Fall comes early when your biking

Somehow I have managed to replace almost my whole bike since the beginning of the summer. I did not start out to have a new bike but circumstances conspired against me to break way to many bike parts in my many adventures this summer.

As a culmination to year of bike breaking Todd, Jamie and I went out to Buena Vista to bike part of the Colorado trail and camp. The day started a little late but the ride was great the air was crisp like it supposed to be on a perfect fall day and we were riding single track that twisted through the aspens at the base of Mt. Princeton. I was following Todd pretty closely down the trail and all of a sudden he goes off a nice kicker and it looks great till he starts riding on his front wheel and then the wheel slips off the trail and he is on his back on a log. It's quiet for just a second and then Todd is running around like a maniac cursing and hitting trees and then he somehow ends up face down in the dirt.

Needless to say Todd did not bike on Sunday, or probably for the next couple weeks. As opportunity would have it my Aunt and Uncle live in Breckenridge and love to have people over so we stopped in there to give Todd a chance to rest and recuperate (which didn't really happen). Then we went on to the peaks trail which is a blast this time of year. The weather was perfect and Jamie's wreck happened when she got the brakes confused (We have been taking her on all these pretty hardcore rides and the peaks trail was only her 5th time biking.) Which of course meant that she ended up on her ass, but hey I think she might have still had fun go over to http://off-and-running.blogspot.com and you may find out a little bit more about how she sees the wreck. She recovered nicely by the end of the trail and all of a sudden was going off 1.5ft. steps which was totally unexpected after a wreck because everyone is supposed to be more tentative after a wreck right????

If you guys get the chance you need to go check out the aspens with in the next week and 1/2 cause it looks like winter is coming early this year.

Sorry for no pics hopefully the will come later when I get them from Todd an Jamie.

Ack! I broke my bike frame :-<

I went biking with Ian and Jev at Palmer Park on Sunday and Ian definitely pushes me to ride harder which is great, but I kind've ran straight into a big rock when I was trying to stay ahead of him going down the Cheyenne trail.

Rest, biking and relaxation

What does rest mean?? I am wondering if I am just hanging out or actually resting most of the time. Three different terms exist in my mind rest, relaxation, and rest in God. I think that the 3rd may not involve the other 2. I relax a lot but may not rest. This culminated about a month ago when I just started to crave sleep and getting away from people for a while. I had been relaxing with all my friends and having lots of fun but not resting and it finally hit a wall. At the monthly Glen meeting today one of the guys said that many of the people who come to the Glen for conferences got more out of the rest they experienced during their weekend at the Glen then the actual conference.

I think I get a lot more rest then many people or at least relaxation. I'll admit that I do not have any real responsibilities outside of work. I get to spend much of my time of in leisure activities. Why do other people fill up their lives with so much meaningless crap. I can understand if you have a couple kids a weekend away from them would be great. I met a lot of people in my old bible study at pierced that did not seem happy with their life. I definitely tend to grouse about stuff a lot, but in reality I'm pretty happy with my life and my job. My job is very frustrating at times, but never horrible no matter how much I dislike my boss.

In terms of rest I think it would help a lot if I would forgive some of the people at the Glen and give up the grudges I have towards some of them and the Glen in general. I think that I have some valid points but nothing is ever as bad as I make it out to be.

If I give all this up it will be much easier to focus on God and experience rest in him. I do not rest in God very much. God is sometimes the farthest thing from my thoughts even when I am meditating on the Bible. I tend to be all analytical or all emotional and often there is not an inbetween area for me when I meditate on who God is.

God is... Open ended statements like that bring up many different trains of thought, but When I meditate on God I think it might be better for the present to just focus on God when I meditate and not any specific aspect of him and see where it goes. Maybe then I can rest in him even as I stop thinking.

It's Early.....

I don't think I have been up this early in a year at least. One of the guys at the house I'm in charge of had a brother go into the hospital last night at 12ish. It turned out to be really serious with what sounded like major internal damage to a couple organs and the lungs. It was a really interesting situation.

