It is very strange and wonderful to be back at Corrymeela. Corrymeela has several lounges that are used for retreat guests, and as fate would have it, our designated lounge is not the same as we had earlier this fall...it is instead the exact same lounge I had more than 3 years ago on my very first Corrymeela visit. Corrymeela has always been a place of rest and remembrance for me, and now especially so. I expected to have a weekend that would bring a sense of closure and completion to this semester, but when I sat in the cozy little room and thought back to the last time i'd been there, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of accomplishment that stretched all the way back through my college years, bringing me a sort of double closure: for this trip and for my college experience as a whole. In my very early days of college I sat here in Corrymeela and wondered what N.Ireland would be like...what it would be like to be gone for a semester...what it would be like to return to bluffton after having a semester experience here.
Now, three years later I can think back and remember how all of my hopes and fears evolved and resolved. The questions about college are behind me, and in their place is a feeling of remembrance for the long and adventurous college experience I've had. What a wonderful and unique journey its been.
I suppose you could say that my college experience began and ended with Corrymeela: with Northern Ireland. And how changed my college days have been because of the things I've seen and enjoyed here...
Indeed, its a strange and full sense of completion and accomplishment that I have today.
The borders of Bluffton University stretch far if you let them.
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