Show us the way oh Lord. . .

“Others have seen what is and asked why.
I have seen what could be and asked why not. ”
― Pablo Picasso

(a statue of Christ on the Charles Bridge , Prague, The Czech Republic / Julie Cook / 2012)

What is it that sets us apart form the other creatures on this planet our ours?
Other than that opposable thumb business?

What is it that makes us greater, wiser, better. . .?

Is it perhaps our ability to be compassionate and kind?
Perhaps to reason and analyze?
Or is it is our capacity to be creative. . .that ability to dream, to imagine, to think and therefore to compose, to construct, to paint, to sing, to sculpt, to dance and to build. . .

The ability to even take that which has been ruined and destroyed, even by our own hands, and to remake, rekindle and renew. . .?

I had not intended to have such a serious minded post again this week but it appears that forces beyond my control thought better of my initial decision. . .

Today’s news is laced, once again with the heinous beheading by ISIS of another innocent bystander–another victim to their ravenous thirst for innocent blood. This time it was an 82 year old Archeologist taxed with preserving and saving the ruins of Palmyra.
It seems they held this gentleman for the past month, torturing him in an attempt to discover where the vast treasures of this ancient, and to some holy, site were hidden. He never shared that information with his captors, who knows if he even was aware of hidden treasure, so it was another case of “off with their heads”. . .

Here you may find a link to the full story as found on the BBC . . .
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33984006

In Charles Kaiser’s book “The Cost of Courage” which I shared in yesterday’s post, Mr. Kaiser retells the story of the Vichy Parisian Mayor, Pierre-Charles Taittinger who, following the invasion of Normandy which was the telling realization for the Nazis that their time of Occupation in Paris, as well as all of France, was drawing dangerously to its finale, approached the Nazi’s high commander, General Choltitz, with his final plea for the Germans to spare the city.

It was well known and documented that if Hitler had to relinquish the City of Lights back into the hands of the Allies, then they would not receive a city at all but rather one that had been razed and burnt to the ground. Every bridge crossing the Seine, as well as every monument from the Eiffel Tower to Napoleon’s Tomb had been wired with explosives. The fleeing German troops were to detonate and burn everything in their wake as they left the city.

Monsieur Taittinger implored the General one last time:
“Often it is given to a general to destroy, rarely to preserve,” Taittinger begins.
“Imagine that one day it may be given to you to stand on this balcony as a tourist, to look once more on these monuments to our joys, our sufferings, and to be able to say, “One day I could have destroyed all this, and I preserved it as a gift for humanity.’ General, is not that worth all a conqueror’s glory?”
The General replied, “You are a good advocate for Pairs. You have done your duty well. And likewise I, as a German general, must do mine.”

History tells us that the General was wise enough to know that by now Hitler was indeed a madman and that the war, with the Soviets now advancing from the east, was all but over and that it would not serve the furture of Germany, whatever that further may now hold, to destroy what the French held so dear. There is more to the story, a series of interventions and seemingly miraculous moments which spurred the Allied forces to march upon the city in the nick of time, but I suggest that you read that story on your own as it makes for fascinating reading.

When the church bells rang out echoing across the city, with the deep baritone bells of Notre Dame leading the way, sounding the joyful news of the liberation of Paris, the General was heard to say, “that today I have heard the bells of the death knell of my own funeral. . .” He had sent the troops out from the city with having detonated only the bombs of one of the train stations.

What is it about our splendors and our glories, those monuments we construct, build, make and craft from generation to generation. . . those tombs and treasures we hold so dear and so ever important? So much so that we feel the urgency and need of being tasked with their care, their maintenance, their upkeep and their eventual preservation?
Is it because we see that these manmade wonders are some of the tangible evidence of the better part of our nature? That despite our ability to destroy, to kill and to promote war. . .deep down we know that we strive for the good, the beautiful and the enduring?

These wonders of ours link us to our past civilizations. These monuments of glory, grandeur and beauty of both joy and sorrow allow us to see from where we have come, and in turn we are afforded the opportunity to show future generations the part of us which is better, kinder, gentler, more humane —that side which chose to give rather than to take?

So on this day, when another has fallen victim to a dark and evil menace spreading outward from the Middle East, I am left with the simple prayer, “Oh Lord, show us the way. . .”