I was somewhat a sleep at 1 or so and I here a diesel truck go by and then I here joey's voice. Whenever I here joey's voice in my house at 1 in the morning I know something has gone wrong. Joey takes care of the front gate during the night and would always be sleeping and groggily answering the phone. I stumble out of my room and joey's trying to explain to one of my roomates who is deaf that his brother is in the hospital. So joey takes him to the hospital and I groggily go back to bed about 2. Then at 3:30 I hear a pounding on my door and am praying that things are not going any worse then before. But it is just our security guy waking me up so we can find someone to stay at the hospital with robert, because joey has to be in denver at 8am.

Even though a couple of us have been up all night, what has really amazed me has been the servants heart of all the NCP guys. A couple of them went to the hospital to stay with robert @ 3:45 and I asked one of the guys that works with me to help out in the kitchen at 5:45 this morning and he willingly if not happily got up to help out up there.

For anybody who reads this before I update it. you can be praying for robert's brother jonathan who last I heard was in really serious shape at the hospital and on the brink of death and for robert and his family.

I guess that is the end. I can not even imagine how I would feel if it is was my brother in the hospital right now. I would probably be sitting in shock and not really comprehending what is going on. Robert is taking so much in himself with his parents out of town and him being the only one by his brother's bedside so pray for him also.

Does Christian culture tend to destroy art and other cultures

An article I was reading in National Geographic Adventure about Wade Davis poignantly illustrated what I was thinking about in the Garden tonight. He is a ethnobotanist who has gone all over the world experiencing the plants and traditions of cultures while trying to let people know how important it is to preserve cultures all over the world. He states that one of the biggest problems for smaller cultures today is that they are being absorbed by larger societies because the people in these cultures are told that to be successful they have to earn more money at a plant in a big city. In reality their culture is destroyed and they are not any better off because of it.

Reading this article made me think of the Christian culture all over the world. It is what I was thinking about tonight when I was in the Garden of the Gods after a night mountain bike ride to go sit on the rocks and think. I realized that I was questioning God in a large part due to the failings of religion around me. When I look at Christians as a whole there are not very many that I respect for their actions outside of the church. If I was hitch hiking back from a long bike ride the chances of someone picking me up who was a christian are not high. At least in Colorado, a redneck or a bike/snowboard bum would be more likely to pick me up. Or if I needed food I would be more likely to get it from some hippies camped beside the road then if I went up to a car full of Christians and begged for it. Why are Christians so afraid of the world around them. God has brought so many beautiful things out of the non-Christian culture. I mean why is it that not many Christian bands are really any good??? And why is it that if you have a boss that is mormon or a co-worker that he is more likely to treat you with respect and dignity then if that person is a Christian.

Why is it that so many Christians expect new converts to conform to their culture. It is kindve like how the southern Baptists expect members of their church not to ever drink and say that it is biblically wrong to drink when they encounter other people. Or how a lot of churches ask their kids to give up secular music for Christian music. So much Christian music really stinks. If a kid is really musically inclined he or she is probably going to go for non-christian bands so instead of steering him towards inferior music why not find secular bands that are clean and present good values. It is really not that hard

My friend Patti was saying yesterday that relationships are really the cornerstone of a good church. Not the sermon or the music but the relationships you have with the people in that church and how they make you feel loved and cared for and inspire you to want to show that love and care to everybody you will meet in your daily life. The Christian life is not about rules and figures, it is about loving your neighbor to show them christs love and the rest naturally follows. Rules tend to drive people farther away from God while love tends to drive them closer to him.

Relationships

I think relationships are one of the most important things about life. I was sitting with a friend at It's a Grind today and she said that she went to a church in town because of the people who went there not for the preaching or the worship, but for the people. When I really think about it my life is all about relationships with people. I think one of the reasons I have such a hard time with my boss is because he is so anti-social. He does not really allow you to have a relationship with him.

I keep saying how hard a time I have at Glen Eyrie, but really the reason I stay there is because of the relationships I have with Joey, Derek, and all the garden volunteers I work with. I love interacting with people and being able to just provide and bless people through the relationships I have with them. I have definitely taken all my friends forgranted... the guys I hang out with most of the time are both leaving one for china and the other to go to grad school.

