Food Feature: Ascendant in Maui

Serenely grazing goats, a tumbledown general store and dusty prickly pear cactuses that look like Mickey Mouse ears are no surprise in upcountry Maui. They go about their business at the junction of Highway 37 and Lower Kula Road near the steep ascent to Mount Haleakala. The flora and fauna are a neat fit in the arid landscape, where the “Valley Isle” looks distinctly like the Old West. Up here, the Hawaiian beach-movie idyll of surfside palm fronds and a whiff of sunscreen vanishes, replaced by the sharp scent of pine and the feel of hot, crisp wind. Passersby on the road wind their way up or down switchbacks, returning from being wowed by the sunrise on Haleakala’s 10,000-foot summit — the House of the Sun.

What doesn’t seem quite so Hawaiian on this lonesome roadside is a gleaming peaked tin roof and church spire, ducked below the crook of the road with a makai — ocean facing — view. I’d driven up from the beachside towns, a traditional purple orchid lei drying on my rear view mirror, to find the Holy Ghost Church, and to help prepare for a friend’s Hawaiian wedding. I found the church by peering over the side of the road. It appeared closer than the silvery green Kihei coastline in the distance — a secret jewel box in a quaint neighborhood far above the beaches, dive shops and shoreline resorts of guidebook Hawaii. On the outside, it’s a simple, Gothic-style white country church, until you walk around it, and realize it’s octagonal; the only eight-sided building in the state.

Inside, it’s a single room to make you goggle-eyed with sumptuous painting and statuary seemingly whisked away from a tiny European museum. The walls and organ loft are an ice-creamy tropical white and pink. But it’s the towering altar — painted in vibrant colors and inlaid with 23-karat gold and aluminum, which was more precious than silver at the time it was built — that dominates the snug sanctuary.

Each of the 14 stations of the cross lining the walls is a vivid tableau. “They pop out at you!” gasped the mother of the bride, backing away from a meticulously carved figure. Each portrayal is captioned in Portuguese rather than the traditional Latin, surely at the direction of the church’s original benefactors, prosperous Portuguese farmers and landowners, the same people who brought the ubiquitous ukulele to the islands.

The Holy Ghost Church was built at the turn of the last century by the folks who worked upcountry Maui’s fields producing cotton, onions, potatoes and fruit. Their farms were so prolific that during the California Gold Rush of 1849, mainland miners balanced their diets with potatoes, pears and plums imported from the island. Parishioners raised revenue to build the church by holding cattle auctions Sunday after mass. The altar was crafted in Austria at the studio of Ferdinand Stuflesser, and the precious artwork was brought arduously across Cape Horn by ship, and hauled carefully, in pieces to reassemble, by oxcart up the rural Haleakala road from the port of Kahului.

“I found a board from the original packing crates [propping up the altar] ... and on it was written ‘to the Sandwich Isles,’” marveled Bernard E. Gruenke, president of Conrad Schmitt Studios, the 112-year-old New Berlin, Wis., preservation firm contracted in 1991 to restore the church’s artwork. Calling the church “museum quality art,” he was “shocked to see this piece in Kula ... halfway up Mount Haleakala.” During the year-long restoration, when the contractor and architect had to replace “everything below the cupola” due to damage from time and weather, Gruenke found evidence that the church exterior had been painted black during World War II so it wouldn’t stand out during blackouts.

Hardly a museum piece or pampered relic, the church is alive with weddings and christenings. Mass is held Saturday and Sunday, and the church has a small cemetery. Holy Ghost Church serves Kula’s Roman Catholic community, and a donation box — along with a stack of community bulletins waits by the door. Some parishioners drive more than 45 minutes around the island from Lahaina to worship here. A notebook with information on the history of the building and its restoration is available at the back of the room for visitors, providing information about the surprising little roadside church. The building is open to the public, and was awarded National Historic Landmark status in 1983, acknowledging its value to American cultural history. Holy Ghost Church is a moving example of faith and art in remote places. Take a break from the beach to stop in and say “aloha and mahalo”-- hello and thank you.??