The spire fell but firefighters reported that the façade and two towers were saved from destruction.
President Emmanuel Macron has announced, “This Cathedral will be rebuilt.”. I am now adding (Tuesday) he set a date for completion of the effort at five years. Leonard Sweet writes "The notion of (re)building a cathedral in "five years" is not to understand a cathedral, which was not designed to "click" back into existence. A cathedral was a long-term project that no artisan who worked on (living in small huts at the base of the scaffolding) expected to see completed in their lifetime. They sacrificed and served to bestow hope and dreams, truth and transcendence for future generations".
The ancient Greeks had two words for time, and kairos was the second. The first was chronos, which we still use in words like chronological and anachronism. It refers to clock time - human time – time that can be measured – seconds, minutes, hours, years.
Where chronos is quantitative, kairos is qualitative. It measures moments, not seconds. Further, it refers to the right moment, the opportune moment. The perfect moment. The world takes a breath, and in the pause before it exhales, fates can be changed. Sweet's comment makes me understand that (re)building a cathedral should at least make a nod to honroing kairos time.
In Waiting for God, Simone Weil wagers that “every human being has probably had some lucid moments in his life when he has definitely acknowledged to himself that there is no final good here below.” We are usually locked in our chronos time perspective, however the fire and ash from today may have triggered Weil's lucid moment for some.
Nôtre-Dame de Paris. Our Lady in Paris was not built as a simply a structure for the use of priests and teachers but was also built to be a teacher. Partly what was communicated to those who read the Bible in Latin was depicted in the building of the Nôtre Dame. While not the first to employ the staple designs of Gothic architecture it is a premier example of that style's innovations. Armed with new expressive potential, Gothic architecture conveys powerful messages about biblical figures like Christ, the saints and prophets, as well as local kings, lords and religious figures.
Yet the Nôtre-Dame is also rooted in the corporeal world, with its ornamentation bringing new levels of naturalism to the Gothic tradition. This is reflected in the gargoyles which were meant to ward off evil but mostly served a very practical purpose. As rain water runs down the roofs of Notre-Dame de Paris, it needs to drain off without dripping down the walls and potentially damaging them. By evacuating rain water, the gargoyles protect the cathedral and protect the stone from damage caused by excessive runoff.
To a mostly illiterate culture cathedrals helped teach the concepts, wisdom, and stories of the scriptures through imagery, sculpture, as well as the architecture. Western culture is different now and, perhaps, needs that sculpture, imagery and architecture to allow meaning to come to us through something other than words.
I remember in a college art history course my instructor tried to get the class to imagine the miracle the cathedrals were when they were initially constructed.
The flying buttress design allowed for windows which created open space and light to the cathedrals through stability and structure. The height of the cathedrals and ample amount of windows creates this open space for viewers to see through, making the space appear more continuous and giving the illusion of there being no clear boundaries.When the stained glass was added in to all of this it became an art equivalent to today's theaters; presenting Biblical stories in color with all their raw intensity and immediacy to capture the viewer's imagination.
Paris is already dreaming of how to re-imagine this living monument. Nôtre-Dame de Paris' past, present and future are in many prayers today.
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