It’s a heaviness in your heart sort of day.
In reading through all the news about Notre Dame burning, I came across a line from a firefighter—“these cathedrals and houses of worship are built to burn.”
The timbers inside the cathedral were 850 years old, some of them. The stained glass 764 years old. There is no fire code, no earthquake-proofing, no Class A fiberglass shingles. Just the hundreds of years it took the people of France to build the cathedral. Built in a way that makes it mortal, of materials that are mortal. It wasn’t built in a way to be able to withstand a fire. It was built with things that burn.
A few years back, my brother introduced my family to Notre-Dame de Paris, a musical by Riccardo Cocciante and Luc Plamondon, about the hunchback story. The opening song is called "Le Temps des Cathedrals," The Age of Cathedrals. The narrator sings,
In reading through all the news about Notre Dame burning, I came across a line from a firefighter—“these cathedrals and houses of worship are built to burn.”
The timbers inside the cathedral were 850 years old, some of them. The stained glass 764 years old. There is no fire code, no earthquake-proofing, no Class A fiberglass shingles. Just the hundreds of years it took the people of France to build the cathedral. Built in a way that makes it mortal, of materials that are mortal. It wasn’t built in a way to be able to withstand a fire. It was built with things that burn.
A few years back, my brother introduced my family to Notre-Dame de Paris, a musical by Riccardo Cocciante and Luc Plamondon, about the hunchback story. The opening song is called "Le Temps des Cathedrals," The Age of Cathedrals. The narrator sings,
Pierre après pierre, jour après jour
De siècle en siècle avec amour
Il a vu s'elever les tours
Qu'il avait bâties de ses mains
Les poètes et les troubadours
Ont chanté des chansons d'amour
Qui promettaient au genre humain
De meilleurs lendemains
De meilleurs lendemains
Roughly translated, it says something like:
Stone after stone, day after day,
with love one century after another,
they saw the towers rise--
towers they had built with their own hands.
The poets and the troubadours sang songs of love
that promised to mankind better tomorrows.
Something about listening to this song today, with the scope of the cathedral's centuries all folded into one melody, was incredibly moving. Visionaries, for centuries, poured their full-hearted dreams and craft into building Notre Dame de Paris. L'homme a voulu monter vers les etoiles. Man would that he could climb to the stars. And the masons, the architects, the poets, the musicians, all sang one song: that visions could be made physical, could be given body, could be brought into tangible, corporeal existence.
The cathedral was a labor of love.
The cathedral was a love song.
When something like this cathedral--something you thought permanent--passes nearly into nonexistence as it did in today's fire, you think things:
You mean I'll never be able to take my daughters to sit in front of Notre Dame?
You mean when I come into Paris after a long time away and I wander over Pont Saint Michel, Nutella crepe in hand, to watch the evening turn to night and all the lights of Paris go on, I'll come to the cathedral to find ... what?
What of the saints and apostles carved in the tympanum?
What of the rose window?
Kind of at the heart of Notre-Dame de Paris is this pretty little song called "Vivre." The chorus says: Live for those we love. Love more than love itself. Give without waiting for anything in return. Love the way the night loves the day. Love until we die of love.
Watching the flames today made me realize, more than all else, that our time passes quickly, and we need to say the things we have to say now, while the moment is ours. All is temporary, all shifts from existing, out. So you have to go and see things before they're gone, because things go away. You have to love the people you need to love, because they will too. We are all built to burn. Timber frameworks and breakable, meltable, stained glass rose windows. So we love each other and love what's around us all we can.
