I was not devastated to see Notre Dame go up in flames, and I hope they never rebuild Her.
Sad, yes, as one is sad when a beautiful old thing that has outlived it's usefulness must be released. Shocked even. But also I felt a deep, silent "Yes!" as I felt empowered.
You see, I BELIEVE that our words, our art, our creations and yes, our buildings, carry vibrational energy. They change the physical world. One only has to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau to FEEL and KNOW that. The vibrations of torture, suffering, loss and man's inhumanity to man linger. The sadness we take with us as we leave there, changes what we create. And so the ripples continue.
Had Auschwitz-Birkenau been a beautiful building, would that warrant it's rebuilding and restoration at some hideous amount of $$? After all, it was the epitome of efficiency, and our commercial world celebrates industrial efficiency.
Notre Dame and many old stone relics like Her are public symbols of the Catholic Church - one of the world's biggest and richest financial players, with a very blotted, ugly, copy book. This is the very same church that initiated the burning of the so-called heretic "witches"; which saw rich clerics eating their fill with the Noblesse de Robe while the French people starved before the French Revolution; which condoned slavery from France's many African colonies; which grew fat and whose very edifices and artworks were funded by rape, war, indigenous genocide and intellectual repression.
This is not a vibration I want to see continued in the world.
Just weeks ago the world was aflame (pun intended) with moral outrage at a Catholic Church which condoned the sexual abuse of children by Cardinal George Pell - which has remained silent and turned the other way as generations of women and children have reported sexual and domestic abuse. The church has hidden priests and refused responsibility. It has denied struggling women access to both their faith and safe contraception and abortion. You choose, it said. Suffer now with our blessing, or be damned eternally. This is not any vibration I want to see perpetuated in our world. Me? I chose the eternal damnation.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Arundhati Roy, one of my favourite authors and environmental activists, encourages me daily with those words.
A new paradigm and global consciousness IS rising. Before we can have new approaches to health, housing, the environment, money, banking, employment etc, old structures will need to be allowed to collapse and burn. Sometimes literally. And we will need COURAGE to stand by and watch what we thought was beautiful and to hold that knowledge and sorrow together with the knowledge of what it really was.
Notre Dame was a beautiful facade for an ugly reality, and I don't want to see that vibration of falsity restored.
So what do I want? Open, honest dialogue. I want us to HEAR the many women and men who still need to vomit when they smell frankincense and who shudder at being entombed emotionally and spiritually by dark grey stone.
France is a terribly divided society with acute racial and refugee tensions, as it struggles to embrace all of the ugly national karma its centuries of rape and pillage and colonialism have created. I would love to see the windows as part of a new multi-faith center and mosque on the same site which provides services for France's colonial refugees. And I would like to see the Vatican sell some of it's art and incredible global real estate to pay for that. NO need for donations AT ALL.
I would like to see the gerzillions of $$ already pledged for Notre Dame's restoration REDIRECTED towards schools, desalination plants, reproductive healthcare, domestic violence services and education, clean energy options, reforestation and environmental education centers in France's former colonies.
Now that energy of responsibility, reparation and restoration is a vibration that could, and should, ripple out into the world.
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today....
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
Together, we can.
Come check out my natural Thai herbal business…
Contributing to the
. Cos it MATTERS.