On rebuilding

Seneca wrote On Providence to answer a single objection, put to him by his young friend Lucilius: if the world is governed by a rational order, why do good people suffer misfortune? His reply refused the easy comfort. He argued that hardship is not the failure of providence but its instrument, the friction by which a person is worked into something finished. The image of the gem is deliberate. Nothing valuable is arrived at smooth. The blows are the making.

This week the Benjamin W. Mount Auditorium inside the Central School Arts and Humanities Center in Lake Charles, Louisiana, reopened its doors. Nearly six years after Hurricane Laura devastated the facility, the historic auditorium has officially reopened. The people who returned did not get their old building back untouched. They rebuilt it with new lighting, speakers, and a theater control booth, integrating the technology without sacrificing the historic beauty. The damage set the terms of the restoration. What was rebuilt is more capable than what the storm took.