Our Lady is burning

I’m lucky to live just up the road from Paris. I can get there in a three hour drive, or better yet, one hour on the mighty Thalys. So I manage to walk her streets every few months, either for work or for pleasure. Whenever I do, I make sure to pass by the Notre Dame. Most of the times, the queues of selfie-stick wielding tourists are too long so I just settle for a stroll around the Île de la Cite, continuously glancing up her flaring buttresses and snarling gargoyles.

She always takes my breath away, no matter how often you look at her. The Notre Dame is not a building. It’s not even a church or a cathedral. To me, it is one of the greatest living stories of human collaboration. How the finest minds in architecture, engineering and arts can organise themselves over the span of centuries to contribute to one singular vision.

She almost burned down this week. A fire erupted on her roof on Tuesday during the evening traffic rush. It took the Parisian pompiers the whole night to battle the blaze, to save the structure. Almost immediately, even while the ashes of the collapsed spire and the forrest of oak that held up the ceiling were still smoldering, the French elite opened their wallets.

As I am writing this, almost one billion euros have been pledged by a mere handful of wealthy individuals to rebuild the Notre Dame. Of course, there has been an outrage…