They are gold, pasty gold, lunging upward, and though I cannot literally smell them from my safe leather chair an ocean and full continent away, I know the plumes of smoke rising from the Notre Dame Cathedral are acrid. I inhale slowly, aware of the clean air entering my lungs. The knowledge interferes with my attempt to pretend I am there witnessing the loss. There is a haunting remembrance shivering on my skin, recalling that I watched, from this same space, the engulfing flames of the Twin Towers nearly a generation ago.
When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell in New York I was already in a grieving place, though thinking back on it now, it seems nearly every phase of our lives involves some level of grief. I was in the process of redefining myself as a woman; my children had all flown my nest, my mother was waning in her life, my body was feeling the onset of age.
Today, as I watch the flesh melting away from that iconic edifice in Paris, I am aware of the eleven grandchildren who have come to us since I watched the smoke rising from those iconic New York towers. Today my grandchildren and I share this sorrow.
Last year some of those grand children's voices echoed off the walls of that cathedral on a trip to Paris. We, ourselves, were there just a breath ago, humbled by the massive shadow the structure cast in that sparkling city, stunned by the intricacies of the architecture and the art, let alone the holiness of the spot.
I have found my day unfolding, under this breaking news, differently than I had anticipated when I woke this morning. I cannot tear myself from the news. I watch as the skin melts away, exposing the bones of the structure. The steeple, stiff against the licking flames like Joan of Arc, evolved into a skeleton, eventually falling into the roof below. I cannot turn away. Its as if I feel called to witness, in spite of the horror.
Just yesterday the place was abuzz with worshippers. It was Palm Sunday. In remembrance of the return of Jesus to his holy city, faithful Catholics waved palms under the stable old rafters of Notre Dame. Children would fold those palms into little crosses to be hung on their bedroom walls. Traditionally the leftover palms from that service would be kept by the priest and burned, the ashes saved to be used next year on Ash Wednesday. I imagine beautiful Parisian Catholics next year wearing the ashes of Notre Dame streaked in the configuration of a cross on their foreheads. Mountains of ashes for the taking.
As Isaiah said, Beauty for ashes.
While I watched the flames suck the life out of such an irreplaceable treasure, my computer whistled notice of an incoming message. A text arrived from our daughter, Kate:
"There's a little bird nest on my porch
with little bird eggs!"
She sent a picture:
And then she added:
"It made me think of Gram."
 |
| a photo from my lap; Kate's message in the foreground. Notre Dame burning in the background. |
From the corner of a window on the porch of her little house in upstate New York, Kate sent, unawares, a breath of resuscitating hope. Here was a waft of fresh spring air amidst the life-sucking smoke of the fall of Notre Dame. Here was a reminder that what God has instilled in the breast of every female robin is an instinct to gather twigs and twine and bind them with mud. We humans do it too. We assemble cathedrals, and we watch them fall, in spite of our most noble efforts.
And we weep for the loss.
And then, we weep again, different tears; remembering that the cycle of life goes on. Evidence rests peacefully in the corner of Kate's window.
We may question it when major tragedies befall us, but the truth remains: God does not sleep.
Beautiful, Cori!!!!!!
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