We’re here at the church for an OWL retreat, 17 youth in 7th and 8th grades, and four of us adults spending the night (another two adults will come in tomorrow). Worship went a little late tonight. We met in the sanctuary, lit all the candles in the wall sconces, and a candelabra up front — our little church is beautiful in candlelight. We did a lot of singing in the worship service tonight, and it sounded wonderful in that space. It was a good worship service mostly because this is such a good group of youth, particularly kind and supportive of each other.

You always wind up feeling sleep deprived after one of these overnight church retreats. But this is also the kind of thing that really builds church community — and I’m not just talking about building community in youth groups. We Unitarian Universalists should have more overnight retreats for adults. You don’t really know someone until you’ve talked to them about spirituality at 2 in the morning.