The good side of this is that I am in the process of moving off the Glen. It is much easier to break with a place when you do not have any good friends living their anymore. I told one of my friends once that I sometimes struggle with valuing friendships above God. It is so true. If I am studying the bible or praying or just meditating on god and a friend comes by I will usually drop what I am doing to go spend time with them. That is why it has been weird the past couple weeks when I have cared alot less about hanging out with all my friends till late at night talking about everything. I cannot decide if I am drawing away kind've preparing myself to be alone more or if I am just being emo and introspective. I have been thinking alot about what my life means outside of my friendships with people. What else is their in it. I struggle to live in any time besides the now, I struggle to keep in touch with people who are not right around me and keep up the valuable relationships I built with people in the past.

I love all my good friends from before bbut why should I sacrifice all these relationships for the now. All my friends in the past are worth keeping in touch with. Is it selfishness that prevents me from keeping in touch with them or just laziness. When I say I sometimes value relationships more then God, I realize that it is only the people who are present right in front of me at that time.

Adventures :->

I think one of the biggest reasons I love my bike... besides the thrill of leaning over in a tight curve... is all the cool places I've been able to go on it. Normally I would not consider deckers colorado an adventure, but when the grocery store lady tells you it is only 25 miles to castle rock on this little paved road and she is wrong it can turn in to a pretty good adventure.

I started out just taking a ride out to cripple creek colorado on friday morning to enjoy the curves on the way out there, but as I left cripple creek I decided that it was a shame to waste my day off and decided to head out to deckers,co which is in exactly the opposite direction. I got to deckers and decided I wanted to go someplace I had never been before...which is how I ended up on some backwoods dirt road.

Gas isn't usually something you have to think about in a car, but on a motorcycle you can't ignore it or you may be pushing your bike to the next gas station. My bike has about 140 miles before it runs out of gas. When I got to deckers I was at 105 and I knew that I couldn't go very far out of the way. The grocery store clerk in deckers said," It is only 25 miles to Castle Rock" (which has gas!!) I followed her directions but I ended up following this dirt road that crossed the colorado trail and praying I would find a town soon. the ride was beautiful but I was always thinking in the back of my mind about gas and the next town.

I ended up getting to a place off US 285 with 141 on one tank of gas and somehow God has blessed my motorcycle and it got 61 miles per gallon when I usually only get 45. I wish I had more pictures (mental note...must by digital camera...). I think I might start keeping a list of all the towns in colorado I have visited but then it would noot be as much of an adventure going random places at the drop of a hat. It is kindve like bagging 14ers just to bag them and not really going for all the enjoyable experiences you are going to have along the way.

So more an adventure us not just for the excitement it is for the experiences that you gain from it, for the joy of hanging out with friends or seeing beautiful scenery as you ride your motorcycle beside the south platte and see the canyon closing in around you as the road gets lower and the river gets higher and you wander if you are going to be riding a sport bike through water in a couple hundred ft.

Glen Eyrie and the christian work place

I talk to so many people who get burned by christian organizations and get burned out because they feel or are made to believe that they are expected to work overtime for no pay because you are working for a non-profit "ministry". Is there a reason that so many people struggle more with their beliefs when they are at christian organizations. Just because someone working for a place like Glen Eyrie believes in their mission and loves it does not mean that the salaried people can take advantage of that and ask people to do things that would be illegal in any other place.

You would expect a christian ministry to be a model of workplace satisfaction. You would expect that the employees would be able to say that they can see in the dimeanor of their bosses and higher ups that they are cared for and valued.

Conversely, these same employees should be willing to listen to constructive criticism from their supervisors and employees and if a worker is not the right fit they should be asked to leave. Grace only goes so far before it hurts the person it is being given to. So when does this grace go to far... When a boss cannot communicate with his employees... when a boss cannot communicate his expectations without being harsh and grating... when a employee ignores the requests of his boss due to the harshness of his bosses requests???

Everything I am talking about relates directly to me. Ever since I have been at Glen Eyrie I have seen countless employees dismisses or just leave because they are so fed up with it all. I do not know many employees who have left since I have been here that would ever recomend that someone else they know and like work at Glen Eyrie. Some of the higher ups have left and come back. They tend to be the ones who lack in people skills when it comes to disipline. I have seen more ministry going on in the secular work place then I ever do at the Glen. One of our supervisors does not even make any pretence of trying to have any caring about his employees spiritual lives and has to be forced to have bible studies with his employees and will not initate it unless he is forced to.

