Tag: church

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Winter Sanctuaries

By Christian Begeman

Christmas time has rolled around again. This season has been a little different than most. First, there is little to no snow, and second, we all have felt the anxiety and angst of a turbulent year. Somehow, the last few months have seemed to ratchet those feelings up a notch. That means it’s a perfect time for a holiday celebrating peace, love and goodwill. As for the lack of snow, I recently heard a wise farmer quip,”If there is going to be a drought, I want it to be in winter.”

Some of my fondest memories of Christmas took place in the church my family attended in Isabel. Starting with the first Sunday in Advent, our little congregation turned up the volume when Christmas hymns came out. With an organ and piano leading the way, we would rattle the windows on”Joy to the World” and make a joyful noise attempting to hit every note on the chorus of”Angels We Have Heard on High.”

The best part of Advent was the Christmas Eve service. Small brown bags full of peanuts, old-fashioned hard candy and apples were handed out on arrival. We’d sing favorite hymns, light candles and then every family exchanged gifts and cards. It seemed every face wore a broad smile. Many of those faces now gone. There was Art the usher, who gave each of us kids a piece of candy after Sunday school. Molly, a widow with the kindest heart you’d ever meet. And Chris, who created the most interesting gifts made of polished agate and other rocks. Incidentally, Chris was also hard of hearing and always revved his car engine to near jet-level decibels when leaving (which we boys loved). I could go on with memories of revered Sunday school teachers, old friends and manger scenes.

I suppose these memories are part of the reason I have enjoyed seeking out and photographing country churches. The buildings are not only pleasing to the eye, but they stand for so much more. Community. Faith. Family. Love. Death. Forgiveness. Hope. These are the things I remember when I think about my time growing up in church.

I started creating an annual”Prairie Sanctuaries” calendar in 2014. Each month features a different country church with a photo taken in that same month. For this month’s column, I thought it would be visually interesting, as well as poignant, to pull together a collection of winter scenes featuring these prairie churches. I’ve included a couple of brand-new photos taken on December 13, a very frosty day in northeast South Dakota. It was some of the only wintry white we’ve experienced this season. Seeing the church steeples and frost immediately put me in the Christmas spirit. As I wandered through the nearby cemeteries and along the wrought iron fences, the memories of all those smiling faces and joyous times at my little church rose up and lingered for a sweet moment like the fading tendrils of smoke from the candles in the window.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midco he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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A Lasting Legacy

Our July/August issue includes a story by John Andrews on Joseph Ward. Ward came to Yankton in the late 1860s to spread congregationalism, but his legacy in South Dakota extends far beyond the church. Andrews collected several photos from the Yankton College archives for the feature. Here are some that we couldn’t fit into the magazine.

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Rural Steeples

In 2014, Sioux Falls photographer Christian Begeman started Prairie Sanctuaries, a Facebook page dedicated to country churches. He’s since photographed and featured over 200 churches, with 55 of our 66 counties represented. Our March/April issue includes a photo essay of some of our favorites from his page. We shared them all in black and white, but we’re sharing the color versions here — along with a few more we didn’t have room for.

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When Magic Awaits

By Christian Begeman

The day didn’t start well. At midnight, the moment the day turned from Thursday to Friday, March 11, the alarm in my hotel room at Oacoma went off. I’m not sure if it was accidently reset or the previous occupant thought it would be a good joke on the next guy, but needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled about it. I was planning on getting up early. Just not that early.

About 3:30 a.m., I was up again and out the door. My plan was to photograph the Milky Way with a little country church I knew about near Lower Brule. Bleary eyed and short of sleep, I arrived at the church to find that a new structure had been built right where I had planned to point the camera. Plus, there was a home about a quarter mile away with a barking dog that I had awakened. Hoping to not wake the residents, I headed farther down the road to another little chapel I knew of on the way to Fort Pierre. So far, I was 0 for 2 on the day.

