Notre Dame

Yesterday our beloved Notre Dame Cathedral fell into flames and was consumed in a great part while over 400 firefighters struggled to save here, while billions watched her around the globe, while many came to stand around her, mibile phone cameras held high to capure her old bones crunching under black and orange licks of heat. Our hearts shrunk at the sight of that great, proper, wide Dame standing dignified while her roofs turned into smoke, collapsed and fell, while vitrals blackened, exploded, melted, fell into shards and were long gone.

I watched her from many, many miles away and felt those flames in my heart, certain that - regardless of the damage - the Great Lady would stand beautiful and proud again.

Yes, the damage is great and the loss is incalculable, but I choose to believe that this Wise, Great Dame - tall and proud and wise like a Goddess of Old - has chosen to teach her people a valuable lesson.

The world has been coming apart, ones turning against the others, fighting over imaginary grievances, giving in to pety arguments and consuming with large spoons the poisonous porridge of malicious, fake information. People has chosen to feed their own anger, resenting what others get and what other earn because they can't seem to understand why are they not getting it. Even when they don't need it and even when they don't want it. Even when none of it ever affect them. People have allowed themselves to become bitter when facing the good fortune of anyone else. They have made themselves into easy preys for those who seek to loot, rob them of their hard earned rights, and turn those into privilegdes they will no longer be able to enjoy. And blame the inmigrants, the poor or the other political party for it.

Europe is being divided, even within the greatest sign of their union. It was never a perfect union, but it's like marriage: it's never perfect, but often times it's worth fightng for it. And this comes from a consumated single, childfree woman, so you should listen to me.

Latin America is also bing divided between the ecologists and pro-Human Rights camps and the zealous religious conservatives. The United States... well, yeah. They have placed themselves as the epithome of internal and fierce division, one that goes so deep, it roots out even basic elements we have all thought there was global consensus over.

In this frame, and in the Holy Week, Notre Dame caught fire and let her roofts burn up and collapse, years of history go up in smoke, invaluable stories and art and craftsmanship be lost. Wise and Proud she stood in the middle of the day, where she could be seen, sheltered in her island, crowning the Seine with fire so that people would understand that divisions destroyed, and destruction isn't something to feed spite, to ignore, to blame on the other side, but is a brand that touch us all. She sent her roofs up in flames so people would understand what they were allowing to be lost. She called around her her brave sons and daughters to teach a lesson of preservations, and now, wrapped in her mourning raiment, she calls upon her people to stop being stupid and work diligently to recover their shared history, their shared love and pride and work shoulder by shoulder to build up a new roof, new dreams, new hopes and a new future. Ones that take inspiration of the old ones, but improve them, make them better and work as a reminder also of the slowly degrading bones of society, the pains and fragilites that will always snap at some point, and which need to be tended with love and care.