Wine tasting and prayer

This past weekend I went to Sonoma for a church retreat with the 20s/30s group from Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church that is also a beautiful historic landmark on the top of Nob Hill. I didn't know a single person going, but I had been to an event or two of theirs before. It was actually a lot of fun, situated on a beautiful property in wine country, and I met several interesting people that I hope to keep in contact with here in San Francisco. We had "free time" on Saturday afternoon, so a group of us went wine tasting to Lambert Bridge and Roshambo, and then we watched the GMU game at a bar in Healdsburg.

The rest of the weekend was a seminar of about 20 people, led by a professor from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. The topic was "Sex and Spirituality" focusing on the main topic of the erotic energy that runs throughout historic Christian traditions. It felt closer to a philosophy class I took once at UC Irvine (during the summer, for fun, because I'm a dork) on the Philosophy of Love than it did to other church retreats I had been to in high school.

I'm interested in the Episcopal Church for a variety of reasons, although I'm pretty much in the dark regarding the significance of the liturgy and traditions that they follow during church services. Having grown up in an evangelical and pentecostal protestant Christian denomination, where the music is modern and the prayers are whatever people feel like saying at the time, I'm curious to learn more about a church that seems to bridge the Catholic traditions and Protestant beliefs. It is amazing how different the worship, fellowship, and expressions of faith during services can be between groups of people that have the same core beliefs.