Today falls a triumph of ages.
Notre Dame Cathedral belongs to another world, not only for its spiritual transcendence, but in the history that oozes from its walls like oil; the essence of countless lives and stories. Indeed, the very stones cry out with the groans of thousands of workers who've sweated out its creation and numerous restorations. The towers echo with the chorus of worship, and the Saints whisper a careful chronicle of prayers - praise and lamentation, gratitude and grief - uttered from the hearts of people of all sorts belonging to ages past and present (and perhaps yet to come).
It's an enigma, this building, so hard for us to understand even from its very creation. Its first construction (begun in 1163) wasn't completed for another 182 years. People would train and work, live and die, generations passing quietly, just for the creation of something beautiful for God. Maybe they'd never even see it finished. There was no rushing, no shortcuts, no shortage of patient skill, suffering nothing short of human perfection. The work of building was just as much an act worship as the liturgy that the structure would house.
How are we to understand this? Today, when buildings are built in one year and disappear the next, not for beauty or glory but utility. Personally, I see this attitude most apparent towards poetry, simply because no one (myself included) seems to find much time for it nowadays. And of course, they demand our time; that we sit and ponder, mulling over the words, letting them unfold (in their own time) like a spring flower to the sun. They are frustrating, utterly anti-utilitarian, and pointless ... but beautiful, and, if you're lucky, little treasure chests of truth.
What justification can our modern world provide for a paradox, an impossibility like Notre Dame? None. It was nothing but a sacrifice, to lay down your whole life into the very foundations of a building, and be forgotten. It's ineffable without faith, the sense that sees beyond this world; the knowledge that their sacrifice was building a house not only here, but a heritage in Heaven.
And today it falls and perhaps all its secrets and stories are scattered in the ash.
But perhaps it still stands somehow, somewhere ...
and the chorus still echoes in eternity.
