In speaking to a colleague yesterday about the fire, I actually became slightly emotional. We were discussing the loss in terms of architecture and history and art, and I cited the point that the soaring edifice was also home to one-of-a-kind artifacts of religious significance.
Like the Crown of Thorns. And a relic from the True Cross of Christ.
And as those words left my mouth -- the True Cross of Christ -- I felt my throat tighten just a bit.
My colleague never commented on my tone. She does know that I am a practicing Roman Catholic, as the point has come up in various political discussions we've had along the way. But I could read sympathy in her eyes.
Thankfully, these priceless items have apparently been saved. Divine intervention, perhaps.
Stories and memories of Notre Dame are everywhere today. And I've got one as well.
March 1984. I was in the midst of a study abroad semester in London with 24 other students from SJU. As the semester unfolded, a group of us decided to go to Paris for the weekend.
We took a bus to Dover and got on the Sealink -- this was all pre-chunnel, folks -- to France.
The morning we arrived, we navigated the Metro (not a one of us spoke French, by the way, other than how to pray the Hail Mary) and made our way to Notre Dame.
I don't remember the particulars of the tour we took, except for its finale. After exploring the interior, we were led up a series of switchback staircases outside to the roof of the two columns. From there, we were led across the rooftop on a narrow pathway bounded by a parapet that came up to perhaps my hips.
My acrophobia kicked in. That barrier between us and the plaza below seemed much too low to be of much good, and I backed myself as far away from it as I could. I inched along, flat-backed to the wall of the church.
One of the guys in our group passed by a gargoyle and said to me, "C'm-here, Dan. I've got a great idea for a picture."
How many troubles were started with exactly that question?
He borrowed my wool hat and placed it on the gargoyle's head. And as he prepped to take a picture, the wind whipped it off the grotesquerie and blew it below.
I mustered the courage to lean forward to see it drop on another walkway underneath the rose window, far below where we were. It didn't land in the courtyard where I would have a chance to nab it when we descended.
It was being held hostage by Our Lady.
I immediately knew I had to get it back -- it was a favorite hat and I wasn't eager to ride out the rest of the winter in London without it.
We descended with the tour and I immediately searched out someone on the cathedral staff to help me.
The language barrier was huge. "Mon chapeau!" was about all any of us could manage. We pantomimed and pointed our way through the other details.
Our aide wasn't too happy to have to a) figure out what these idiot Americans wanted and b) act on it. But he did. Within 15 minutes or so, I was reunited with my hat.
"Merci! Merci!"
I'm not sure what the French word for eye-roll is, but I got an unmistakeable one.
The punchline to this story came after we got back to London and my housemate got his film developed (hah... remember having to get film developed?).
The shot was perfect: A leering, crouching gargoyle. And a hat in mid-air about two feet in front of his skull, about to submit to gravity's pull and cascade downward.
That hat is now long-gone. Many of my pictures from that trip are also MIA. And I've long ago lost contact with the friend who suggested the picture.
And now the Cathedral itself is nearly lost as well.
But this much is true: Catholicism is all about Resurrection. And even though pieces of this story have been lost forever, the church in Paris will rise again.
Vive la France!
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