The death of our brother Kyle during junior year seared a road through our collective heart, destroying all that was profane in our lives. This road broke through our days as we had known them and shattered the normalcy of life. It dragged us many levels deeper then the typical teenage fare did. We fell hard and we fell together.
Just as death cut through us and intensified our interactions with our lives, a second force, both older and more powerful then death rose to complete the process. A force that turns profound life riddles into poems and illuminates meaning in chaos was activated deep within us to transform the broken pieces of the collective heart. The type of love that emerged in the community was love that had already been present; built within the infrastructure of the program and laying latent as potential within the nervousness of our freshmen smiles. Our heartbreak created a shift in the air, in our perspectives, in our psyches. This shift revealed what had been waiting for us as we grew. When the normalcy of our days was destroyed and time itself seemed to distort, a new kind of self emerged from each and every one of us; a self only present before in the glimmers of electricity that tease every soul.
We come from different backgrounds, we have vastly different perspectives on life and we certainly all look different, but when we were the most disillusioned we sought solace in each other. A tremendous love was indeed present within the differences and tension that existed between us.
When I look at my classmates now I see young people who have been touched with things older than time. The potential of freshmen year has fully exploded and actualized. The seeds of destiny and character that we held within us erupted when jarred by the twining of pain and magic, light and dark, love and death.
What makes CAS a brilliant and revolutionary program is the recognition that the work of the world is not done, that it hangs in the balance waiting to be pushed into a new direction. The institutions that uphold social inequalities are temporary, and the persistent chaos and heartbreak that plague our world are similarly transitional stages. The work that must be done in a global sense is the same work that I have seen in my CASmates. As people we have transformed from the naive potential of our freshmen selves into people in contact with deeper truths. Likewise I think the world today will age a similar transition and grow from chaotic potential into a more mature and beautiful self. In CAS acknowledgement of personal power has been built into the program; it affirms the strength of our transformations when dealing with the world. It remembers that that which occurs within somehow shifts without, that our personal revolutions have somehow left the world changed. The world is ultimately created in the images that we hold inside, and those have now been shaded and outlined in the ink of our connection to each other and the depths of ourselves. The veil between the world we live in and the world we wish to create will be pierced by the type of love that is created in communities like CAS amongst teachers and students, people of all backgrounds and abilities.
We move out into the world different people then who we were. We have encountered the mystery: the mystery of who we might become, the mystery of the Other, the mystery of different people coming together in community, and the mystery of loving deeply and having life end. However, paradoxically, even when we lost we gained. When we fell we were gathered up again by love that emerged from distant corners, we felt hands on all sides rush to keep us up, to give us a reassuring squeeze, to match us pulse to pulse, to confirm that connection was present. Having encountered this, I know we move forth, and there is a part of us deep inside that can never truly be afraid again.
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