On the eve of the seminar around and in the Cathedral of Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris caught fire and partly burned down. We were already in Chartres and sympathized with the French and worldwide emotions. The cathedral in Chartres, also a Notre Dame, mourned her sister with two intense chimings of the bells. In the days that followed – but perhaps this had been the case before – there were always heavily armed soldiers in the city and around the cathedral. On white Thursday, at the entrance to Mass in the evening, they even stood at the entrance and every visitor had to pass by…

It was the third trip to Chartres that we made with a group, the previous trip was already five years ago. Every time I enter the cathedral I get the first impression that I had when I came in for the first time. An unprecedented harmony and holiness, a reminiscence to the cosmos, a preview of the future immortal body of the human being, a colorful metamorphosis in the stained-glass windows to keep out the everyday and an immersion in the purity of the ethereal… My father, who lived in England for many years before I was born, often said: ‘The first thiought is the best’ and that is an excellent advice.  It is very fruitful to let the aftereffects of previous visits rise in the memory…

In Chartres the Christian platonic time ends and the breath is being hold in expectation of the new intellectual time. We are now in the middle of this intellectual period and a change to the spiritualization of thinking ‘as a cultural factor’ is still to be expected. But in Chartres you can experience in the memory what lies hidden in the future. 

Chartres by Mieke Mosmuller