either/or
both/and
The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris took 182 years to complete in the hands of skilled craftsman and visionary architects who knew they likely wouldn’t see the finished masterpiece. And that’s what it is, a masterpiece of generations. There are countless stories in the building that we’ll never know, but I bet it’s safe to say that a fair few of those artisans and masters-in-their-trade were working for their love of the craft and God. To suggest, in our other-sourced grief and outrage, that a cold stone cathedral and a few stained glass windows are unworthy of attention and love while there are starving children in the world is missing a sacred opportunity to expand our hearts and capacity to hold too much. That cathedral is built of stone and wood that are themselves deep time and embody histories and herstories we can’t even conceive of. We need these bastions of memory in our throw away culture. It is in part and wholly alive in the animist view and as a symbol. And that is, I think, where things get a little cranky and strange. For some those elements are a symbol of everything that is right with a flowering faith and for others they represent everything that goes wrong when people and groups lose integrity.
Everything has a shadow side.
Everything.
Acknowledging the Catholic Church’s policies that have engendered and generated generations of sexual abuse perpetrated on children. Acknowledging the imperialism, colonialism, exceptionalism, and wealth disparity in the United States and between countries like the US and huge swaths of the rest of the world. And setting them aside for a moment.
It’s a good thing to ask people with wealth and power to remember and embrace humble origins by opening their hearts to people who are having a different experience—those who won’t have dinner tonight, or can’t provide shelter for their children, or the community that’s lost its church to a racist arsonist. But if they have no memory or felt sense of that kind of vulnerability, it’s a little like asking a teenager to embrace the possibilities of old age or death. We have to create a culture that allows for this type of easy travel through different states of consciousness where we routinely put ourselves in another’s shoes.
However, we don’t do it through shame. Not because our anger isn’t justified but because shame works in very specific ways that tend to run counter to our ideal of empathy.
The people who are pouring enormous amounts of money into the Notre Dame Cathedral restoration are touched and moved by something in the story of the cathedral, or possibly the faith, or the French people.
Start there. Reach in for the heart. Lean in to the beauty inherent in that gesture to rescue and restore a symbol of such depth and richness and ask it to extend itself to the heart-rending suffering happening simultaneously in the world. Those people and projects deserve a voice that can inspire while telling the truth.
Just as everything has a shadow side, it also has a seed of truth and beauty. Let’s water and tend those seeds and see what blossoms in our worlds and ourselves.
Photo credit: Joshua Brian Flook
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