The Wake.

[This is not the post with the comics.]

This weekend I went back to my alma mater to say goodbye. It was the final commencement before Cascade College closed its doors, fallen victim to Tough Economic Times after only 15 years of existence.

Cascade was my employer for nine years, my first post-grad-school job and the longest I've ever worked anywhere. But before that, Cascade College was the school I graduated from, striding down the aisle between tall House and taller Hill, all of us proud members of the first graduating class of our institution. And before that, it was a dream realized, the reincarnation of the well-loved but financially disastrous Columbia Christian College.

Columbia was where I lived my first year of college life. It was a magical place, and I don't mean that hyperbolically. What I mean is, things happened there that defied my understanding of how the world works. Big things, beautiful things. Oh, it was doomed even then; we were warned before we showed up to campus that the school might lose its accreditation that year. But people still came, such was the reputation of the place. I believe there were around 100 students that year, which is quite a few if you consider that the total student body never got much above 400 at the best of times.

And the people who came... well, they weren't ordinary people. Most of the staff and faculty were pretty much volunteering their time at that point, waiting on deferred paychecks that they knew might never come. The quality of instruction varied, but more than a few of the professors were remarkably gifted, and every last one of them cared deeply about the students. And the students were talented, passionate, funny, warm and radiant people who welcomed all 10 or so freshmen with open arms. It never would have occurred to me that people who were that cool would want to be my friends. But that was never in question. Insightful as these people were, they were apparently blind to the heavy cloud of social stigma that seemed to shadow my secondary school years. They didn't recognize that I was a born outcast. As far as they were concerned, I belonged.

And for me, that changed everything.

The students were why Cascade happened. They were determined that this was not the end, and their enthusiasm, commitment, and hard work fueled the process that led Oklahoma Christian University to take a gamble on a west coast campus. While I went off to a year of school in Nebraska (which had a similarly profound effect on my development, but that's another story), many of my colleagues set aside academic progress, stayed on campus, and worked to rebuild, recruit, and give life to the dream we shared. And the next fall, when I came back, O mirabilis, there were classes on my campus again, and all the employees got paid.

The story of the next fifteen years is more or less the story of any organization that begins with high ideals and pure intentions. People came and went, some of them the better for their time there, some of them not. Decisions were made that had good and bad repercussions. Cascade was many things to many people; it was even many different things to me. It was a cause to which I rallied, an experiment in the unlikely, an ongoing collision of ideals and reality, a place to grow, a place to struggle for and against, a place that meant so much to me that when it was time to leave, it took me years to see it. The one thing it was not was a failure. We all wanted that institution to grow, thrive, and bless the lives of generations. But in a decade and a half, it managed to do an awful lot of good.

I was not at Commencement, but I was there for many of the weekend's events. There were so many amazing people, so many kinds of relationships represented: my professors and my students, my classmates and colleagues, acquaintances and close friends and used-to-be close friends, and an embarrassing number of people whose names I could not for the life of me recall. The buzz of so many greetings, so many hugs and how-are-yous ran counter to the aching awareness that we were there to close a book, to put a body in the ground. Several people told me things like "It doesn't seem real" or "It hasn't hit me yet." I nodded. During the last chapel, in an auditorium packed with people singing old hymns and new in rich four-part vocal harmony, I was conscious of the distance I put between myself and what was happening, of choosing numbness over being really present and open. Sometimes I forget how good I am at this. Curious to see if the emotion was still there or had dried up completely, I eased open the tap just the tiniest bit, and spent the next several minutes feverishly trying to shut it off again. It will hit me when I let it.

There is a thing I believe about God, though it is not a thing I have found anywhere in the Bible. It is that no service done for him, no sacrifice made in his name, is wasted. It may be flawed in a thousand ways; it may be more ridiculous than useful; it may be an utter failure or even cause real harm. (I am not describing Cascade with any of this.) But I believe the gifts we offer to God are received by him in their imperfection, as we also are received by him, with infinite grace, with welcoming compassion, and with a joy beyond our capacity for it.