After saying goodnight to other students, Megan and her three friends walked back to their cabin. It was late, but they were still energized and stood outside in the dusk. “Hey, in case this gets hard, why don’t we make a pact to stick by one another no matter what?” Carly suggested. The others agreed. They positioned themselves around the tall stump near the front of the cabin. Each put her right hand one on top of the other. “I swear on my pink high tops that I will do my best to help us all get through this course,” Stacy began “I swear on my flute that I will be there for each of you,” Jana added as she looked each girl in the eye. “I swear….” Carly paused, “on my Uncle Jake’s blessing.” Megan was left. She had no idea what to dedicate in this case. Looking down at the pile of hands, she blurted out. “I swear on my...HANDS!” Megan could not explain why she said that or what it meant. The brief swearing in was completed. The girls then raised their hands up from the stump in an arc that reached upward and then to the outside of the circle. In that moment, something happened that each of them experienced quite differently. “Hey! What was that?” Stacy shrieked. “Did you see the flash of light? Was that your uncle’s blessing? I’ve heard of things like this in science fiction stories.” “It was like a sparkly rainbow of colors,” cried Jana. “I didn’t see any light or colors, but everything looked different for a moment–like a ripple…like the way heat on pavement makes ripples in the light,” added Carly. Megan saw nothing. Instead, she experienced a split second of peaceful openness where she felt expanded, as if her spirit were part of some larger or greater being. “Maybe it was a distortion in the space-time continuum,” Stacy added, “like in science fiction stories.” “Yeah,” Megan nodded. She wondered if anyone else felt what she had felt.