Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is a symbol – unquestionably.  The question is, “Of what?”

I have never been to that particular European Cathedral, but I have been to dozens.  I am attracted to them like a moth to a candle and have been to them in virtually every European city I have visited – not to mention Middle Eastern City.  If there was not a cathedral in the city, I visited the biggest church.  On those visits I have seen people ascribe to them all sorts of meaning, from the sacred to the profane to the evil.  I have seen them viewed with awe and I have seen them disrespected.  I have seen the Soviet government use them to store war materials.

They can be viewed on so many levels.  They were built as sacred spaces.  But they were also the aircraft carriers of their time – all about power projection.  They are works of art and architecture.  There are museums and artifact warehouses.  I have been indescribably moved in such spaces on spiritual and emotional levels and I have also been repulsed.

In other words, such spaces are what we make of them.  And in these modern times, that means what we individually make of them.  Yet, it seems as if everyone is rushing to affix some message to this tragedy.

Most fascinating to me is that Dennis Prager:

It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning — and with it, Western civilization.

and ISIS:

ISIS fanatics are heartlessly revelling in the inferno at Notre Dame Cathedral just days before Easter calling it ‘retribution and punishment’, according to terror intelligence researchers.

have remarkably similar takes on the meaning of the conflagration.  There is, of course, a vast difference in tone between the two, but the meaning they imbue the event with is very similar – the death of the West.

I have not looked for it because it is ugly, but I am certain there is some silly preacher out there saying that yesterday’s mess in Paris is God’s judgment on the errors of “the Papists.”  As a Protestant I marvel at my very silly brethren that act as if the church somehow sprang forward fully formed in the 16th century and there was not 1500 years when the Roman church was the only church.  I have seen many decry the fire as somehow fitting of a nation that appears to have lost the faith and that is just ugly.

I opened this post by recounting how different people react to structures such a Notre Dame Cathedral.  Everybody lost something yesterday.  What was lost depends very much on the particular individuals involved, but everybody lost.  By rushing to pin a message on the loss we are also crowding out the very real grief being experienced by people who have ascribed a different symbology to the structure.  And that simply lacks compassion.

I understand – events like yesterday are at first blush a massive messaging opportunity.  Everybody’s attention is riveted.  An audience that large and that attentive is hard to come by.  But when that messaging lacks compassion it is unlikely to succeed and may even make enemies.

For today, grief and compassion should be sufficient.  History will place the messages it will on the event.  What message is affixed will have far more to do with who wins history than with what was said in the immediate aftermath.

For today grief and compassion are sufficient.