ND de Paris: I keep thinking about a number of visits to the cathedral and how moving they were, especially when I didn’t believe any more, like most of the modern world, in the theologies that accompanied the history of such a site—from abbot Suger and kings to today’s global neoliberalism. I could think of the power plays of a Louis IX, a Louis XIV, the goddess Reason at the revolution, a Napoleon at his self-coronation, the Te Deum-s sung after major catastrophes, things that crowds could admire and even die for, but nothing that readers of the gospel could love or be faithful to. But at a free organ concert—Sunday at 18h00—, with Pierre Cochereau at the grandes orgues, there were moments of great emotion—Bach rather than Vierne would be the trigger—moments that would take the form of a loss or regret and make me think of previous generations of trusting people bent on giving meaning to their lives and transcending them, no matter the base politics of power and greed. It came as a call to my generation, a call that I still find difficult to answer, yet easy to decipher. It’s sad that the great forêt of early mediaeval wood beams that supported the roof and the spire above the nave is gone, but fortunately the stone vaults held up, firemen were quick and brave, and the inside of the cathedral or much of it survived. A monument to the ingenuity of mediaeval thinkers, architects, masons, and woodworkers who came from many nations can be rebuilt. Viollet le Duc’s nineteenth-century heritage can be reconciled to modern taste and revised with the restorations to come. More difficult to do, but as clear a decision to take as that of the reconstruction of this iconic stone vessel is the universal question of meaning of our lives. Can we respond to the faith and beauty ideals of these mediaeval ancestors in our own way? Can we steer away from systemic greed and respond to poverty, violence, solitude, and meaninglessness by taking the high road—by committing to share present global technical and economic achievements with all inhabitants of our blue planet?