(Duomo di Milano / Milan, Italy / Julie Cook / 2007)

(The Bascillica di San Antonio / Padova, Italy / Julie Cook / 2007)

(Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore / Firenze, Italy / Julie Cook / 2007)

(Basilica Papale di San Francesco / Assisi, Italy / Julie Cook / 2007)

( Basilica Papale di San Pietro / The Vatican / Roma, Italy / Julie Cook / 2007)

(stain glass windows in The Basilica of the Holy Blood / Bruges, Belgium / Julie Cook / 2011)

(Notre Dame / Paris France / Julie Cook / 2011)

(détail, Notre Dame / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

(Eiffel Tower / Paris, France / Julie Cook / 2011)

(the cross that sits atop the Eagles Nest or the Berghof overlooking Berchtesgaden, Bavaria which was once Hitler’s private mountain retreat / Julie Cook / 2013)

(St Stephens Cathedral/ Vienna, Austria / Julie Cook / 2013)

St Vitus Cathedral / Prague, The Czech Republic / Julie Cook / 2013)

(Rose window, St Vitus Cathedral / Julie Cook / 2013)

(A section of the Berlin Wall / Berlin, Germany / Julie Cook / 2013)

(a section of the Berlin wall / Berlin, Germany / Julie Cook / 2013)

(The Brandenburg Gate / Berlin, Germany / Julie Cook / 2013)

(The interior of the new German Chancellory, the Bundestag / Berlin, Germany / Julie Cook / 2013)

Exterior of the Bundestag / Berlin, Germany / Julie Cook / 2013)

What’s in a door? Utilitarian necessity or art? I say both.

“Strange – is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too”
Horace

Over the weekend I had another blgoger visit my “site” and reblog the post on “Thank the Door Openers.” I, of course, am humbled and honored whenever anyone visits my posts, likes my posts, and especially wishes to reblog something I have posted. As I am a relative new baby to this blogging business, having just started at the end of February, I am not the most savvy when it comes to blogging—the procedures, the etiquette, the whole ropes of the blogging world. I just try to do my thing, and hopefully bring some sort of knowledge, pleasure, hope, happiness to anyone out there who may stumble across my little blog.

I also tend to be a bit naive when it comes to people, always just expecting people to be more like myself and mostly wanting to do the right things, especially by other people. So I’m assuming (there I go again) that reblogging is a good thing. The visiting blog site is all about “doors.” I’ve showcased a couple of my daily quotes with some pictures of doors I’ve taken on various adventures. The blog, which visited my little blog, is: legionofdoorwhores.wordpress.com
And I must say that there are some very beautiful pictures of doors, from all over the globe, on this blog.

When I first saw the name of the blog site, the word whore in the title kind of threw me, as the word has very negative connotations in my world. Growing up the word whore was used to describe a pretty low individual, mostly female, who just threw away, in most cases, one’s body for sex to and with everyone and anyone indiscriminately—it was an individual who possessed little to no self esteem, and as a younger person, the word, to me was just really bad.

As a lifetime high school educator, I have learned that certain words that were once considered negative and bad to, say, my generation, are used very freely and loosely today by this generation. I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing and I could write an entire paper on this little topic but that is not my intent today. I just really want to talk about doors.

So back to my being humbled by someone wanting to reblog my posting on a door…which got me thinking…. You may have seen my post “Never be deterred by the closing of a door” with the images of the Parisian doorknobs…I explained in that post how, on a trip to Paris, I had become captivated by the myriad of beautiful and old doorknobs, I was suddenly noticing, gracing the doors to home and shops all over the city of Paris.

Being a history nut, plus spending my life as a visual arts teacher, I saw the knobs as tangible links to Pairs, her ancient stories, as well as very small intimate pieces of her beautiful art…art that was not showcased or housed in a museum but actually free for everyone to see, touch and enjoy—but a type of art that most people simply walked passed without giving a second glance or thought.

I must confess that it was, however, on an earlier trip to Italy, that my visual interest to such things as doorknobs and doors was actually piqued. I began to understand the importance and history, as well as for the storytelling, which was behind so much of the aging architecture in these ancient European cities and towns. Maybe I feel this way because I am an American who has grown up with urban sprawl mentality– the concept of if it is old tear it down and make way for new, modern and sleek, because we know new is much better than anything old…I am sad to say….and that kind of thinking is indeed oh so wrong, but there I go digressing again.