Thankfully things changed when I got to Divine Infant Mission Church just off Highway 1806. It was still dark enough to photograph the Milky Way and high wispy clouds began to move in to diffuse the brighter starlight just enough to make them appear larger than actual size on the long exposures. At the first hint of light, I heard the coyotes sing their morning song to each other. The clouds grew thicker so I decided to head into the Fort Pierre National Grasslands to find something to shoot against the predawn sky.

What happened next was one of those magical South Dakota moments. As the dawn light began to paint the incoming clouds on the eastern horizon, I could hear pheasants cackle, prairie chickens boom, ducks quack and an owl call. The morning was alive all around me. At one point I looked behind me and saw a great horned owl calmly at looking me from just 30 yards away. Turns out, the barn I was using as foreground in my photos was also his home.

Farther down the road was an old, one-room schoolhouse. I stopped there to photograph the brighter colors of sunrise. It was one of those mornings when the whole sky seemed alive with a different shade of color.

The rest of the morning I hunted for country churches in western South Dakota for my Prairie Sanctuaries project. The sky was a beautiful, crisp blue with plenty of high, white clouds — perfect for black and white photography. I found a very interesting set of abandoned one-room school houses along the Wicksville road in southern Meade County that caught my eye. I can’t remember ever seeing two sitting that close together before.

Later in the day, I made my way to the Reva Gap campgrounds at Slim Buttes. I had heard from a friend that the pasqueflowers were out early this year due to the warm weather. I was able to find a handful above ground, but none had bloomed yet. Even so, the hearty little flowers are fun to find and photograph.

As the day waned, I drove to Zeona in southwestern Perkins County to visit a church I had not photographed yet. I was hoping for a signature South Dakota sunset. Things weren’t looking promising; the western sky had clouded up significantly. But then there was a break on the horizon and the sunlight started to shine through. Just as I pulled up to the church the sky turned pink, yellow and orange. It was a thrilling way to end the day. And to think, I always say that March is the hardest month of the year to take pretty pictures in South Dakota. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Risen from Ashes

The first settlement in the Dimock area was in 1879, when a large group of German immigrants came from Wisconsin to South Dakota. They built a wooden church to accommodate their Catholic community, but in 1908 the church was destroyed by fire. The current Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church was built of lasting brick and stone in its place. The magnificent chapel, consecrated in October of 1909, is adorned with stained glass and canvas murals sent from Germany. Photos by Dan Ray.

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Rock Solid Faith

By Christian Begeman

During the last two years I have sought out as many South Dakota country churches as I can find. Over the course of my wanderings, three unique and historic church buildings made entirely of stone have captured my imagination. I wanted to show them partly because we just celebrated Holy Week, which for many South Dakotans means an extra emphasis in the beliefs that root our faith. The other reason is to remember the hard work and strong community ties that went into constructing and maintaining these buildings.

Photographing these churches presents a challenge. I always want to capture them in the most beautiful light or weather possible, but more importantly I want to both respect and convey the significance of these places. Often I am literally treading on holy ground. I was surprised to find each church in this column unlocked and open to the public, with only small signs reminding to close the door when leaving or simply asking to sign the guestbook. That is South Dakota at its best.

The oldest stone church I visited was Historic Lakeport Church and St. John the Baptist Cemetery in Yankton County. This building was started in 1882 and finished in 1884, constructed from chalkstone quarried from the Missouri River cliffs south of the church site. Regular services are no longer held, but I did learn that Mass is still held once a year followed by a potluck. Lakeport is also affectionately known as”the smiling church,” nicknamed because its front windows and door form the image of wide eyes and a grin.

Chapel of the Holy Spirit, found roughly 3 miles south of the Grand River in rural Corson County, is a church I knew as a kid growing up in Isabel. I had a friend that would attend from time to time and he just referred to it as the”old stone church.” It wasn’t until I was in college that I actually got out to see it. The chapel was built in 1922 with stone quarried from a nearby bluff of Firesteel Creek under the direction of the Episcopalian Mission to the Standing Rock Reservation. To get there you must travel quite a few miles on gravel and then prairie dirt roads. Once at the site, it truly does feel as if you’ve taken a step back in time.

