Wednesday, April 17, 2019

with roof and spire

The photo shows Notre Dame Cathedral in 2014 with roof and spire. It will take years for it to be restored. I am thankful that enough of it remains that it can be rebuilt.

The hands shape human culture. The hands have the capacity to reshape civilization. I hope visitors to Paris will find an army of young men and women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds with saws and planes launched into the process of restoration. You cannot make old wood, but you can make new craftsmen and is that not the point of a cathedral? Who will worship there if you've not first shaped the spirit? The hands do that through our quest for useful beauty.

My sixth, 7th, and 8th grade students have been hand planing white oak, so they should be aware of the difficulty of building a cathedral in the 11th century with hand tools alone.

This is not the first cathedral damaged by fire, so there are folks around from the last time that can help.

 https://www.cnn.com/style/article/notre-dame-restoration-gothic-cathedral/index.html

According to John David, a master mason from the UK who had been involved in a cathedral renovation there, "What I've heard a number of times today is people saying 'we can't do this anymore, we haven't got the craftspeople to do it.' We have. We have plenty, and we have plenty of people who can train others."

Make, fix, grow and create. Provide for others to learn likewise.

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