Restoration: A Practice of Making New

This week I was moved to tears by a news segment on the reopening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

It caught me off guard. I’m not a particularly religious woman. If anything, I practice a broad kind of faith that lives a bit outside of traditional religion.

But something about the majesty of a loved and frequented house of prayer that sits at the heart of a city and captures the spirit of a community – in any faith – has always touched to me.

I remember feeling rattled to my core when the iconic building was lost to flames in 2019. As the restoration team revealed the fruits of their labor in the soft reopening this week, what struck me was the power of devastation and subsequent restoration to breathe new life and rejuvenation into a previously stagnant reality.

As in nature. As in structures. As in religion. As in life.

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you know that I live in the heart of the Santa Cruz mountains – in a fire zone that was devastated in 2020, during the COVID pandemic. My own house (which I was not living in at the time) survived the flames, but the roof was later crushed by a falling redwood tree branch, sparking the former to initiate a significant restoration project and eventually sell the home.

I later moved in and took the next steps: an upgrade that involved stripping down, re-tiling repainting and refurbishing the space to serve as my home office and private retreat in the woods where healing conversations and innovative work now takes place.

Many of my neighbors’ homes, however, were not so lucky. Insurance did not cover the rebuild. Permits have been hard to come by, and many empty lots still remain between standing homes in my neighborhood. But new life still prevails. Branches began to grow back on trees. New families move into the neighborhood. And new hope eventually began to return.

In nature, the creative cycle of destruction and restoration is essential to the health of any ecosystem.

Wildfires serve a crucial healing purpose. Yet in our current human society, we tend to believe that what we’ve built should carry on forever.

But why should it? How could it? As our consciousness continues to evolve… as our needs and priorities change… doesn’t it make sense that our structures would also need to surrender their current form and ultimately be restored?

As in structures. As in life. As in the human body…

When I teach about resilience, I do my best to draw upon a variety of sources. Intentionally, I include approaches that favor both grit and grace.

Grit, the coveted ability to stay strong during a crisis, to stand our ground, and to bounce back in the face of adversity, is a very good thing. But I have found that grit – the idea that human resilience is primarily about keeping it together, while the world is falling apart, is only half of the story.

On the shadow side, it can lead us to falsely presenting (or even falsely evaluating) ourselves and holding on to things whose utility may have actually expired.

This year I’ve had the privilege of coaching client who lost her mother. While the original goal behind our engagement was to improve her leadership at work, surrendering to the full humanness of her grief has become her new priority. She came into our training program burned out. She knew that she needed some new strategies in order to be able to lead at the next level.

By the power of Grace, she is now finding a different kind of strength in faith, right timing, and surrender.

When you look more broadly at the research on resilience, you will find that it also includes: Being willing to let go. Finding connection in community. Moving emotion through traditional indigenous practices like healing song and dance. Softening in the face of resistance. Receiving others’ support. Embracing failure and rewriting your goals.

But what does this have to do with restoration?

When the men and women who spoke about the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral shared their sentiments, they highlighted the fact that the devastation was so severe that nobody was sure if it could be done.

They also spoke about cleaning up years of grime, not just from the fire, but from degradation, wear and tear that came with the use of the structure over time. And they spoke about bringing forward a brilliance that would not have been uncovered, had the devastation of the fire never happened.

Perhaps this revitalized structure, influenced by the hearts and hands that restored it, could also give birth to a more generous and loving faith that gets back to the heart of the religion it was originally built to house.

When things fall apart, we have the opportunity to take stock of what really matters. To dig deeper to find the true essence underneath the original form.

And we have the opportunity to engage in a process of restoration –

Of our structures. Of our own human bodies and psyches. But it isn’t just an act of building the same thing again. It is a creative expression, led by the heart, that makes us even better.

I invite you consider these questions as you move through your week:

• What structures in your life, work, relationships, community or organization could benefit from a cleansing by fire?
• What brilliance might lie beneath?

Sit and meditate with the questions. Jog the questions. Dance the questions or bring them into your yoga practice. And if concrete answers come, I encourage you to listen.

To our restoration,

LeeAnn