Letter to a friend:
“Building a Cathedral”

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My friend,

We are currently celebrating in France the 800 years of the Reims cathedral! 1211-2011. It is a very impressive monument, a true masterpiece. The main construction took place between 1211 and 1291, roughly 80 years, under the leadership of three consecutive architects. It is easy to imagine that the number of people who worked on this program is huge. Many of them spent their full life working hard on it knowing that they will never see the final result. The stonemasons, the carpenters, the blacksmiths, the roofers, the glaziers and many others specialists, contributes to the construction, each one performing its limited work without the knowledge of the overall design. In other words, they probably had a somewhat limited perception of the overall picture neither did they know that the building will have such a long life

But they knew perfectly that they were building something for the glory of God, something very important which will attract the blessing of God. They were proud to bring their capabilities for the good of the collectivity.

I was chatting the other day with a project engineer working on a small regional submarine cable project. He was basically in charge of the project detailed planning and the associated logistic. I quickly realized that he didn’t had what one could call a submarine cable culture ; no idea about the history of the domain ; no real sense of the technology involved ; unable to give  the names of the main players, unaware of the current large projects, etc.

I could not believe it! I was not surprised to hear that his job was not too attractive to him and that he was already looking at other opportunities!

My friend, how is it possible that this guy has not been made aware that he was contributing, modestly but surely, to the construction of a Cathedral?


Jean Devos
AQEST Senior Advisor
Submarcom consulting


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