Our Savior’s Lutheran, found 6 miles south of Menno on the James River, was built with rocks found in nearby fields. Lloyd Sorlien was 8 years old when the building was finished in 1948. He clearly remembers helping gather rock in neighboring fields as well as attending services in the basement until the building was finished. Lloyd also told me how his dad had a particular skill for knowing where to hit a rock with his 10-pound mallet so it would split just the right way. He also pointed out a cross in the front of the church made from rocks brought over from Norway.

As much as I hope these grand old buildings stay standing as reminders of what once was, I’m also reminded that a church isn’t a church without the people that belong to it. That sense of community has always been strong in South Dakota in one form or another, whether religious, family or civic based. I’m hopeful that we South Dakotans continue in this grand old tradition for many years to come.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing South Dakota’s prettiest spots. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Capturing the Old and Weathered

By Christian Begeman

A couple weekends ago, I fell victim to another case of cabin fever … What am I talking about? It happens every weekend nowadays. There is always mail to be read and bills to pay, but it doesn’t matter. There is cleaning to do and usually dirty laundry waiting, but that certainly won’t keep me inside when the fever hits. In fact, there are no amounts of classic movies or great new television shows recorded on the DVR that will stop me. When the sun begins to make its decent in the lower western sky on a Saturday or Sunday evening I’m gone. The same holds true when certain weather events make conditions ripe for a great photo. Phenomena like fog, frost and thunderstorms usually get my engine racing as well.

Weather conditions only make half the photo though. I believe a good weather photographic has to have a scene or place to anchor our ever-changing South Dakota climate patterns. Over the last few years I’ve found myself drawn to symbolic structures of our past like country churches, old weathered barns, homes and schoolhouses to do this. Typically I like to find these buildings out in the open and away from tree belts in order to get an unbroken view of the horizon. However, interesting structures in and around trees are not discarded on my map. I make a mental note of these for the foggy winter days that produce hoarfrost. Those few still, frosty mornings where Jack Frost made magic provide photographic gold if you happen upon the right scene. It’s good to have these places mapped out ahead of time as I’ve found the best time to shoot frost rarely lingers. When the sun gets high enough in the sky to lift the fog, it usually doesn’t take long for the wind to pick up and start undressing the flocked landscape.

Back in the middle part of the ’90s, when I took my first photography class in college. I learned to process black and white film in the dark room and how to dodge and burn prints. The following summer I always had my dad’s Argus film camera nearby while out on the farm. Just a quarter mile from our farmhouse stood the one room schoolhouse that my mother attended as a child. One hot July day we had a good old-fashioned thunder boomer roll in from the west. As soon as it passed over, I grabbed the Argus and jumped into our old Ford work truck and headed for the schoolhouse. I shot a whole roll that evening. Out of it came maybe three usable shots. One of them I’ve included here. The schoolhouse was since burned down. I’m glad I had the shutterbug fever back then otherwise I wouldn’t have anything but a memory of that old building.

Maybe that is why I’m still drawn to such structures when looking for great South Dakota photos and maybe that is why images of old barns and buildings still resonate with people today. There is a sense of history and a feeling of”remembering our roots” that these images can evoke. It is yet another reason that I like photography. An image made is an image saved and stored forever. That old schoolhouse was a play land for me when I was young and a place of work as I got older. It was a place of learning for my mom and now it is gone and lives only in our memories … and in a couple photos I took under a dark and stormy sky one summer long ago.

Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.

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Our Historic Church

By John Andrews

I never attended a wedding, funeral or a single Sunday service in Garfield Lutheran Church, but I always sort of considered it to be our church. I’ve never heard many stories of its early years, but I always assumed the Andrews family, who came from Norway and homesteaded southwest of Lake Norden in 1882, played a part in forming the congregation in 1884 and in constructing the church in 1901.

