Love recognizes no barriers.
It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls
to arrive at it destination full of hope.
~Maya Angelou
~Maya Angelou
When in Europe you tend to walk more.
Today we walked everywhere.
Went to a couple of churches.
They always amaze and inspire.
The walls at the Cathedral Saint Etienne captivated my imagination.
and has been rebuilt, modified and added to since the 11th century.
It still has stood the test of a few hundred centuries.
Pretty and impressive.
I'm sure with loads of tourists and Sunday services it is not always so serene.
Today we saw only 3 other people, in the whole place.
The religious icons are ernest and the glass in the windows colourful and recently cleaned.
The messages and beauty of this place go deep.
Maybe that comes with layers of time.
Most people come here to look at the big paintings in frames of angels,
human struggles and Gods gifts.
I'm not your regular kind of enthusiast.
I get excited about all sort of interesting things.
Today, its walls.
Yet the walls which frame the paintings, altars, windows
are works of art in themselves.
Who painted these?
The artisans lovingly (maybe) and (no doubt) painstakingly crafted
the repeated patterns, without any modern technology.
How?
Did they ever wonder how long it would be there?
Could they imagine that a woman & her two children,
from a country on the other side of the world,
would see their work hundreds of years later?
Yeah, probably not.
The worn parts are just as evocative to me,
as the prestine paintings in a gallery.
After surviving fires and rebuilds,
cardinals & kings,
the walls still stand,
sealed by someones beautiful painting.
Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.
William Barclay
sparkle & twirl*
