palaces on earth.”
Lloyd Wright’s son, Eric would later recall, “Here was Swedenborg’s own concept of which he had not known until after the Chapel was built…It was as though Swedenborg had been guiding him. It was the unique character of the Chapel to have this spiritual affinity between two creative individuals existing centuries apart. The spiritual harmony between philosophical and physical ideas, more than anything else, explains the unique experience the Chapel has provided for millions of wayfarers.”
The result has become a classic in architectural history.
H/T: CCA, Centre Canadien d'Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture
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