By Kurt Fekete

Fifteen teenagers gathered at Almont Retreat Center in Michigan for the Memorial Day Weekend Swedenborgian Church Youth League (SCYL) retreat titled Becoming You: A Retreat on Freedom, Formation, and Divine Providence. SCYL Chaplain, Rev. Renée Machiniak, seminarian Ben Gunter (with Rev. Kit Billings observing), and I led spiritual workshops and worship, while Heather Oelker, Jill Baxter, and Bill Baxter worked in the kitchen cooking delicious meals and assisted with games and activities. Concurrently, Tammara Mounce led a group of eleven young adults participating in a Transitions retreat. This adult group worked on opening the outbuildings in preparation for camp and doing projects, while they also met for sessions with Tammara on the same Divine Providence theme.

The retreat kicked off around 8PM on Friday evening after everyone arrived from the surrounding cities and states. Pizza awaited the incoming retreaters, and afterward the teens and staff all sat down to gather to do an icebreaker, go over retreat rules, dish teams, and the schedule. Then I closed our opening evening session with a brief explanation about the theme. I told the teens, “At this retreat we will look at some big questions. Questions like: Is life random or is there a deeper pattern? Why does freedom matter so much? If there is Divine guidance, why is it so subtle?” I went on to explain how our habits are shaping us. How our loves are shaping us. How our choices are shaping us. How we are shaped ultimately determines who we are, and Emanuel Swedenborg believed that the process of Divine Providence is continually guiding our shape towards heaven.

Renée led our Saturday morning session on Is There a Bigger Story? The teens considered whether their lives are shaped by pure chance or by something greater. After reflecting on hard experiences that led to growth, the group considered Swedenborg’s idea of Divine Providence: the belief that God is quietly guiding all human life toward good. Teens mapped out their own life timelines, looking for patterns, and asking what they might be growing toward. 

After lunch, Renée did a follow-up session entitled, Why Freedom Matters. This session tackled a big question: does forced goodness even count as goodness? Drawing on Swedenborg’s teaching that real love and belief require freedom, teens worked through everyday scenarios—group chat drama, cutting corners on homework, late-night scrolling—to see how small, repeated choices quietly shape character over time. The intended takeaway was that freedom doesn’t just decide what we do, it shapes who we become.

Our Saturday evening session was led by Ben Gunter. Ben’s session, Why Would a Good God Allow Evil? took on one of life’s hardest questions head-on by discussing why a good God would permit suffering. Grounded in Swedenborg’s teaching that evil is permitted,  not caused, and can give rise to good, the group examined real, age-appropriate scenarios—rumors, being cut from a team, bad habits—asking what freedom and growth look like even in difficult circumstances, without minimizing the real pain that can be experienced. With Ben’s gentle leadership, the teens explored deeply not that suffering is good, but rather if positive growth can happen in response to it.

I led our Sunday morning session which was titled What If Guidance Is Subtle? Using the analogy of GPS recalculating after a wrong turn, my session explored how Divine guidance might work quietly rather than through dramatic intervention. I showed how small choices over the course of a lifetime can lead you to heaven or hell. Then, the teens mapped their own past mistakes through choice, consequence, lesson, and change, to notice how they’ve grown gradually, often without realizing it in the moment.

Our last session was again led by Ben. His session, How Should We Live If This Might Be True? closed the retreat session workshops by turning insight into action: if our choices truly shape who we become, how should we live? Teens reflected on personal responsibility for character and habits, then wrote personal letters from their future thirty-year-old selves back to who they are today. This was a moving way to close out a weekend of thinking about purpose, freedom, and growth.

Much of our free time was spent lounging in the upstairs library and playing CatchPhrase, Werewolf, Codenames, and other games in the downstairs Pfister lounge. Outside, when weather permitted, the teens enjoyed time with the young adults playing frisbee, fishing, or taking a stroll around the pond. On our way to our Sunday afternoon outing to Lake Nepessing Golfland, we abruptly encountered a violent thunderstorm. When we discovered that this storm was going to last a long time, teen activities coordinator, Caroline, acted quickly and found us a nearby roller rink. What a fun twist to our usual afternoon outing! Many of the teens had never skated before, so this was an exciting and, for quite a few, an adventurous activity. After skating, on our way back to camp we stopped at a Meijer department store for a quick shopping excursion. It was Micah’s eighteenth birthday, so he was thrilled to buy himself some action figures with his newly acquired birthday money. After a group photo with Sandy the Penny Horse (Did the store actually call security on our gaggle of teens?), we returned to the retreat center for our traditional spaghetti dinner and festive ice cream social.  

Our spiritual programming ended with a closing worship service led by Ben and me. Teens read scripture from Romans 8:24–26 and Proverbs 3:5–6, on trust, patience, and God’s presence in life’s uncertainty. Maudie read a beautiful poem that she wrote about providence. We then took part in a “Knots in the Tapestry” activity, tying knots into strands of yarn to represent the fears, struggles, and burdens we carried, then weaving those strands together into one shared tapestry. The knots stayed visible, a picture of how God works through real, imperfect lives rather than erasing life’s tangles. The evening closed with a final reflection tying together the weekend’s big themes—freedom, suffering, guidance, and growth—leaving teens the final critical question to carry home: What kind of person am I becoming?

Early Monday morning, the east coast group was off to the airport at 4AM while the rest of the teens slept in as late as they could before waking up to clean or just in time to be picked up by their parents. We all departed this Almont retreat understanding that we are becoming something. We learned that every repeated choice forms a habit, every habit forms a love, and every love shapes who we are becoming. Swedenborg would say that heaven begins when we choose what is good because it is good. We are free to reject that, but we are not free from the fact that our life is being shaped. Be intentional! Be honest! Be thoughtful! Pay attention to who you are becoming because your life is not random, freedom is sacred, and your choices have eternal weight. 

Read the full September 2026 issue.