Destruction, death; it’s a part of life (whether we like it or not).
The flames looked like a pulsating, pumping heart of fire inside the heart of Our Lady – the heart of Paris.
When Our Lady, the Notre Dame Cathedral, caught fire on Monday (15 April, 2019) evening it shocked the whole world.
The embers of the burning heart floated and flickered through the age-old rose window (now glassless) almost like it didn’t care about any of it – did it know it was devouring the Notre Dame Cathedral?
Destruction neither sets a schedule nor does it discriminate. Even such beauty is not impervious to harm.The Notre Dame cathedral embodies and keeps over 800 years of history. Building started in 1163 and it was completed in 1345. It took over 200 years to build this cathedral.
My own heart ached to see what happened, along with so many others. I wondered why in the world this happened, but asking a question like this didn’t help with finding an answer.
It feels like the Notre Dame Cathedral is such a large part of our lives, for whatever reasons, and we flow through the veins of this cultural body of history and architecture to reach this central (old) heart that enriches us, gives us some reason or meaning, and pumps us back to flow to the rest of the cultural body.
History, as sacred as it is, can’t be contained; it needs to take its leave at some point. We need to find an acceptance within ourselves of when history, eventually, take its leave. It is within us where we need to find the courage to let the burning heart take what it must; it beats at its own rhythm and we can only meet it at a certain point lest it takes us with it too.
Art in all its different forms and structures is embedded within the forms and structures of our psyches. We create and we destroy, but sometimes we create and never seem to expect things to change, we want it to stay the way it is. What we forget is that none of it ever promised to stay, however, what we also need to remember is that if it stays the way it is it can’t ever transform to become something new.
Re-creation, renewal; it’s also a part of life.
