It’s fun to see pictures of people or houses or cars before and after they have undergone a makeover. Sometimes it’s hard to see how they could be images of the same person or thing. Restoration is a process of recognizing what was there all along, and bringing it to light.
What have you been able to recognize and bring forward so that others could see it as well?
“But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.”
― Alan Paton
When have you chosen to pursue restoration when you were tempted to punish?
Sometimes restoration is simply not possible—there is no way to get things back to the way they were. But sometimes it is possible to make something new out of the wreckage, like a mosaic from the shards of broken pottery.
How have you found or made something new out of what could not be restored?
Being out of tune is a problem of damaged relationships—the notes on an instrument or between instruments have become out of sync, discordant. Tuning an instrument is a careful, meticulous and sometimes tedious process of careful listening and small adjustments to restore the harmony of the relationships between notes.
What do you do to keep your relationships in tune?
The difference between restoration and something that is given up as beyond hope tends to lie in the determination and creativity of the one who would do the repair. Some things really can’t be fixed, but it’s amazing what a combination will and imagination can do.
When have you managed to stick with something until you came up with a creative solution?
