Notre Dame de Paris Miscellany

I have been impassioned about cathdrals ever since I wandered through my first ones, in Great Britain when I was about 12 or 13.

People respond differently to church architecture. My father has joined exactly one church in his life, the First Congregational Church in Williamstown, Massachusetts, during his college years, and claims that he was drawn in by the building. It is indeed, a magnificent example of pre-federalist New England simplicity. My current Presbyterian church is similar in form ~ albeit red brick rather than white clapboard ~ and insistent upon its claim to a Western Reserve of Connecticut (otherwise known as northeast Ohio) heritage. Both of them urge upon their congregations the austerity of the Reform and Puritan response to the Catholicism of the medieval and Renaissance periods in European history.

But the lavishness of a cathedral has always beckoned to me. The first church we joined here was a United Methodist congregation with a building modeled after a 13th century French cathedral. When we visit St. Augustine, I go to Memorial Presbyterian ~ not a cathedral (we don't have bishops in the Presbyterian Church, and a cathedral is the church seat of a bishop), but architecturally reminiscient of one. And given the chance, I will always be more than willing to explore the nooks and crannies, glass and stone, side chapels and altars and columns and windows and archways and crypts, of a cathedral.

This one, Our Lady of Paris ~ built 1163-1345 to honor Mary, the Mother of God ~ suits me just fine.