Because God sees...

A few days ago  I walked past St Andrew’s Cathedral at Town Hall station and I stopped for a while.  I sat there and looked at this structure and thought about all the beautiful cathedrals I have admired, sat in and studied.  I wondered by myself why it is that I am so fascinated by these shrines to a God that I am not always so sure of.  I wondered what it is that draws me to them and why it is that there is something in them that speaks to me directly.

As I sat there and looked at the intricate masonry on the nave, I found myself wondering about the stonemasons who carved the delicate lacework on the Duomo in Florence and the Notre Dame in Paris.  We know who the architects and the sculptors of the monumental  key pieces are but no-one knows who the lowly mason was who sat there and lovingly carved the faces of angels and gargoyles.  Suddenly, a lot made sense to me. 

The blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into a room while I am on the phone and ask me a question.  Inside I am thinking “Can’t you see I am on the phone?” Obviously not.  No one sees if I am on the phone, or cooking, or doing the laundry, doing the ironing or knitting a scarf because sometimes I think no-one can see me at all.  I sometimes feel like the invisible mom and that I am only a pair of hands – nothing more.  Can you fix this?  Can you tie this?  Can you open this?  There are times when I am not a pair of hands, I’m a clock to ask, “What time is it?”; I’m a dictionary to answer “What does ‘ephemeral’ mean?”; I’m a car to order “Okay, please pick me up at 20:30.”  

At times I am certain that these hands once held books and my eyes studied literature and History of Art and graduated cum laude, but that it somehow disappeared into the peanut butter I spread on the kids’ sandwiches never to be seen again.

Sometimes, I sit quietly and watch others who all seem to be put together so well and it is hard not to compare and feel pretty pathetic at times.  But today, while thinking of the cathedrals of Europe, I thought that I should rather consider myself a builder, like one of those masons.   I think I stumbled across four truths in those cathedrals:

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       Firstly, no-one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names.

·         Secondly, those lowly masons gave their whole lives for a work they would never see completed (especially if you think that structures like the Duomo and Notre Dame took three centuries to complete!)

·         Thirdly, they made great sacrifices and expected no credit for their efforts.   The passion of their building was fuelled by faith that the eyes of God or some higher power saw everything.

I thought of the delicate carvings of birds under the eaves of some of the big cathedrals in Europe and I wondered whether anyone ever asked the mason why he was putting so much work into carving a delicate bird into a beam that no one will ever see.  And I think he would have replied, “Because God sees”.

I did not have a sudden epiphany or religious experience, no.  But it was as if something whispered to me “I see you.  I see the sacrifices you make every day, when no-one else around you does.    No act of kindness you have done, no button you’ve sewn on, no muffin you have baked, is too small to notice and smile over.  You are building a great cathedral but you can’t see right now what it will become.”

Perhaps I should consider myself as a builder, as one of those lowly masons who showed up at a job they would never see finished, to work on something that their name would never be on.  Perhaps I should just believe that I am building something great when nobody sees. Perhaps that is why no cathedrals will ever be built in our lifetime.  Mainly because there are so few people who are willing to sacrifice to that degree.  Perhaps that is what love really is too.

I feel like the mason carving the bird in the beam. I have always believed that love means giving of yourself as much as you have to give.  When I give I feel happiest which is why I have always got so much pleasure out of spoiling him in very way I could think of.  Because when you have something to give to someone, you have a sense of worth and a sense of value.  You are not merely filling a space – you matter.  You are carving a bird into a beam that no-one really sees.  

In the four years we have had, we have built something beautiful.  I could see the cathedral taking shape, I loved the grace of the arches and the cool tranquility of its cloisters.  I cannot just put down my tools because there has been a complication or a change in the architectural design.  I have put my whole heart and soul into this building.   I don't know if I really want to start digging new foundations for a new edifice somewhere else.  It is hard work and frankly I don’t know if  I have the strength to start again and after another four years to find myself faced by being told to start digging all over again. I want to finish building it – even if it takes a long long time.  At least there is progress and I am building something.  Brunneleschi did not give up when faced with the challenge of finding a way to deal with the roof of the Duomo. Instead of scrapping it and starting again, he looked at it again and found a creative and ingenious solution to his problem.   It took him a long time, but he managed to build the most spectacular dome in history. If oysters can create something as magnificent as a pearl from an irritation caused by a grain of sand, imagine what we can do with love.  

Perhaps one day, you will see that an imperfect mason is someone you could have taken  in your backpack when you go to war.  I don’t know.  At this stage though, I have no choice but to walk away from you and hope that the birds on the beams, and the stony faces of the angels I have lovingly carved for you in the cloisters will tell you something of the love I have for you in days to come.  I believe that the spirit of your love for me still wanders through the coolness of the cloisters in your heart at night even if you choose not to express it.  I think you still hear it humming quietly in your soul when you are alone.

At times my invisibility feels like an affliction.  But it is not a disease that is erasing my life.  It is a cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness.  It is possibly an antidote to my strong stubborn pride.  As a mother I am also building a cathedral.  I pray that one day the world will marvel not only at what we have built but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women like me.

We never know what our finished products will turn out to be because of our perseverance.  Please don’t walk away from something that is really beautiful and which can bring a lot of joy, love and happiness in your life because of current difficulties.  Nothing gained easily is ever really worthwhile.  Let this grain of sand grow into a beautiful lustrous pearl in the years to come.