City Church SF November 2024 Retreat

So I attended City Church SF for about a year and a half (Jan 2023 ~ June 2024). I ended up leaving as I got married and my husband and I wanted to find a closer church to attend (City Church is unfortunately an hour away from us). I really miss the community and although we can’t visit on Sundays anymore, I remember really loving their retreats. So my husband and I signed up for their Spiritual Retreat in Redwood Glen in Loma Mar, CA.

DAY ONE

I actually had driven up the road to get to the conference grounds before to help second shoot an elopement ! It’s deep in the mountains west of Palo Alto, and it passes a few mountain towns. One of the towns has this place called “Alice’s Restaurant” that I’ve always wanted to try to go to but never have yet. It sits at the intersection of these two roads and looks very quaint.

Anyways, the plan was to get to the camp grounds at 7pm Friday as that was the check-in time. When we were right at the entrance of the conference grounds, we got lost because the residential housing right at the entrance threw me off, making me think it was a residential neighborhood. So I turned us around and went down the other road adjacent to the conference entrance, which I noticed had no buildings or housing at all. I stepped outside for a brief moment and it was so scary being outside. It was a dark expanse and dead silent, making me feel so vulnerable being in the woods in the mountains. It was sort of cool, but mostly horrifying, so I quickly headed back into my car.

We eventually decided to go back up the road that looked like a residential neighborhood and lo and behold, it brought us to a bunch of the meeting rooms and the office entrance area of the conference grounds. We found our lodging area – Siden – and settled down in our room for a bit. The person checking us in was someone I had not seen since June, so that was fun for me ! Our room was basically like an older-looking hotel. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was comfortable and nice to have our own space and bathroom:

The view from our window:

The first thing on the agenda was ‘community time’, which was basically fellowship time. I got to catch up briefly with a handful of people I had not seen for a while, and then we grabbed snacks and played two rounds of Cross Clues, which was so fun ! It can be a silly game, and it is also a cooperative game which I really appreciate because I do not like competitive ones. We then headed to bed after that, but here were the photos I took from my phone for that first night:

DAY 2

Breakfast started at 8:00 and it was buffet style ! I got eggs, diced potatoes with salsa, French toast, and an orange ! It was a very filling breakfast:

After breakfast, Jacob and I walked around the campgrounds for a bit to explore the area. Here are the photos I took during that time:

The beginning of a trail:

The firepit area near our lodging:

Our conference building:

At 9:30 we then had centering prayer. We also did this last year at Zephyr Point, and I really liked it. Basically, you choose a sacred word and focus on that word in silence for about 20 minutes. I chose the word “feel” and it was really grounding as some anxious thoughts came up during that time.

After centering prayer, we split into two groups to talk about things we were concerned about, things we were hopeful for, and things we know about God. It was a cool group of people to hear these things from.

After the centering prayer and group time, it was lunch ! I did not get any photos of the lunch, but it was basically baked potatoes with toppings (there was still also fruits and bread/pastries on the side).

After lunch, we were supposed to do a guided meditation prayer through the woods, but with a lot of people wanting to do this activity, we just went over some prayers together and then went in our own groups to go hiking. The routes around the conference grounds are actually quite confusing, with different fire roads even running through the trails, making it seem like there were many forks. There were a couple of dead ends we ran into, but my goal was to see the creek, which we did ! And it was a beautiful creek. Here are the photos I took during that hike:

A banana slug:

The ‘fairy door’ tree:

The sanctuary, with an adaptation of Psalms 23 on a log. This place was very hidden and hard to find:

A cool-looking log I found that kind of looked like an old wall:

After the meditative hike was about 2.5 hours of free time. Jacob and I took a picnic blanket and laid out on this field nearby. He read a book while I napped – I was tired even with 2 cups of coffee that morning. There was this really pretty gazebo on the field:

After free time was dinner ! This was the menu for dinner and the food that was served. They even had a pescatarian option for me, which was awesome :

We were supposed to do s’mores after dinner, but something serious happened which made campfire s’mores a low priority. I reflected on if I would at least write a sentence about it, but I don’t think I will out of respect for everyone that attended. Thankfully the issue was resolved though.

At night, we also found a big ol’, fat tick on me. Thankfully, after doing a full body check, we did not find any tick bites. But I also did not want to catch-and-release this potentially lime disease-giving bug. So we had it in a cup for the time being, with the Gideon Bible as a weight over it as we decided how to get rid of it (I eventually found a plastic bag so I put the tick in there and threw it away.. I would have loved to flush it down the toilet, but all the toilets there spit up so much water when flushing, and I didn’t want the tick to fly out during flushing):

Also, after all the hiking today, we also walked over 15,000 steps! :

DAY 3

This was a shorter day as we all had to check out and leave at 11:30 am. Breakfast was the first thing to do, except that they did not have French toast this time, so that was a bummer. But it was still a filling breakfast. We then did some centering prayer again, and then we did some worship with communion and prayer stations:

And that was the trip !

Reflections

One thing this trip reminded me of was the importance of technology-free Sabbaths. There was no cell signal where we were and even though there was wi-fi, it was unreliable to access it. So aside from my digital camera and my freewrite traveler, I did not use much technology. Lately, because of school homework and reading, I have not really been taking technology-free Sabbaths like I used to, only social media-free Sabbaths. I notice how calm I felt while in the mountains, and how overwhelming it felt to be reconnected to everything again. Granted, I cannot run away from my responsibilities in relation to technology, but I can probably begin prioritizing my technology-free Sabbaths again.

Another thing that I was thinking about this weekend, with some things happening, during the retreat is how life can change so quickly all of a sudden. Uncertainty is an incredibly uncomfortable thing to hold, and I believe Jesus knows this, which is why so much of his message is about hope and hoping in Him – which ultimately paid off this weekend.

Anyways, thanks for reading if you did !