by Athena and Bill Steen - Cohabitat

When I was a boy, my father was the main one to look after the
church. Once when we had been up to southern Colorado to visit part
of our familyfor a couple of weeks, it had been raining here almost
every day we were gone, heavy rains. The day after we got back, my
father took me with him to go see how Aings were with the church.
We could see as soon as we walked up to the church how heavy the
rains had been. The adobe plaster was washed away here and there,
and the winds had blown a cottonwood limb onto the roof When we
went to open the doors, the wood was so swollen by the water that we
could barely open them.
When we got them open and saw inside, we just stood there awhile not
saying anything* There, growing out of the adobe floor, was a young
stand of wheat
I remember trying to convince my father to leave the wheat alone-it
seemed right to me that it should be there-but he Just smiled and said,
"Ml hijo, you know we can H worship the wheat n
lna couple of days,
everything was back to the way it was, but I never forgot that day.
Elder from northern New Mexico village.
Persistence of Memory \ New Mexico's Churches
Museum of New Mexico Press