Notre Dame Cathedral and our homing beacons flickering into life

Notre Dame Cathedral.

Day zero - the fire. 

Day one - the shock, with its epicentre in Paris and reverberating out across the globe, when it was still unclear whether or not this edifice would be saved. Shock felt by architects, historians, curators of precious things and maybe even a few musicians, given the cathedral's beautiful pipe organ.  Felt by tourists with their memories, tourists-to-be with their bucket lists and lovers of all things French.  And most significantly, but unreported and rightly so, the numbing shock of a small section of the population who call the cathedral their home church. 

Photo Credit: ABC News Thursday
18th April. Reuters: Philippe Wojazer

Day two - the curiosity.  What survived?  What didn't?  What does it look like?  What caused the fire?  What happens next?

Day three - the rebuilding. Millions of euros donated and we're moving on and fixing it all up.

It's such a fast moving world.  And it's such a tragedy that the world didn't sit with the emotions of Day One for just a little bit longer. 

I recently finished reading through a large portion of Jeremiah with a friend – the book of the Bible that documents in sad, brilliant detail the besieging of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and ending in the death of many, the destruction of the city including David’s palace and Solomon’s temple and the exiling of small number of faithful Israelites who listened to God's words through Jeremiah and obeyed.  

Since then I have been reading Lamentations and a selection of Psalms written in the early days of the exile.  These writings capture that Day One shock as they sit with the pain of their loss - the loss of their homes and their city, their key and defining state buildings, the life they knew - and the horror of the final months leading to the exile.  And it's clear that those who mourned most deeply mourned for something far deeper than the loss of buildings and livelihoods.  They mourned their loss of God who had come to dwell in Solomon's temple but was no longer there, and the loss of their capacity to meet with Him in the absence of the structure and the structures that enabled worship. 

And so on Notre Dame Day One the themes of Jeremiah and Lamentations were ringing in my ears.  And I think there was something far deeper than just the shock of losing beautiful things and an iconic edifice. 

When we went on our Grand Tour of Europe a couple of years ago I loved visiting the grand cathedrals and old, old churches.  Many of the grand cathedrals were built on ignoble foundations, financed through the sale of indulgences by the powerful to the terrified and the powerless. 

Even many of the tiny churches have their own unorthodox beginnings. We visited a beautiful Norman church in Newton Tracey, a tiny village in Devon.  My husband grew up there and the St Thomas-a-Beckett Church was his family’s home church.  Legend has it that back in the day the knight of the village was one of the four who murdered Thomas-a-Beckett and apparently said knight's mother ordered him to build this very church as penance.  We enjoyed a Sunday service there and had my mother-in-law’s ashes interred in the graveyard of what was her home church.

What I loved about these grand cathedrals and old, old churches was that they were places set aside for prayer and worship, and no matter how steeped in curious and corrupt goings on, there will have been faithful folk worshipping within their walls in every generation.  For centuries.  As one of my sisters said, walls imbued with the prayers and worship of the faithful. 

So I think the Day One shock seems to have struck something deeper in many.  So strange in a country that is known as being post-Christian and with the rest of the western world fast turning its back on the things of God. But I think for one day the homing beacon that lies within our souls, calling us Home, was flickering into life.  The part of us that recognises we're made in God's image and that wants to be in relationship with Him, even if we don't realise it.  There was something deeper happening than merely the grief of losing something physical.  And so many just didn't know what to do with it, having pushed God so far aside.  It is a great shame that in our fast moving lives this discomfort was quickly overtaken by curiosity and then plans with backers to rebuild in under a week.   

But the shock of the Notre Dame fire and the flickering of the homing beacon IS something.  For the Christian we are reminded that our hope is in God through Jesus, not in buildings and beautiful things - as much as we might love them.  And we have been given an opportunity.  Maybe there's still time to share the hope we have with those who, on Day One, felt a deep sadness at this news but didn't quite know what to do with it...that one brief day when they felt the call to Home.  But we'll have to be quick.  The world is moving on.