As Notre Dame burned in Paris last night, another historic cathedral was basking in its 1000th birthday. When I say millennial, I am talking about a thousand years, not a recent generation…
I spent the weekend with my wife and son in the Basel area and Heidi and I attended a special concert on Sunday night to commemorate the 1000th year of the Basel Münster, a soaring cathedral in the heart of Switzerland’s third-largest city.
Hearkening back several centuries, the concert included a mix of pipe organ music and Gregorian chants sung by a group of five talented young women from Paris.
As an American, I’ve seen ancient wonders of the world like the Acropolis in Athens and pyramids in Cairo, but realize that nothing is that old in the United States. It’s always chilling—in a good way—to step into a house of worship that has been operating more or less continuously for hundreds of…or in this case one thousand…years.
I was so sorry to watch part of the Notre Dame Cathedral burn last night. I have been in the cathedral several times including for a wonderful concert many years ago. It is a quintessential part of Paris and I applaud French President Emmanuel Macron’s determination to rebuilt it. There is no other choice.
The shock fire was a reminder that nothing on this Earth is forever and a further reminder that we must carefully care for the resources entrusted to us, both natural and man-made.
Do you get shivers as well when you walk into an ancient edifice?
Are you the photographer for the pictures where the congregation is facing the camera? If so, it’s wonderful they let you move freely.
That was me. Interestingly, there was seated up above the stage/altar. The singers just bowed there in the last picture. They were actually singing behind us up where I took that picture.