Why does Notre Dame matter?
Isabelle Hamley writes: Growing upward in France, I never really thought of Notre-Dame de Paris as the all-time French cathedral. Or the all-time example of early gothic compages. Or even a identify of deep spiritual meaning for me. It was – well, that's information technology, it just, was. And so I wasn't actually prepared for the tidal wave of emotion I felt equally I watched information technology burn against the properties of the metropolis.
Within an 60 minutes or so of the news hitting the headlines, I read a grumpy Facebook post lament that this seems to be such large news, compared to the many parts of the earth devastated by suffering that we so frequently ignore. And more than this morning – blogs and posts sharing their righteous outrage that so much money would be used to rebuild, when it could be used for the poor. For good causes. For much more valuable man lives. Allow the ruins stand, and plough the ground into a park. And of course, at one level, this is absolutely right. There is so much need in the world, so much misery, that nosotros should do everything we tin to combat it. The question is, are these things mutually exclusive?
Or, to put information technology another way, exercise those calls to go out the ruins to stand up, to concentrate on 'what really matters' greatly misunderstand the nature of existence human being? There are but a few things that distinguish human beings from other creatures. One, according to Aristotle, is laughter. Another, co-ordinate to scientists, is self-consciousness. Another, I would fence, is art. Art in all its forms—the creation of beauty for its own sake, non for utilitarian purposes, but because information technology calls to something deep within us that nosotros cannot explicate, something that connects the states to a reality beyond what we tin can see or hear or touch or experience. 1 might even suggest, it is a key aspect of the divine image inside us. Equally human being beings, we do non do things only because we accept to, or because they pass a rigorous test of usefulness. Human being beings, even when facing the most desperate circumstances, brand music, depict, write, tell stories. It is woven into the very fabric of who we are. And then watching a well-known, well-loved, irreplaceable building devastated by burn, calls to something within us that we may not be able to explain or rationalise – and yet something that has the potential to bring out beauty and help united states of america recognise and rejoice in our common humanity.
The very commencement message of support the rector of Notre-Dame received, he said to journalists yesterday, was from the Main Rabbi. Somehow, something about beauty, symbol, meaning, and loss had the power to bring people together. Many of those interviewed on the streets, and personalities and celebrities speaking, talked of 'our' cathedral, regardless of their organized religion groundwork. I wonder what those who had the vision to build the cathedral, and those who lavished the best of their abilities and talents on the building, to give glory to God, to draw the optics towards sky along the vaulted ceiling, to teach the organized religion to those who could non read designed Biblical stained glass, I wonder what these men and women would say, when seeing that the fruit of their labour has spoken deeply to many who would not immediately describe themselves as Christian? Isn't this part of what cathedrals are for? Isn't communicating the beauty of the Gospel, awe at its power, an essential aspect of mission? And when nosotros recognise our common humanity, and elevator our eyes nigh utilitarianism, then, hopefully, we recognise that there are many, many other situations we need to nourish to.
But this is just the start. There is something even more important that makes the states human: we are people who remember. We may distort our memories, we may be selective, we may attempt to forget. But nosotros remember. Sometimes in words, sometimes in pictures, sometimes in habits and symbols that accept the power to bring out what nosotros accept buried deep. The retentiveness of a people is not held merely in history books. It is held in the very country they inhabit, in its landscape, in its buildings. The suggestion I saw in a weblog this morning, that history is always there, we practice not need buildings to remind us of it, is but an expression of an old heresy, or of a destructive modern trend. It suggests that we are but spiritual beings, that the material world around united states is something we may use, but that its destruction or absenteeism does non affair because we, supreme beings, accept the power to hold things in our spiritual/cognitive retention. It also seems to advise that we tin make ourselves what we desire to be, regardless of what is, or isn't, around us. Both of these assumptions are deeply flawed. We are who nosotros are through a circuitous interaction of the culture we alive in, the history that has shaped information technology, the landscapes nosotros inhabit, the languages – verbal and non-verbal – that we speak, the symbols that structure our ways of thinking and reasoning.
And out of all of these elements, we weave narratives that tell us who we are, why we are hither, where we have come from, and, perhaps, where we are going. Notre-Dame is a keystone of those narratives of French identity. Keystones are rarely obtrusive, just nonetheless they ensure that the cute, visible parts of a roof all hold together. Notre-Dame holds many strands for us: all French roads are measured from its parvis; information technology inspired countless other cathedrals, some of which accept surpassed it profoundly in beauty and elegance; rulers were crowned at that place; information technology was a focus of anger in the French revolution; 1 of the greatest stories always told by a French novelist, Victor Hugo, was set in its belltower; in living retention, our older citizens think the bells ringing the end of years of war in 1945. These are the visible strands. Other, less visible strands are there too, and some of them were surfacing for the first time in many years final night. France has a deeply religious past, and a deeply ambiguous relationship to this by. It champions secularism, and religion is usually discussed with mild condescension, if not outright suspicion, in public life.
Information technology was therefore deeply moving, concluding night, to hear journalists groping for words they had almost forgotten—words that speak of organized religion and what faith had meant to the nation over the years. Many of them were trying to put into words the sense of connectedness they felt to the cathedral, how moved they were to hear hymns and prayers from Christians surrounding them, and find words that would nurture hope. This morn, journalists were tentatively using the word 'phenomenon' as they contemplated the picture of the inside of the cathedral, the cross illuminated from the side windows, nonetheless intact, and heard of the news that many windows had survived, and the organ maybe too. To hear these words spoken with awe and genuine interrogation is nothing curt of a miracle – and information technology may be short lived. But as I listened, I realised that Notre-Dame had lived up to its destiny: information technology reminded a people of its by, and of the hope of new life we find at the pes of the cantankerous.
France has tried very hard to push God away, and forget the faith of centuries. Just when the people fell silent, the very stones cried out. The question is, at present that we retrieve, what volition we exercise with these memories for the future? There is a small window of opportunity for the nature of public discourse to change. For the derision and suspicion of faith to morph into respect and attentive listening. Yesterday, the French president embraced the rector of the cathedral. Church and country in a long forgotten cover? It was a fleeting image, and notwithstanding a hint that new life, new ways of imagining our life together are always possible.
And for me, this is the real question of the rebuilding. What is it we are rebuilding? What kind of vision will animate the endless years of work ahead? Will we listen to the retentiveness of stones, and award the God whose cross triumphed over devastation, fire and ashes? Notre-Dame held memories we had forgotten; will nosotros take God's souvenir of memory, and reshape some of the distorted, incomplete stories we tell ourselves, then that we can move into a meliorate future? I hope and pray that we exercise; and I believe that we can, because I believe in the God of Good Friday and of Easter Sunday, who ultimately holds all memory, all by and futurity in his hand.
Dr Isabelle Hamley is Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. She was previously in parish ministry and theological educational activity, and her PhD explored the interpretation of texts of violence in the Old Attestation, published past Wipf and Stock as Unspeakable Things Unspoken.
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