You know you're in the Holy Lands when you see the grottoes in everyone's yards...

from Green Bay Press Gazette...


Although this article is about the Wisconsin Holy Lands, it reminded me of our own Holy Lands here in Kentucky located in Marion, Nelson and Washington counties, especially the part about the Virgin Mary grottoes in everyone's front yard. 

You will occasionally hear folks in some passably scenic patch of some state other than Wisconsin refer to their little stretch of sod as "God's Country." The claim is made everywhere from northern Georgia to rural Montana to, inexplicably, Alabama.

Pretty clearly, none of those folks have ever traveled the back roads atop the Niagara escarpment east of Lake Winnebago that link Jericho to St. Peter to Marytown, and St. Nazianz to St. Anna to Mt. Calvary.

This is Wisconsin's Holyland, and there is a little bit of debate about whether it includes Eden or not (most seem to say not for Eden is where sin was born). But St. Cloud as well as Johnsburg — where the immigrants from Rhenish Prussia built St. Johannes Gemeinde way back in 1843 — are certainly a part.

Elmer Thome, proprietor of what some call the "Holyland Museum" (also known to the secularists as the Malone Area Heritage Museum) just down the road from Johnsburg, suggests one sure way of knowing you've passed into Wisconsin's Holyland. Just look for the Virgin Mary grottoes in everyone's front yard. Or, perhaps, listen for the whispers of the rosary.

Read on...