wfn.org | UMNS# 04426-Museum design captures spirituality of Native

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Museum design captures spirituality of Native Americans 

Sep. 20, 2004	 News media contact:   Tim  Tanton * (615) 7425470* 
Nashville {04426}

NOTE: This feature is a sidebar to UMNS story #425.

By Mark Schoeff Jr.

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - The National Museum of the American Indian cuts a
dramatic figure on the National Mall. 

Nestled amid gray and pink marble Smithsonian buildings and the U.S. Capitol,
the curvilinear, earth-tone, limestone structure rises out of the ground as
if it were a rock that had existed on that location long before the pilgrims
landed on the shores of present-day Massachusetts. 

"The building is meant to look as being of the earth ... carved and shaped by
wind and water," said museum Director Richard West Jr. "We look to nature as
our inspiration for how we design building structures. You find very few
straight lines and right angles in nature."

The building's design also provides a touchstone for the spirituality of
Native Americans. 

"Our spirituality is something, a quality, that pervades all of our life,"
said West, a United Methodist Native American. "It is an attitude toward life
and a sense of the potential and expanse of life here on earth, not only in
the form of us two-leggeds but also in four-leggeds and in living forms from
plants to rocks. It's that dimension of respect for life that is at the core
of native spirituality."

West believes that philosophy melds seamlessly with Methodism. "I see no
conflict between the two," he said. "They are both about reaching beyond
ourselves to seek as good a definition as we can get of higher being, if you
will - approaching the divine and seeking to find balance in our lives and
making our lives whole. Native spiritual practice and good Christian practice
try to do the same thing."

# # #

*Schoeff is a correspondent for the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference's
UMConnection newspaper. This story first appeared in that paper.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service