darxus

A couple of years ago, Jon and I went to Europe for the first time. We walked through so many cathedrals and churches that we barely remember them all, and after 3 weeks had no interest in ever seeing the interior of yet another cathedral. However, fairly early in our trip, we did see something special.

There is a saying in Cologne, Germany, that if the cathedral is ever completed, the world will end... but there is no chance of that happening.

The Cologne Cathedral is so large, that by the time they have finished restoring and rebuilding one section, another has nearly crumbled away, so they move the scaffolding every decade or two and begin again. This is on a scale of hundreds of years, since 1248.

Since there is essentially permanent scaffolding in place, they are able to offer a "behind the scenes" cathedral climb. It is not much of a climb, since the so-called scaffolding has elevators. The cathedral attic has staff lounges and storage rooms and construction offices and restoration workshops. The pathways along the rooftops, amid the gargoyles, are built into the structure.

Still attached to one of the roofs is a wooden crane hundreds of years old. It was easier to just leave it there after doing its job. They figured it would be needed again.

The storage rooms are jammed with art and decor that is currently simply "out of fashion." Apparently even in these gothic cathedrals that all sort of look the same to us, decor and icons go in and out of fashion, and the church is redone in a more pleasing and modern style, according to the tastes of those currently overseeing the space.

There is a giant eagle, of all things, which currently hangs over the door to the roofers' break room. It was uncovered awhile ago in a storage room, and they liked it, so they stuck it on the wall. In the process of cleaning it up, the restorer found a roll of parchment stuffed up its rear, which when unrolled, read simply "Johannes Schmidt war hier" -- John Smith was here, possibly in the 1800s.

Semi-famously, the stone gargoyles which are too far from the ground to be seen well by passersby, now include a person on a cell phone, and a person in a hardhat. Our guide spoke of the German attitude of "creative restoration." They do not have a philosophy that these living buildings must remain unchanged, restored every time to an exact copy of the original design. They are not historical preservations; they are not frozen in time. They are the facilities that people use to live and work and worship in the 21st century. Every modern touch and flourish that is added becomes part of the history for generations that will follow us. People will look back at these new gargoyles in two hundred years and discuss how people lived and dressed at the turn of the millennium. The legend may even live on, of who these statues were modeled after and why they were chosen.

Periodically, cathedrals are blown up in a war, or burned down in an accident. Damage from WW2 is still evident all over Europe. Some cathedrals have a whole wall of windows in a clearly different and more modern style than the other windows, created by the artists of this past century to replace what was broken. It is all part of the history we tell now.

In Vienna near the river, we saw a beautiful church up on the hill and asked out guide about it. She said, "Oh, I don't know that much about it. It is pretty but not historically important and not really very old." Not very old - how old? "Maybe 200 years?"

In America, we have a very limited idea of what is old, and what is permanent, and what is important. We fetishize the past 200 years, treasuring buildings and artifacts that are "not really very old," converting 150 year old buildings into preservation sites instead of keeping them in our daily lives. We do not rebuild historical sites that are lost, updating them in order to continue using them for their intended purpose. If we restore them, it is as a sterile museum.

So yes, Notre Dame has suffered great damage, and will never be the same. Weep for the hours of labor and love, weep for the beauty that was lost. But do not mourn Notre Dame.

It will be different, and it will still be Notre Dame. It will be grand, it will pay homage to the generations that have come before, and it will be the symbol of France that this generation builds.

I bet it will also have a proper lighting grid.