Doubt the First.
Cry the Second.
Love the Third.
Live the Fourth.
If you have made a Kairos at any point, you have heard to live the Fourth. Living the Fourth is taking the lessons you have learned on the Kairos weekend and putting them into action. For most, the "Kai-high" you receive after Kairos lasts for maybe a month, then you lose the necklace until the next time when you are on Kairos team, in which case your "Kai-high" lasts for a small bit longer, before slightly fading out before you graduate.
Now, if you are sitting in my case, I go to a Jesuit school where everyone sports their Kairos necklace, whether it be in class, out on the weekends, or just hanging out in the dorms. We have a retreat at my school that is very similar to Kairos, and the kids get the same "high."
The question still stands, though: what do kids do if they do not have that in college? How do they continue to live the Fourth if they do not have similar experiences in college?
Living the Fourth passes beyond the confines of high school. While the "Kai-High" may not stick for long, the idea of living the Fourth is a mentality that lasts far beyond the weekend of Kairos, and if you try hard enough, far beyond the years of high school. Living the Fourth encompasses ideas that pass so far beyond Kairos. To live the Fourth means to find God in all things and to put love into everything you do. Living the Fourth is accepting those around you, flaws and all. That is an idea that spreads far beyond what Kairos does and can be taken to those in the real world, no matter who they are. Living out the Fourth is living out your faith, whatever that may mean to you.
How does this stand with a person who is struggling and is begging for a new Kairos experience, but cannot find one?
Kairos teaches people to make their faith their own. By the time you leave high school, you are thrown into an adulthood harder than anything you may have experienced throughout your young life. Faith becomes a mature, adult action just as everything else. The roots made in Kairos can help you realize that with the freedom you gain with adulthood, you gain freedom in faith. That faith can be expressed however, whenever, and wherever you so wish. The beauty of a mature faith is it can take you as near or as far as you need to go in life, and in the end, it is all yours.
When learning of diversity of others and acceptance of their flaws as well as your own, you learn the positive consequences of acceptance and the positive effect of positivity in others' lives. The basis gained at Kairos can be a pushing factor in the way you treat others later on in life.
Although Kairos may only last for a short weekend in high school, faith lasts forever. It is always changing and always evolving, and Kairos is the perfect example of that diverse faith and opening one up to the freedom of a mature faith.
So no matter where life leads you, remember this: you may not know a person's background, and they may not have the same experiences as you, but you can always live the Fourth out to whomever you meet.
