“Nobody Steps on A Church in My Town!”

I have pictures of our visit to Notre Dame somewhere.

More importantly, I have the feeling of visiting Notre Dame.

And that feeling is a feeling of quiet peace that I felt visiting pretty much every church I’ve been to, whether in Europe or the Americas.

There is faith in the grandiosity. A love of God in the stained glass, the carefully-carved and laid stone, the hewn wood.

I admit I don’t feel it much the same in LDS churches, but I certainly do in LDS temples. That feeling that you’re in God’s home.

I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France and visited many a church there. I was lucky enough to start my mission in Perigueux, home to the marvelous Cathedral Saint-Front.

I love how the cathedral’s domes and turrets dominate the city landscape, perched close to the Dordogne River.

And I know the church has changed quite a bit as a building over the years, with the domes I love so much appearing in the 19th century. We weren’t always welcomed there as missionaries, but I still loved to go into the building, look at the art and architecture, and imagine seeing God there.

I would love to go back and see it again. Because it is a beautiful building. But also because of the beautiful feelings I felt there. I lived in other towns in France, but when I think cathedral, I think Saint-Front.

Notre Dame I visited with my wife in the late 1990s. The feelings I felt in Perigueux I felt there, walking in the cool light shining through the windows.

To see it burn this week hurts. Because a house of God has burned.

I have no doubt it’ll be restored. Whether for secular or spiritual reasons, the cathedral is important. And whether they replace the oak and lead with more oak and lead, or do something more modern with steel or aluminum, I know God will still be there. That feeling will still be there.

And when churches burned in Louisiana earlier this year – smaller churches, less architecturally-significant churches – I still felt the pain. No one deserves to have their place of worship taken from them.

Or stepped on, as the case may be.