chills

Eu­rope is filled with Cathe­drals. You back­pack from coun­try to coun­try and you grad­u­al­ly be­come de­sen­si­tized to their splen­dor.

But some of them, de­spite how many you walk into, still con­tin­ue to have an awe-in­spir­ing, and tru­ly hum­bling ex­pe­ri­ence.

I vis­it­ed Notre Dame dur­ing East­er break. It was night, and the doors were closed, save for one small ar­cha­ic wood­en door gard­ed by a kind­ly faced man. The court­yard was filled with tourists. And he kept turn­ing peo­ple away. East­er ap­proached, and no one was al­lowed in.

Un­less you were Catholic. And were look­ing to pray.

I was, and gen­er­al­ly am, an Ag­nos­tic. And I think when an­oth­er Catholic hears a per­son is Ag­nos­tic, their re­sponse boils down to ‘chal­lenge ac­cept­ed.’

So I en­tered into the dark­ness. Qui­et­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed by can­dles. Hushed whis­pers as guards pa­trolled, look­ing for tourists who were ly­ing about their faith. Ush­er­ing out those un­de­vot­ed to make room for oth­ers pray­ing or on pil­grim­age.

I walked the halls in the dark­ness and felt the building’s age creep through my clothes and set­tle into my bones. Dark­ened stained glass sang a deep song as dark as its wood­en pews. The cathe­dral whis­pered to me a promise to re­lin­quish its se­crets should I sim­ply stop and pray to God.

And I stopped. And I prayed. And this ag­nos­tic was re­mind­ed by the safe and in­no­cent em­brace with­in God’s arms. I felt mag­ick in this an­cient build­ing.

I left and thanked the man. His kind face hid whether he re­mem­bered me or not, but it was unim­por­tant.

An­oth­er trav­el­er – a Cana­di­an artist came bound­ing up to me. She asked if I could take her pic­ture. She let me bor­row her lens, since we had the same cam­era base, to take a pic­ture of my­self and the whole Cathe­dral. She had prayed a few min­utes ear­li­er even though ‘pray­ing wasn’t re­al­ly her thing any­more.’ It wasn’t mine ei­ther.

We both found each oth­er in a mass of peo­ple. And as won­der­ful­ly as we had con­nect­ed, we walked away. Be­cause Notre Dame is mag­ick. And you nev­er ques­tion mag­ick – you sim­ply ac­cept.

My heart cries in ter­ri­ble jagged screams.
 

—jes

Flom­mist Jes ex­ists for mo­ments of fiery in­spi­ra­tion. See her in­spi­ra­tional byprod­ucts at jdeprez.com. Copy­right © 2019 JES DE­PREZ. Im­age source.

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