It's just a building, right? A collection of wood and glass and stone. A tourist attraction. Right?
I've never been. In fact, my first visit to Paris is this summer, and we've been so excited about going to Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis and Sacre-Coeur. So last night, as I sat with tears in my eyes watching flames pour from one of the rose windows, I wondered why my reaction was so strong. It feels silly, to be so torn up over the loss of a building I've never been inside, in a country that isn't my own, dedicated to a religion I don't particularly follow.
I suppose that even though it's "just a building", it represents so much more. I imagined the hands of the stonemasons, 800 years ago, blistered and white with stone dust, putting the stones together like giant pieces of Lego. I imagined how such a magnificent and overwhelming statement of faith must have appeared to Parisian children in the thirteenth century, as they looked up at this Gothic masterpiece. I imagined the knees of all those who have, over the centuries, kneeled on that floor and prayed. I imagined the men who created the stained glass windows, painstakingly working on something for a greater purpose. I imagined the trees that held up the roof and how different the world was when they were cut down, not with power-tools but hand-held instruments.
Those people have gone. Dead hundreds of years ago, all that remains of them is places like this. The gap between us closes when we walk in their footsteps and see the things they would have seen (more or less). Their feet wore down the floors in that church just as ours do now; their hands brushed the stone and their eyes looked upwards to the vaulted ceiling. So you see, it isn't just a building. It's a monument. It's a marker of the stonemasons, the architects, the glassmakers, the carpenters, the artists. It says that, at some point in its 800 year history, X, Y, and Z were at Notre-Dame. To see that go up in flames, how could anybody fail to be moved?
And what struck me this morning, after the fire was out and we could see what damage had been done, was that the structure of Notre-Dame saved itself. The wooden roof was built over stone vaulting; the vaulting protected most of the interior so that the damage is actually pretty minimal considering the size and intensity of the fire. The skill of medieval architects and stone-masons helped save it last night, and so maybe it's about time we stopped using the term 'medieval' to criticise and deride. It's a tragedy, and one that has likely cost all of us an amount of priceless objects and artifacts that, French or not, form a part of human history. But at the same time, it could have been so much worse; at least one rose window survived - something that literally kept me awake last night. The tunic of Louis IX was removed - again, something that I was so seriously concerned about - and the bell towers and outside structure will be fine. I'm not entirely sure what the point is to this blog post - I guess I'm just trying to get some of the emotion off my chest, because I'm still not 100% sure I understand it. Part of my brain keeps whispering that, in a world where people are starving and wars are raging, one building isn't significant in the grand scheme of things. But it is. It is, for so many reasons that I don't even think I can comprehend. I just know in my heart and in my soul that these things matter, no matter how many people make comments about it being just one building that isn't worth the effort to save because it's of the past. Places like Notre-Dame are a statement of humanity and faith and life. And surely that matters. Regardless of what else is happening in the world, surely these things do still matter.
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and then Add to home screen.