So, after almost 30 years, I got to visit the Rev. Robert Schuller's famous Crystal Cathedral in Southern California.

When it first went up, I promised myself a pilgrimage.

Last week, I made it.

Over the decades, the cathedral has expanded into a regular Protestant Vatican City — with a memorial park, scriptures carved in the walkways, a visitor's center and statues of biblical heroes.

But the flagship is still the great church itself — a gleaming symbol of how we should let the light in and become "transparent" for God.

The docent on duty told me the cathedral has 10,000 panes of glass and 17,000 organ pipes. On hot days, "air conditioning" comes from opening a bank of windows 10 stories high. On rainy days, the cathedral goes from a light in the wilderness to a refuge from the storm. Thousands huddle together, listening to the rain and the word of the Lord there — not unlike like Noah's family.

The cathedral is owned by the Reformed Christian Church (Norman Vincent Peale's denomination), but graduation ceremonies and weddings are also held there.

Part of the parking lot is set aside for people who want to worship from their cars — folks in glass and metal containers stopping to contemplate another glass and metal container.

The grounds are immaculate. Walking around, I felt I was strolling through Eden while an urban wilderness loomed just beyond the gate.

Outside of cathedral square, in fact, other glass buildings rise and shine, as well — business structures filled with movers and doers.

It's a temptation to deliver a sermon on such things, to say, "Sometimes Satan can appear as an angel of light," or say, The easiest way to be lured away from God is with something counterfeit — like the grand, glass churches of mammon.

But I don't really feel that way.

For one thing, there's a good deal of business going on at the Crystal Cathedral itself — a handsome gift shop, an array of donation boxes; just as — in those shining secular structures — I'm sure many heartfelt prayers have been uttered.

For, in the end, Crystal Cathedrals can never guarantee a rescue, any more than monuments to the modern world are always emblems of spiritual death. Like most things in life, it comes down to the individual.

Even at the heart of a gleaming Crystal House of God, salvation remains a personal matter, an affair of the messy human heart.

E-MAIL: jerjohn@desnews.com