
Behind the arch of glory sets the day
The river lies in curves of silver light
…
The towers of Notre Dame cut clear and gray
The evening sky, and pale from left to right
Willa Cather, Paris
Welcome,
I’m thinking about Notre Dame.
There are places in the world that belong to all of us, whether we have been there or not. They are imbued with history, sentiment, desire, and collective memory. They connect the ephemeral to the larger past.
I remember being in Florence Italy, on the Ponte Vecchio, standing where Dante first saw his muse, Beatrice. For a moment, time was suspended -- collapsed and extended simultaneously.
Shared spaces transcend our separateness. They create concentric circles of memory and experience.
Yesterday there were those same concentric circles at Notre Dame. The firefighters inside, the crowds across the Seine singing and watching, those who had visited the cathedral sharing their memories, and a larger circle of those who would not see the cathedral as it was.
All of us connected for a moment.
All of us -- the masons who laid the stone, the woodcutters who cut the timber, the engineers behind the flying buttress, the artisans of the rose windows, the parishioners, the poets, the tourists, the readers of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame – all who built or visited or dreamed of or worshipped at this place.
Shared places can be sacred spaces, holding the best of ourselves. We make places sacred through our intention, our willingness to connect to the experiences that happened there, our desire to be part of something larger than ourselves.
Think of the spaces you enter today. What is their history?
Who has imagined them, built them, tended them, mourned them?
What intention do you bring to them?
I want to hear about your thoughts on Notre Dame and shared space.
In community,
Emily
*And the loss of what we have not experienced is valid. The destruction of the Assyrian city of Nimrod in 2014 was heart wrenching, although my knowledge of the city was only through literature.
** Thinking again about reduplication. If the essence of Notre Dame is its role as cathedral, and it occupies a larger category of place of worship/architectural marvel, then it also has a transcendent category, in which the tourist and worshipper and historian and sanctuary seeker all meet. If you missed the newsletter about reduplication, you can read it here.