December 26, 2025

For the remainder of the year, we're sneaking into the archives to celebrate some of your favorites from 2025. Today's Respite is from January, when we stood in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Good morning!

It’s Thursday [but really Friday], and there she is.

Notre Dame Cathedral has stood here for over 800 years. She was ransacked during the French Revolution, temporarily converted to a food storage warehouse, and then nearly destroyed when another revolutionary government briefly seized control of the city.

And six years ago, thanks to that double-edged sword called the Internet, the world watched in horror as she was engulfed in flames. The spire collapsed, the roof caved, and the walls wobbled—but they did not fall.

For almost six years, she’s been hidden behind walls and beneath a mountain of scaffolding while an international squadron of artists and craftspeople set about rebuilding her.

And now, freed from the walls and scaffolding, her doors are once again open.

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

― Howard Zinn

Onwards we go,

Clara