A Time to Rebuild

TUNE IN: APPLE PODCASTS I SPOTIFY I STITCHER

“Sometimes glass has to break for the light to shine through,”

says Lana Negrete on Episode 12, A Time to Rebuild, as she explains how she’s been able to find the gifts in the tearing down of her business during the 2020 Santa Monica Riots.

In Ecclesiastes 3, the Bible says there is “a time to tear down and a time to build.” *

2020 was a time to tear down.

The virus forced us to tear down the old ways of work, recreation, and worship. Answers to questions we’d been agonizing over for years, “is this where we belong? Is this relationship good for us?” became crystal clear. We said goodbye to relationships of convenience and habit and stopped dimming our personalities to make others more comfortable.

Some of us even pursued things that we’d always wanted to do but had been too scared to try.

The shifting landscape of our souls was reflected in the protests and outcry against racial injustice that erupted all over the country.

Lana Negrete, owner of Santa Monica Music Center and Outreach Through the Arts with Ryan Sickler, Host of The HoneyDew Podcast. Posted with Lana Negrete’s permission.

On May 31, miles away from the organized protesters, looters tore down and nearly destroyed The Santa Monica Music Center. According to Lana Negrete, owner of the fifty-year-old business, the looters were more than opportunists taking advantage of the situation. They were the evidence of a greater societal illness.

In Episode 12, Lana takes us behind the scenes of the news footage of the 2020 riots, describing the difference between the looters and the protesters. And shares how she, a small business and non-profit owner, used the pain of nearly losing it all to pivot her business and her perspective.

Learn how she can have compassion for the very people who nearly destroyed her livelihood. You will be moved by her graciousness and the outpouring of support and generosity of her community. You will be amazed that it was because of this massively traumatic event that she was able to see one of her greatest dreams come true, a chance to rebuild an even better, more magnanimous non-profit for the arts.

Loved ones, as we step into 2021, it is now time to rebuild.

*Ecclesiastes 3, The Holy Bible, NIV version:

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

  a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.