Introductions

After putting our stuff in our cabin rooms ( the men's cabin was aptly named "Fir") we went up the hill to a small chapel. The sanctuary was cleared out to leave nothing but a carpeted floor, an old piano in the back corner, a large fireplace adorning the left-side wall, and the back wall which was covered with large sheets of butcher paper with song lyrics written on them. We were told to find our name tags and subsequently meet our new small group members. It was a group of 8 students, most of whom I had never met or seen before that day. We briefly met our new small group leaders, one of whom I had known previously. Julia Claire (known to everyone as JC) is the the Campus Ministry director of retreats at Santa Clara. She welcomed us to Search Retreat 2014 and told us the theme of our retreat would be "I Lived" a song by One Republic (which I thoroughly recommend). Each Search retreat has a song that the retreat leaders choreograph a dance to and the song is played frequently throughout the weekend. The song started and the the leaders began to dance to the music. I thought, "Well, I'm going to have to know these dance moves by the time the weekend is over, why not start now." So I followed along as best I could, and so did many of my fellow searchers. In fact at the end of the song JC announced that never before had the searchers ever started to learn the dance the very first time the song is played (By the end of the weekend we all  got pretty into the song/dance and the last time ended in a jumping group hug/mosh pit thing).

After the dance we all sat down and were told to listen intently to the retreat leader sitting by the fireplace. It became clear to me that this would be the general structure of the retreat: A retreat leader was given a topic to speak about, the topics ranged from Love to Prayer and a few other in between. After their speech we were given time to reflect and take notes in a journal. Then we would break up into our small groups and perform small exercises that tied back to the topic at hand. The speeches were all very emotional and heavy in subject ( A leader told me after the retreat that JC really pushed them to get outside their comfort zone). Because of the sensitive nature of their talks I would not dream of sharing their stories. But I can say that I watched and listened intently, wishing that I had the opportunity to also share my story so that I could possibly change the lives of a room full of my peers. They were all very brave and sincere, which was all that us searchers could have asked for.