“April is the cruelest month,” begins T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland, regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century. That line came to me a couple of times during the past week because of the deaths of two friends on April 11. Then on Monday, I watched live images of what Washington Post columnist, Alexandra Petri called, “The burning of a great stone book.”
Yesterday morning I went through an old box of photos hoping to find ones of Notre Dame Cathedral that I had taken when I toured France during the summer of 1977. I found two of the outside (shown above) and none of the inside, even though I attended a morning mass there and afterwards climbed the bell tower. Back then, I paid little attention to art and beauty.
The journal I kept that summer contains only five lines about the Cathedral — notes taken from a tape I listened to while there: ” . . . all road distances calculated from the cathedral; art was the literature of the laity; competition to build-rebuild churches may have hurt the urban population . . . the weight is not borne by the walls and windows can therefore be larger . . . .”
All facts, no feelings.
On Monday, facts didn’t matter. Yes, I had climbed all 387 steps in that one bell tower. Yes, I had touched the largest bell, in the south tower which weighs 13 tons. Back then, I felt nothing. But on Monday — Passion Monday — I cried along with millions of viewers in common grief. This great stone book, where passersby and worshippers could read their hopes, was collapsing. The durable was becoming fragile. A source of optimism was melting away. Permanence was vanishing.
The saving grace of Monday’s tragedy is that the stone structure still stands, that most of the treasures seem to have been saved in time, that none of the 400 firemen who fought the blaze for nine hours lost their lives and that much of the interior of the cathedral seems to have survived, including the three astonishing rose windows.
And here’s even more profound saving grace. Charles Gosse, a business school student who says, “I’m not religious myself; I’m an atheist,” launched an online funding campaign to rebuild the Cathedral and quickly raised $27,000. “This is beyond religion,” he said.
Yes, it is. This Cathedral has survived plague, revolution, two world wars and occupation. Embers may smolder, but the human spirit — thanks to art and beauty (religion or no religion) — will never die.
Tomorrow, look for “The Cruelest Month — Part Two” about the death of my poet friend; and on Good Friday, “the Cruelest Month — Part Three,” about the death of my canine friend.
Apparently, there’s one other thing that will never die and that is my chronic email subscription notification crapola. My notification was in my junk/spam box AGAIN, even though I marked it as “not spam/junk” the last three times I’ve published a post.
If I had to choose between beauty and religion, I’d choose beauty, hands down. And yes, I know that religion has a lot of beauty. However, I believe that the worldwide grief about Notre Dame Cathedral has more to do with beauty than religion. Then again, I’ve been pretty pissed at religion for several years, thanks to conservative evangelicals. Art and beauty fuel my soul — not religion.
Interesting online controversy: wouldn’t the $1 billion raised to restore the Cathedral be put to better use to feed the poor and homeless? Only $1 million (admittedly not a small amount) has been raised to restore six black churches destroyed by an arsonist here in the United States. Is this fair?
Apparently a chaplain rushed into the burning Notre Dame Cathedral to save priceless relics. It goes back to this hypothetical moral dilemma: imagine you are in a position to save only ONE of two things in the burning Cathedral — the last known copy of the Bible or a homeless stranger. What ONE thing would you save?
Sharon, a profound piece. With you, so grateful the magnificence of the cathedral is still intact and that rebuilding can be done. So much beauty, history, sorrow, joy, faith, all written into the book of those mighty walls. Such permanence, it seemed, held firm by those flying buttresses. And yet…and yet, so much of it fell to flames. It has been beautiful and heart-warming to see how such a place is treasured by so many. It has also been sobering to be reminded of how transient even the most solid, the most beautiful, the most revered “things” in life ultimately are. But we go on, bolstered by the beauty that persistently calls us to kneel before the holiness of all that is…and as we approach Easter, of all that is yet to be—impermanence caught up in God’s somehow permanence.
As to the money being spent on the needy of the world instead of refurbishing the cathedral, there’s always the story of that costly nard ointment. Maybe that’s one of those stories more beautiful than an answer?
Gosh, Carol, this is one beautiful comment. Thank you for posting here and spreading the beauty.
I hadn’t thought about “impermanence caught up in God’s somehow permanence” — that phrase kind of shut me up. That being said, while watching the Cathedral burn, I looked around my home and thought about all the art I would lose in a fire. What would I take if I could only grab a couple of things? The answer was easy: my two catties, Jem and Scout. There’s a message there about the living.
WOW! Thank you for the post and for your and Carol’s thoughtful and insightful comments. Now you have me wondering, what if we left it destroyed by fire? An edifice to impermanence and to concession to the fact that human need is so great that money is best used to relieve living human suffering. The call to repair and restore is so great, I doubt that there is anything to stop it.
I remember visiting the bombed out Coventry Cathedral in England, which was bombed during WWII. They left the bombed out shell and built a new Cathedral next two it. It stands as a powerful testimonial to the devastation of war. Certainly they could never build a new Notre Dame Cathedral next to the old, but maybe only restore part of it and allow the rest of it to stand for “impermanence caught up in God’s somehow permanence.”
On a lighter note, I have listened for the words “flying buttress” since first hearing of the disaster. Carol is the first I’ve heard use them. I learned about that architectural element from this cathedral and was struck by seeing them in person. Thanks, Carol, for heralding the flying buttresses which survived even this disaster.
Sorry to be late in replying to your beautiful comment, Beth. Your comment and Carol’s are worthy of their own posts.
You make a very thoughtful point about Coventry Cathedral and its message of impermanence, and your idea about renovating only part of the Notre Dame ought to be considered. I am concerned that the Summer Olympics is what’s driving the renovation schedule. Took more than 200 years to finish the Cathedral the first time around. We’re all so impatient and fearful. We can’t bear to see gashes and scars that remind us of our own fragility and mortality.