The Stonecutter and the Cathedral

A Parable For Our Times

Once upon a time, a cathedral rose from the earth so high it seemed to pierce the sky.

Once upon a time, in a hut in the shadow of the cathedral's north tower, lived a stonecutter.

The stonecutter, a man as solid and craggy as his craft, lived in the hut of his father, his grandfather, and his grandfather's father, as far back as fathers went. His mother had died when he was but a boy. His wife was a village girl, married to him in the usual circumstances of the time.

The cathedral was very old. It was full of dark corners and whispers. Its tall pillars disappeared into the vault, with a roof that seemed to float above them, over a hundred feet from the stone tiles in the nave. On sunny days, tall and narrow stained glass let in brilliant colors.

For years and years, the village people gathered for services. When services were not in session, tradespeople like the stonecutter made repairs. It was a capacious and complex cathedral; there was always much to do.

Cracks had appeared in the cathedral's walls; these were beyond the skill of the stonecutter. His job was to cut the blocks and tiles used to continue adding details to the cathedral. The people in charge were always adding details. The stonecutter knew, from what his father and grandfather had told him, that the village cathedral was famous throughout the land, and that this fame had drawn rivals, competitor cathedrals that over the years had grown even higher than the stonecutter's cathedral. This upset the people in charge, and they added yet more ornamentation and gargoyles.

The stonecutter's best friend was a master gargoyle sculptor. The friend specialized in making especially fierce and frightening gargoyles, to be hoisted up to the high shoulders of the cathedral walls, above the main buttresses, there to leer and frighten townspeople and other sinners -- fantastic animals, twisted humans, horned representations of the devil.

Over time, the stonecutter's friend and other master sculptors were called upon to carve more saints and gargoyles, as well as leading figures of the church. All this ornamentation had to be hoisted and set in place, either on the interior pillars or the outside walls.

Sometimes, the stonecutter would work on the roof of the cathedral, repairing weather damage. He was glad he wasn't afraid of heights. He'd once seen, as his father and grandfather also had recounted in their own stories, a fellow worker lose his footing and fall with a long wail that was cut short by the stones when he’d landed. That day, the stonecutter had sighed and signed himself, then bent to his work, keeping his mind on his own footing.

Many workers fell to their deaths constructing the cathedral. But the work was steady and brought in food and kept his family sheltered. As the stonecutter's father had said, a few deaths is a small price to pay for something so magnificent.

The stonecutter loved the cathedral. He loved being able to point to this and that location on the walls and say to people that that was where his work helped keep the building strong. He knew his friend pointed to the gargoyles with just as much pride.

But not everyone liked the cathedral. Many in the village, and especially those in the farms round about, thought it was too big. Monstrous, they whispered, and costing far too much in grain and gold. And when a worker died from a fall or a crushing block of stone, other workers whispered that the cost was too high, even as they went back to work and earned bread for another day.

There were outsiders, too. Some said they came from rival villages. They pointed to the cathedral and said loudly that it was flawed, that it was out of proportion, that there were too many ornaments, that the stones were cracked, that the ground was uneven and sinking on one side, that the whole thing might come crashing down at any moment.

But the village leaders and the people in charge yelled, Impossible! The cathedral was strong, and being strengthened every day by the hard work of so many skilled hands. Still, they never offered to increase the pay for the workers; indeed, the amount of work increased over time for the same amount of pay. And if a worker crossed a foreman or let his whispers of discontent be overheard by the overseer, woe betide that man! Instant banishment. Sometimes, a loyal worker would be surprised by instant banishment. Someone must have said something. Surely there was a mistake.

And then some leaders from their own village began complaining, just as the outside leaders had. The cathedral was too much -- too much stone, too much glass, too many pillars, too many statues and gargoyles and tiles and nooks and crannies and pews and decorations. It needed to be stripped, they said, brought back to foundations, they insisted. Half of everything must go, they asserted. And they claimed that only they knew which half to keep, and which to throw away.

All this led to uncertainty and anxiety. The stonecutter continued to make the repairs he was told to do, but he still worried: would he be banished next?

Then the people in charge decided that the cathedral needed to be taller still. So they commanded that the tops of the towers be pulled apart, so that the towers could be made still higher. But the workers protested for their safety, and the outsiders and dissident leaders from inside loudly declared that this would be unsafe. Even with this, the people in charge told everyone the work had to continue.

