The old wooden barn serves as a performance hall and gathering space on the campus. Wooden floors, wooden walls, high rafter ceilings and big windows for the early summer sunshine. Youth from around the state has gathered for a three day retreat on the topic of diversity, inclusiveness and social progress. We all flooded into the barn. Standing among a sea of strangers, a cacophony of footsteps and echoing chatter. Then silence. We were instructed to form a circle. There were many of us. The circle was big. The leader was in the center. They didn’t speak, just slowly walked around the inside of the circle. When they reached you, you did what they did. Hands together. Start to rub, slowly at first, then with increased speed. A whisper emerges like the wind through the trees.  Snaps transform the wind’s whisper into a pitter patter of far-away rain. Knee slaps swirl the rain into imminent energy – the storm is on our doorstep. Stomping harnesses the energy and the storm arrives with a deafening thunder reverberating around us, among us, within us. Our timid adolescent energy has been unlocked. We are all looking around with joyous smiles on our faces. Strangers no more, drenched in the moment. Like all storms, this one passes, guided by the grace of the center.  As it recedes, the storm has washed away, for a moment, the shyness and self-doubt. It leaves behind a calm stillness and a space for connection.