Ave Maria
Ave Maria, gratia plena. Maria, gratia plena Maria, gratia plena Ave, ave dominus, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, Et benedictus Et benedictus fructus ventris, Ventris tui, Jesus. Ave Maria.I don't claim any special connection to Paris or Notre Dame Cathedral, but when I was told yesterday that it was burning, I was completely horrified; my hands flew to my mouth and my eyes stung with tears. And when I saw the cellphone videos of the devastated crowd singing Ave Maria together, I was gutted by the sense of shared loss - Notre Dame is more than an old church in a foreign country to check off one's bucket list, it's a piece of shared human history that feels like it belongs to the world. Surviving the French Revolution, two World Wars, and eight hundred and fifty years of passing time, it defies understanding that she was brought down by an electrical fire.I have been to Paris twice, and posed for the following picture (with an Australian we met along the way) from atop the roof of Notre Dame when I was eighteen:And Dave took the picture at the top when we climbed to the roof of Notre Dame on my fiftieth birthday. On that second visit, I was disappointed that the roof was now surmounted by a chainlink fence (that forced Dave to take his picture through the chinks instead of getting a nice subject-filled panorama like back in the day), but I suppose we can just call ourselves lucky to have been there at all - a thought which seems incomprehensible to me today. The only picture I took on my birthday was Dave posing as Quasimodo (which, queasily, shows how much old timber there was up in the belltower):Here's hoping for a speedy and appropriate rebuild.