Our American story is the story of a baby compared to so much of the rest of the world. In the South, life dates to the Civil War, and in some spots, even to the Revolutionary War. Up North, things date to Pilgrims—out West it’s all about cowboys and gold rushes…none of this Mozart slept here, Galileo taught here, Peter and Paul were imprisoned here, Hadrian built this wall, etc, ad infinitim.

So what someone may see as a utilitarian object such as a knob, a door—I see as art, as beauty as history. On the latest trip, the great retirement adventure, I wanted to look at things other than knobs—windows perhaps. I had really liked windows in Italy. My future daughter-n-law told me that Prague was known for having beautiful doors…. maybe it was to be doors.

Once we landed in Zurich and began the acclimation to our new world, I was finding that it was to be doors after all. I began snapping pictures, much to the consternation of my traveling buds…. “Wait, stop here,” “no, wait, here, this is better,” …but soon my weary companions were eager partners in crime as they canvassed our jaunts picking out and choosing the next “star.”

By journey’s end, almost 3 weeks worth of adventure, I probably had 150 shots of doors alone, not to mention my endless pictures of the sites and visions from our overall adventure. The doors are all from Zurich, Switzerland, Innsbruck, Austria, Salzburg, Austria, Vienna, Austria, Prague, the Czech Republic and Berlin, Germany.

There are pictures of doors from the oldest Synagogue in The Czech Republic, to those of historic individuals such as the door to Kepler’s home in Prague, Mozart’s home in Salzburg, Schubert’s humble childhood home in Vienna. There are the ancient doors to mighty Cathedrals and welcoming churches, doors to wealthy homes as well as to humble homes. There are doors to offices, banks, businesses and schools as well as for back alley service doors.

Doors to hotels, bathrooms, restaurants, doors to castles…some of the doors are well worn with age, some appear new. Some of the doors are metal; some are elaborate and decorated with intricate carvings, some simple and plain. Some of the doors have windows; others are just ancient slabs of heavy wood. There is even the door to Angela Merkel’s office at the German Chancellery, which is no different form all of the other doors in the Chancellery—a simple blue door.

I suppose doors may be seen in one of two ways—they are either doors that invite or doors that repel. They are perceived as either shut and forbidding, or open and welcoming. I, for one, have never looked at a door as something that cannot be opened—at least, eventually opened—as in, come back later during operating hours, or, knock or ring the bell and someone will let you in.
Perhaps it’s all a matter of positive and negative. The proverbial glass that is half full or half empty. I just have never taken the time to think that a shut door necessarily means “no, not ever.”

There are reasons, sadly, to lock and bolt doors—as in “don’t come in and rob me, hurt me, steal from me, harm me”—Churches in the big cities, here in the States, use to always keep doors open—24/7. Even now, in the smaller towns, sadly, churches must lock their doors. What once was open for those indeed of some quiet time lost in prayer is now locked tight from those who wish to take that which is not theirs—or those who wish to harm the alone, the single, the lonely. The sad list goes on and on.

But to me, however, a door, the knobs of a door, are all pieces of something beautiful. They are artistic, especially the older ones, the ones not usually found gracing the entrances here in the US. That’s not to say we don’t have pretty doors—we do, it’s just that they are not a prevalent as they are “across the pond.” If we want an old door, we usually have to go out to an antique store in order to buy one—on the other hand, across the pond, their doors have been up for quite some time—a couple of centuries at best.

May you view doors not as mere barriers but rather as stories—stories old as well as new. May you view doors as the handiwork of artisans and carpenters. May you view doors not as stopping points but as beginnings. There are possibilities behind every closed door, the possibilities begin when you knock and turn the knob—and don’t worry if it’s locked—just come back during operating hours.

I’m including a few of my pictures with this post to give you some idea as to the type of doors found on an adventure. I’m also including a couple of the shots of the door book I put together—similar to the book of doorknobs….
Enjoy one person’s take on the utilitarian…

…and to anyone who sees “their” door here…I am sorry if you are upset. I am not making any money from your door–I just thought it beautiful and wanted to share it with those who just pass by it every day without stopping to see beautiful “art.”