Because it is beautiful

The news of the fire at the Provo Tabernacle spread quickly. Within the hour I had heard it from a dozen different friends.

I felt a stab of grief and was immediately embarrassed by it. It was just a building, wasn't it? Stone and wood, glass and plaster, piled up to make a space that no one really needed any more.

The church has moved on — for efficiency, our buildings must accomplish far more than merely allow a moderate number of people to assemble under a roof.

The Provo Tabernacle was still used for meetings, yes, and for special events, and for music, but it's not as if it were irreplaceable. There'll be some juggling of schedules, and then we'll go right on, having all the same events we would have had without the fire.

But then I think back to the building itself, with its turrets and gables, the stone that soared upward; as close as we Mormons come to a cathedral.

It was originally designed with a central spire, which proved too heavy for the structure under it and was removed in 1917; I never saw it, but even without it, the building was graceful in its lines and fascinating in its decoration.

When I was in college, sometimes my friends and I would walk there for no other reason than to look at it. Because it was beautiful.

Part of the beauty came from our own thoughts, of course. This was the work of pioneers or the children of pioneers. Thirty years before it was built, the land was part of the grassy plain beside the lake; or perhaps it was part of the woods surrounding the place where the river flowed into Lake Timpanogos.

Then came the Mormons whose task was to make the desert blossom as the rose.

Blossom as the rose, not as the potato, the sugar beet, or even the cherry tree.

All these things are beautiful in their way, but the rose is cultivated for no other reason than its beauty. It's a thorny and troublesome plant, but we tend it, water it, and bear the pricking of its thorns for beauty's sake.

Much of the honor embodied by the Provo Tabernacle was from the labor of the pioneers. They came to the grassy or wooded shores of the lake, to the land through which the river flowed, and they cut and watered the soil and planted enough to feed a multitude.