A Letter from Dr. Jake Bucher

"Return to Nepantla: Consolation, Desolation – and Restoration"

Our work to secure the future of Regis continues to require us to make difficult decisions that reshape programs, roles, and in some cases, the day-to-day lives of colleagues we care about deeply. Even when those decisions are necessary, even when they are made with care and intention, they carry loss and that loss deserves to be grieved.

In institutional life, there can be a tendency to move quickly from decision to implementation, from disruption to the next plan, from grief to something that feels more productive. But grief does not operate on a timeline that aligns neatly with budgets, calendars, or strategic priorities – it lingers. It shows up in quiet ways, in hallway conversations, in meetings that feel different than they used to, in the absence of people and programs that shaped who we have been and if we skip over that, we risk becoming efficient, but not whole.

Returning to our fall townhall conversation on nepantla (in-between space) as well as our Jesuit tradition, we are called to be attentive to healing but not yet being healed, to the movements of consolation and desolation, to what is being lost as well as what is being built. It invites us to sit, at least for a moment, with what hurts. That hurt comes in what I learned as the “five D’s of desolation” – feeling discouraged, disheartened, doubt-filled, dejected, and driven into the ground. While we are encouraged not to dwell in those indefinitely, we are encouraged to neither rush past them and to acknowledge that grief is not a distraction from our work, it is part of our work when we care about the people and the mission entrusted to us.

And while grief is important to honor, grief is not the end of the story. In working with President Cooper Whitehead, she has shared her vision for, and commitment to, restoration. Restoration is not about returning to what was. It is about asking, together, what is now possible because we are willing to engage this moment honestly? What needs to be repaired in our structures, in our relationships, in our sense of trust? And what needs to be reimagined so that the future we are building is not simply smaller or leaner, but more aligned with who we are called to be?

Restorative work requires participation. It is not something that happens through a single decision or from a single office. It happens in how we show up for one another in conversations that are direct and humane, in a willingness to listen even when it is uncomfortable, and in a commitment to rebuild in ways that are not only effective, but just, so that our coming sesquicentennial is less the celebration of an end to 150 years and more the start of another 150.

That is not easy work. It asks us to hold two truths at once: that something real has been lost, and that something meaningful can still be built. Thank you for continuing to show up in that tension with care for one another, with honesty about what this moment asks of us, and with a shared commitment to restoring – in whatever ways we can – the strength and spirit of this community.