I’ve discovered over the years that I’m a very object-based learner. Like probably most people, the life lessons that seem to sink in the most are the ones that ones I’m able to garner from situations or circumstances that I experience. And since Architecture is my career, I seem to get a lot of them from buildings…
Last year, I spent most of my professional time helping to design a new hospital downtown. This building takes up essentially a city block and is about 7 stories tall. It’s the latest project in a hospital complex that, like many urban Medical Districts, encompasses several blocks. The new building sits almost directly across the street from the main entrance to the entire complex. The road that divides the new building from the existing entrance building (and the rest of the multi-block complex) is heavily trafficked and is one of the main connectors between the Medical District and Downtown proper.
One of the aspects of the building that I was tasked with leading was the design of an enclosed pedestrian bridge that connected this new building to the existing complex. Fortunately, this was not the first bridge project that I had been a part of; in fact, it’s the third bridge I’ve done for the same client, across the same street, all within two blocks of each other. So. I’ve learned a lot about building bridges over the years.
The Divide
Our church has been spending the past several months in a season of prayer and fasting in the wake of Flyod’s killing and the unrest that has spilled over as a result. We have an intentionally diverse congregation that crosses racial, cultural, and socio-economic lines, so the anger and confusion and tension that have played out across the nation have played out right in our own body as well.
The division we experienced as a result was very surprising to me. I couldn’t understand why all of this was such a big deal. Should it have been surprising? Probably not. But it was. I’ll have explain why in another post. (I tried to start here, but it quickly quadrupled the length of this post…)
Suffice to say that the rift between majority and minority brethren seemed to intensify; we found ourselves distanced both emotionally (due to the national events) and physically (due to Covid). There was a clear divide between us that seemed all of a sudden to be this vast, hopeless chasm.
A Deeper Metaphor
People use the term “building bridges” all the time as a metaphor for fostering unity between different people groups. It’s generally useful as a concept, acknowledging that there are two distinct and separate sides, and that work needs to be done in order for the two to meet up.
However, when most people think about building bridges, they think connections between two land-masses. Roads over rivers or gorges, that kind of thing. They think of adding something to both sides that touch them both and that they both share. That’s generally what “building” means – to work to add something that wasn’t there before. And while that’s true, what hardly anyone thinks about is all of the deconstruction work that has to happen to both sides before that additive work can begin.
On the hospital project, building a pedestrian bridge across the divide meant that we had to remove a large portion of the existing cladding on the existing building. However, as with almost every renovation project, once you start pulling the cladding off, you find a whole bunch of stuff underneath you didn’t know was there, stuff that had been hidden for 30 years or more.
Sometimes you find that things that have rotted out or decayed over time. Other times you find things like utility lines or other weird components that are not supposed to be there. Other times you find that the very structure itself isn’t where it’s supposed to be, or is not the size or shape that the original drawings said it was. All of these things have to be dealt with before trying to put a new bridge in. But you have to rip the skin off first to find out.
Ripping Off the Skin
That’s what the past several months have felt like for us at our church. The conversations we’ve had and the things we’ve read and heard and thought about have felt like us having our emotional and cultural skin torn off to expose what’s underneath.
And guess what? What we found was not as pretty and in-order as we thought it was. Some parts of our bones, the very structure on which the rest of our lives had been built for as long as we’ve existed, were not where they were supposed to be. Our structure was wrong, or at the very least incapable with new accommodation. And we can’t build any bridges until that’s been dealt with.
Again, the existing hospital had been standing just fine on it’s own for decades. But it wasn’t ready to receive that new connection until the skin was removed and its bones were operated on.
And take it from me, having seen this many bridges built now in my career, this is an extremely arduous and messy task. It is not only painful, but is incredibly disruptive to the inner workings of the facility.
Count the Cost
Again, building bridges is not just an additive process. It takes a deep and painful and costly gouging out of existing facades and structures before the flashy new addition can begin.
Sure, the hospital could have just put up a new truss and walkway, put a roof on top and clad the whole thing with glass and stucco without cutting into the existing wall. But what point would that serve? To have a walkway inside that just dead-ends into an old concrete wall? To have the appearance of a bridge without an actual, functional connection?
What are the relationships in your life where you want to “build bridges”? With whom do you want to develop a deeper connection? Are you willing to have your skin ripped off and your bones exposed? How much are you willing to reconfigure your structure and have your world disrupted to accommodate a true, functional connection with Another?