Sadly I never knew much about the church until recently reading that it has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Immigrant families like my great-grandparents conducted Norwegian language services in a schoolhouse in Garfield Township until 1889. By then, the congregation boasted nearly 60 families who decided it was time to build a proper church.

They found a spot almost halfway between Bryant and Lake Norden. After years of planning and fundraising, volunteer members of the congregation started work in 1900. Men dug huge stones from nearby fields and brought them to the site aboard wagons to be used in the foundation. One congregant created a metal weathervane inscribed with 1901, the year of the church’s completion, and placed it on the steeple.

The interior remained incomplete until 1913, when the pews, pulpit, altar and altar rail were added. Step inside and you’ll still see these original furnishings.

When the church closed in 1978, its leaders faced the daunting task of deciding what to do with its most important possessions. One day, one of the church ladies came to see my aunt, and she had Garfield’s intricately sewn altar cloth with her.”We figured you would want this,” she told my aunt. Puzzled, she asked why.

“Because your mother made it,” the lady replied.

That was news to everyone. Grandma Andrews always had some sort of fancywork going — knitting, crocheting or Norwegian hardanger — and never really said much about any of her creations unless prodded. As it happens, my dad and his 11 siblings attended that church all their lives, probably gazed upon the altar cloth hundreds of Sundays, not knowing it was their mother’s work.

The altar cloth has become a treasured family possession that we use on special occasions. I last saw it atop Grandma’s sea-foam green casket at her funeral in 2003. It serves as a connection to our matriarch and the little prairie church that was so important to our family and dozens of others in Hamlin County.

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Sacred Days

By Vi Waln

Many people in the world, including many Lakota and other tribal people, are now observing the Lent season. Lent began with Ash Wednesday, a day many Catholics received a mark of ashes on their foreheads.

This year, Ash Wednesday brought memories of my mother and grandparents who were all good Catholic people. I still vividly remember eating fish sticks or salmon patties every Friday for Lent when I was a child. My mother was very knowledgeable about the rituals of the Catholic Church. I grew up learning all of those rituals from her.

Even though I am pretty rusty on my Catholicism some of the teachings are hard to forget. Being raised in the Catholic Church taught me how to pray. I still remember and can recite the prayers of the Catholic Church. But sometimes I look around and see many people who do not know how to pray.

The Lent season commemorates the 40 days Jesus Christ spent wandering in the desert. It is said he was tempted by demons during those 6 weeks. In order to show repentance to God, modern day Catholics also abstain from certain foods or give up something they enjoy doing during Lent.

I have always admired the figure known as Jesus Christ. He was a role model in many ways with his message of peace and love. For sure, fasting in a desert for 40 days is no small feat. In my opinion, staying alive in a barren desert with limited water sources for that long had to have been one powerful Hanbleceya (vision quest). This year, Lent lasts for about 46 days and concludes with Easter Sunday on April 8.

Lent is also observed by the Native American Church (NAC). Many NAC members observe all the restrictions of Lent, such as fasting on Fridays and attending prayer services on a weekly basis. Lent is a sacred time of the year for many of us. It is a time to practice self-discipline, which is lacking in many of our people today.

Lent can also be a time to reconnect with our spirituality. Prayers can be said anywhere and on any day of the week. Many of us pray every single day of the year. You do not have to wait until Sunday or until you are sitting in your church or tipi to pray.

Prayer can be as simple as reciting the Lord’s Prayer, singing a prayer song or saying Mitakuye Oyasin. It doesn’t take much to learn how to pray. Even burning sage or cedar with a good thought can make a difference. Life is sacred. Sing your prayer song today and every day. Say your prayers. You will feel a whole lot better.

Vi Waln is Sicangu Lakota and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Her columns were awarded first place in the South Dakota Newspaper Association 2010 contest. She can be reached through email at sicanguscribe@yahoo.com