The stonecutter continued working, harder than ever but for the same gold he’d received before. The cathedral tax increased for everyone it seemed. The stonecutter found it harder to support his family, and he began to mutter like many around him that the people in charge seemed to be doing rather well. They strutted around the place in fine clothes, while the stonecutter and other workers made do with patched rags.

Everything became more expensive. Bakers charged more for bread. Millers charged more for flour and brewers for beer. Spinners charged more for yarn, and tailors and weavers and cobblers charged more for wool and thread and shirts and shoes. And everyone blamed the people in charge and pointed to the cathedral as the source of their misery. And the outsiders and dissidents encouraged them in this.

Because there was so much work to be done, making the towers taller, the walls were neglected. The pillars displayed deeper and deeper cracks. The buttresses creaked and groaned.

Then the stonecutter and his friend noticed that other workers began to show up. No one knew where the other workers came from. They only knew that the other workers were a different kind of outsiders, who looked different, who did their work quietly and well, and who went to homes unknown to the village workers.

People said that's when the stealing began, even though the stonecutter and his friend had known that thieves had been among them from the beginning. The workers felt threatened and whispered that the strange outsiders did shoddy work, that the strange outsiders were stealing from the honest local workers, that everything cost more because of the strange outsiders, that the cracks in the pillars that had been there all along were still the fault of the strange outsiders, that the gargoyles were uglier because of the strange outsiders, that the rain and the wind and the mud and disease and the deaths of children and the workers falling off the walls and the creaking and groaning of the buttresses were all because of the strange outsiders.

Then one dark and windy day, with rain assailing them in sheets, workers high on the south tower had an accident, and huge chunks of stone fell and crashed through the cathedral roof, smashing into the pews inside and shattering the tiles, and huge chunks smashed into the cracked pillars, which began to shake, and the buttresses strained to hold the walls, but the forces were too strong, the buttresses cracked, and the walls blew outward and rained stones and shattered glass, brilliant shards slashing through the people and huge slabs crushing terrified workers who could not run away fast enough or others who, knowing they couldn't run, stood and awaited their deaths.

And all was blood and ruin.

The dust rose to heaven and mixed with the wails of women and children who had survived. And some of the workers managed to survive as well, and they emerged, dazed and bruised, gazing upon the bones and caved skulls of local and outsider intermingled, the distinctions made meaningless by the extinction of so many lives, the blood mixed red and flowing, rivers of blood from all the people washing over the cracked and crumbled tiles.

From under heaps of stone and rubble, the stonecutter and his friend the gargoyle sculptor emerged. They staggered around, seeing sky where a huge stone creation had once stood. They staggered around, seeing rubble and stones and glass and blood and bones where once had stood the cathedral which, despite all its flaws and ugly corners, they had maintained and loved.

All gone now. No leaders to tell them what to do. How to build.

Whether to build again.

The stonecutter felt arms wrap around his legs in a fierce hug. He saw his children. His friend the same, wrapped in children. Their wives embraced them.

They stopped then, breathing hard like horses far overworked. They watched as others emerged, dusty shapes amid the shadows of ruin. Like the stonecutter and his friend, these shapes turned and arched their backs toward an unfamiliar sky, knowing that the solid foundations and immovable stones and glass that had been their lives no longer anchored them.

These others, so dusty that survivors could not tell insider from outsider, nor outsider from insider, lurched toward the stonecutter and then stopped. Others, children, women, the very old, flowed toward them from the more distant huts that had been spared from the awful ruin. Slowly, the separate shapes merged and became a crowd, facing the stonecutter and his friend.

The stonecutter thought long and hard. He gazed over the rubble of his work, his father's work, his grandfather's work, and the work of all the generations who had built the cathedral up from a patch of earth under an ancient sky. He gazed at the rubble, thinking hard; until at last, he knew what to do.

He untwined the fingers of his children but kept his family close. He knew that he would find the chisel when he bent down. He knew he would find a large stone, the remnant of one pillar, now humbled and indistinguishable from the other stones. Yet this would be the one.

Out of the rubble, he would create one beautiful block. When it was finished, he would set it as a foundation. Select another stone. Put his chisel to work. Create the second block. Place it next to the first. And so on, and on.

He sighed wearily. He watched his friend find a tool and a stone as well.

He surveyed the crowd, seeing all the suffering faces, the shock, the despair, the wounded, the blamers and the blamed bloodied in equal measure. And all eyes the same. All eyes with questions. All eyes watching.

With the crowd as their witness, the stonecutter and his friend knelt amid the rubble, set tools to stones, and began.