Sure Glen Eyrie is a business but they always say that they are ministry based. So were is the ministry to employees or vice versa. I have great repore with my fellow employees at the Glen but the managers seem to make rash decisions with out any thought to the employees or example they are setting.

I see the examples the guys above me set and I think, how are these guys representing christ to their employees. I have struggled with not believing in Christ and his influence on Christians ever since I've seen the way that people seem to get trampled over without any regard for their spiritual lives. They think of ministry to the guests, which is great but not ministry to the employees. Do they not see that if the employees are being ministered to that they will be more effective and have a greater drive to be a blessing to the guests.

Right now my reason for staying at the Glen is to be a blessing to the volunteer gardeners and NCP. I do not care if the If facilities succeeds because in terms of my department my moral is super low. my boss has no clue how to motivate people only how to make them resent him. When I first came to facilities I would study for bible studies ahead of time but once I realized that marv could really care less about it I decided that it was not worth it to spend any time on it which was not right but I still did it.

It is kind've like the reality that about half the people who have fish on their cars tend to be horrbile drivers. IF YOU CAN'T DRIVE DON'T PUT A FREAKIN FISH ON YOUR CAR!!!!! It is the same way at the Glen. My expectations are higher because it is a christian organization. Yet they try to skirt the rules, and derek wonders why I try to skirt the rules when I do things around the Glen. He does it to just in different ways.

This is a very negative post but It was something I really needed to get off my chest.

I thought it was summer??

I went camping with some friends this last weekend. I had the brilliant idea to climb a 14er named La Plata that is a really easy hike. Well the hike is only easy when there is not 3 feet of snow still laying everywhere.


We only hiked up to a clearing about halfway up the trail but as you can see by the pictures there was no one up there besides us. We made a little campfire to warm up when we got to our campsite and drank wine with trail pizzas for dinner which was fun. Hopefully in a month or so we will be hiking the whole thing once some of the snow melts.




Oh yeah, I went up with todd, jamie and jev (jev is the one who took all the pictures)

It' summer?????

It is not supposed to be this hot in colorado yet. It is already hitting over 85 degrees!! This was great for my friends Ian and Camille's Wedding.

We had the bachelor's party last week out by Shelf Road. Ian is really into climbing and the Shelf Road area has an amazing amount of climbing. We camped at a Blm campsite for 2 days and partied, climbed and rode dirt bikes all over the place. It was really cool to be out camping again!!

This week we were preparing all week for the wedding. And so it went off without a hitch last night. I love it when 2 people feel so right for each other and when you can tell god is blessing them as they get ready to get married. I did not actually get to see the ceremony because i was out getting burritos for the dinner afterwards, but I heard it was beautiful. The Glen really hooked them up. They only had to pay for the stuff that the Glen did not already have. The reception was really cool with a whol

It's 80 degrees

I wish I had some pictures of colorado today! It is amazing. It is not supposed to be this warm out today. It is supposed to be freezing cold or at least mildly chilly.

I need to get a copy of the pictures from our trip to the sand dunes 2 weeks ago. Jev had just gotten his motorcycle registered so we rode down to the sanddunes and I am hoping that he got some amazing pictures with our bikes. The ride was beautiful. We rode down from the springs to canon city to Salida to the sand dunes and then up to walsenburg to the springs. Unfortunatly, we ended up riding from walsenburg to colorado springs in the dark. i think we probably stopped 5 times in 150 miles because we were so cold. Hopefully we will get to do some 3-4 day rides this summer around the west!!! Here is one of he pictures from when I was in Baja at Christmas to hold the place until I get pics from Jev. Also a hooka picture from the top of our roof.

It is getting to be the time again where we get to spend many hours talking on the roof of the t-house. I sometimes despise living on the Glen but so many other times
I love living at the t-house. The community and just having lots of people to hang out with all the time. I do not think i would have gotten to know Jev, Todd and Ian so well if we had not lived at the t-house.

