Notre-Dame de Chartres

I won't go down that road, but we weren't super biblical.

And one of the ways that that really was awakened in me was that trip long ago to Shark Cathedral, because it's covered with the Bible, Old Testament and New.

This is a deeply biblical people that produced it, and it's how they learned the Bible, by reading these buildings.

But it awakened something in me a long time ago, which has led finally to the Word on Fire Bible and a two-volume commentary in the Old Testament.

A lot of it started with Shark Cathedral, so the Bible is everything.

Every crack and crevice is biblical in some way.

The buildings just instantiate the biblical text.

No, no, no.

batshit spiritual experience walking towards.

It's like this little statue called Our Lady of the Pillar that you could just quite easily walk past in Chartres Cathedral.

I'll never get the accent down.

That just brought that literally felt like it landed bits of my heart that had been just scattered all over the place right back into its little into into its space and my heart space.

And he wrote about it, I think.

The charts? Shark Cathedral? Yeah.

Oh, the way that sits in the landscape.

And you can see it for miles.

Today in church history from 1260, the consecration of Chartres.

On October 24th, 1260, according to one historical dating, King St. Louis IX of France attended the solemn consecration of one of the most magnificent churches ever built, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres.

66 years earlier, a devastating fire had destroyed much of the previous cathedral, but something remarkable survived, a treasured relic traditionally believed to be the veil worn by the Blessed Virgin.

For the people of Chartres, its survival was a sign that their beloved cathedral would rise again, more beautiful than ever.

And there is a labyrinth there that I will claim is the second most beautiful labyrinth in the whole world.

The one at Chartres Cathedral in France being the first.

But...

It's a retreat that's been running for many, many years.

Are we counting spires? Because then it would be the central tower, the crossing, the spire of Salisbury Cathedral.

But you might also say it was one of the two towers on the west end of Chartres Cathedral, which has a very famous transition from square to octagonal.

You might indeed.

And the correct answer would be the one at Chartres, but you have to tell me which one it is because that's important.

So I'm actually doing, I'm heading to Chicago this, I'm not sure when this will air, but this week I'm heading to Chicago to do a retreat, but I'm encoring that same retreat in New York in November.

And so we can send you the links, but there's going to be a Black Madonna retreat on, and the focus is on the Black Madonna of Chartres Cathedral, who I call She Who Holds It All.

So we don't have to so it's really a retreat about like identifying burdens that we're carrying that we are not meant to carry and lovingly handing those off to black madonna so we'll be doing that and i'm also just doing lots of book events this fall and i have a patreon community so i write and i do events that are specific to that community and you can also just go to my website and sign up for my newsletter list too and stay abreast of all of that's happening

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