This past weekend, I spent the better part of four days in Saint Paul on the campus of my alma mater, Macalester College. The occasion was Reunion Weekend, and in particular, the gathering of my class - The Class of 1971 - for our 45-Year Reunion. In spite of some contrary weather on both Friday and Saturday, I don't think that the spirit of the weekend was dampened in the least.

 

As part of the committee entrusted with encouraging our classmates to return for this weekend, I was also part of the group who served to welcome our brothers and sister back to campus. It was really great getting to see friends I hadn't seen in some time . . . like forty-five years, as well as to get acquainted or re-acquainted with others I did not know very well, largely because I did not step outside of my comfort zone often enough and extend myself out into the larger and more diverse community which Macalester was, and still is.

 

Over the weekend, I got to spend a good deal of time with several of these individuals and became engaged in significant conversations with them. The conversations were fun and they were challenging, and they left me feeling a bit disappointed that I didn't get to know some of these folks all those years ago. From our chats, I discovered that I had spent four years in the presence of some rather awesome, insightful folks, who had the potential to help me see and experience a lot more than I did. My time at Macalester from 1967-1971 was amazing and I would never exchange it for anything else, but in a sense, it was incomplete. Who knows what it could have been had I stepped aside from the known and the comfortable, and learned more from those who surrounded me, but were never encountered.

 

Grace and Peace,

Rick