Todd's sister Carrie, her husband Graham, their son Hudson, and Joel all came out to stay with todd for the weekend. It was fun to hang out with those guys at todd's house and then we had everyone up to the t-house last night for drinks. There is another idea for the t-house. a patio and wet bar out on the roof. Graham and Carrie are some of the coolest new parents i've ever met. They are just so chill about having a 5 month old.

more pictures to come later

Authority

Why is authority so hard to respect?? Is it the pride inside me? Is it that I will not obey people I do not respect.

I struggle everyday to respect and obey willingly those in charge of me. The guys that I respect I listen to with a willing and open mind, but my bosses who are just total idiots are so hard to obey. I talked about this with one of my friends I work with and we both struggle to listen to the guys in authority over us. If we think something they are telling us to do is stupid or just plain idiotic then it is almost like pulling teeth out (or getting a haircut in my case). My friends dad, told him that it does not matter what your boss tells you to do, if you do it like he says it will fall on his shoulders. I will admit that if i listened to everything my boss told me I do not think i would get my job done as effectively.

All this deep thinking of late is hurting my brain... colorado Springs is so beautiful this time of year!! The grass is just starting to turn green and flowers are peeking their heads out of the ground everywhere. I feel so much more alive every time I look around and see another garden that is coming alive. The glen is so beautiful when God brings everything out of dormancy in the spring.

I guess he has been doing that with me lately. My mind has been opened to many things lately. How i treat people has been at the forefront of my mind. It was brought to a head this week at church. JR was talking about inclusiveness. I hardly ever hear the way jesus treated people called inclusiveness. It really was inclusiveness! He did not exclude anyone from his kingdom if they were willing to come clean with him. There are alot of people I reject in my daily meanderings. I just decide that they are not any fun to hang around or not worth it. or just un cool. Where I get off deciding that I do not know, because even though most people like me i am hardly ever considered cool.

What happened to updates!?!

It is amazing how little I have written period in the last couple months.
I have not written period in anything, not a journal or a web page.

If I am honest with myself not an awful lot has gone on. It has kind've been life as normal. Or not.

I have been in a very introspective mode of late. It has been almost to introspective though because I have not wanted to think about what kind;ve state I was really in lest I get depressed by it.

I think I finally came out of my funk in the last week or so when I started writing again about my disrespect for authority over the past 5 years or so. I have finally admited to myself that it is something that needs to change in my life. I am trying to figure out what was the root of the disrespect for authority, when it started and why. Was it a gradual thing or did a certian event start it all.

I theorized that alot of my disrespect for authority especially in the navs has stemmed from a bitterness towards the leadership of Glen Eyrie . It has seemed like alot of their actions have stemmed from a lack of caring for people and more caring about the business side of things. But that is what everyone says and I know that most of the leadership here really care about people but they are not neccesarily very good at expressing it.

If I look back to 2001 when alot of it started it really all based on a bittereness towards people and then I lose respect for them and do not want to listen to any authority they have.

This bitterness has really drawn me away from the Lord. As long as I have harbored a deep seated bitterness towards people, I have not really cared about spending anytime with the Lord or seeking after him. I have felt like I should care and seek, but no matter how much I strived to love him and seek after him I couldn't. I think there was a big wall of bitterness built up, preventing my soul from any real communication with God. Even my time at Eagle Lake was marked by just doing what I needed to instead of really showing God's love to kids. I loved the kids but God seemed so far away during the past 5 years that I do not think I even desired to show God to them except out of a sense of duty.

I have loved people but really not loved God for a long time. He would always come last as people in my life would come first. Even when I was seeking after him before all the bitterness welled up inside me; I still put people in my life ahead of God. If it was a choice inbetween spending time with people or with God, people would usually win out.

I think when I was a freshman in college I was involved with so many bible studies and functions with IV more to spend time with people then learn or grow closer to the Lord.

It is going to take a long time to re-focus myself on God. All my habits are driven by a want to be with friends, not to be with God. I know that it sounds hypocritical saying that I will re-focus myself on God but I also know that when I seek after him he embraces that and makes up for the 95% of the way I cannot come by myself.

I think that alot of this train of thought came about because I finally began to feel the absence of God in my life as I had a desire to seek him again. I have felt that desire for a long time but he started to bring it to the forefront of my life in the past couple months. The strong desire to spend time with God had not been present in my life in a long time along with the will to do anything about it.

I have not sought after God for a long time but he has been after me that whole time and I put up my wall of bitterness to shield myself from his gaze it was easier then confessing and getting rid of the bittereness.

Tales from the Glen

About a month ago a group of japanese college students came to the Glen to volunteer with us. Last year we had them digging a grave so I'm sure they were wondering what they were going to be doing this year. The really weird thing was that their leader, Bryan Gibbs and a couple of the guys new exactly what my motorcycle was. It seems like nobody in the US knows of buell or they think buells are a piece of crap. It turns out in japan buells are really popular if almost unaffordable (over 20000). I was kind've like should I let them ride my bike. One of the guys wanted to get a ride on it so I gave him a ride around the Glen, I guess riding on the back with another guy is not taboo in japan like it is here so I did not really care either way.

The whole experience was really cool for all the guys who came and volunteered with us. God used the Glen, Bryan and Sarah to reach these guys and move them closer to the Lord. Bryan said that on this trip, the students were more interested in the Lord then they had been anytime in the past year (i.e. a years worth of progress in three weeks).

Another day in Russia

It has been amazing in colorado springs the past week or so. We had our first snow last week. I am still amazed when we get 6" of snow in mid october. Luckily it did not stick on the roads so we did not plow. I like plowing but I hate getting up at 4 in the morning to go and plow. I love how pure and clean stuff looks when it has just snowed. it smooths over all the imperfections in the landscape that I seem to see all the time.

I have been reading "Crime and Punshiment" for the past week or so. I have Barnes & Noble has small unabridged editions of classics that are cheap and that is the most important thing because then I can get a hard cover of a classic for 5 bucks instead of 30. I guess my rants against shopping at walmart and rei are kind've moot when I go and buy books at B & N. I could qualify that it is not very often though, but I have to admit that I am there every other week to read magazines for free. It kind've convicts me that I need to make more of an effort to find a good private bookstore that I can shop at. I rant and rave against walmart, home depot and rei because I want to support local people but still I go to somewhere else like them. I shop and corporate supermarkets and buy my gas from honestly wherever I can find it because once the low fuel light on the motorcycle comes on it is always a good thing to find gas as quickly as possible.

How to I avoid these kind've conudrums?? At the same time do they really matter? If Crime and Punshiment is an accurate portrayal of life in St Petersburg I am lucky to have a walmart. I am really privileged to be able to never have to worry about having enough money for food or honestly anything. The characters in crime and punishment are living in abject poverty yet they still have the same base worries that we have like love, life, God. Of course sometimes all they can think about is food or finding a place to get out of the cold.

Once again does all this stuff really matter. Is there any point in trying to support local businesses over saving money. The issues that come up in my life are so trivial in comparison to food and shelter, but almost everyone in the US has not problem with this kind've stuff. The homeless population in all reality is tiny, I think that most of the people who can not afford to eat usually need to be taught how to manage their money better. It all sounds so callous and hard hearted because I know that their are people who really struggle to have enough money every month and alot of those people are at the Glen. They want a life style like every one else has but it is one they cannot afford so they put themselves in massive debt and then have to look for other jobs because they cannot not afford to get payed so little.

I work with Joey Clark alot and so we get into lots of debates about stuff. God has used him to change my mind on the value of money or how worthless it really is. I always figured that I needed a job somewhere else because I cannot buy everything I want while I am at the Glen. God provides everything I need and more but in all reality I am very materialistic. i get an idea in my head that i want something and I just go out and get it or wait and wait until finally the time is right but I will be focused on that one thing beyond all else for alot of the time until I get it. It is wrong it is like coveting or lusting but I still have a problem with it.

God made me content. Ever since I came to the Glen I have been on the lookout for a better job. I always dreamed of more money. Probably 60-70% of the time i wanted to leave because of money. I had the opportunity about a week or 2 ago to take a job where I would work in landscaping and after the first year get a raise to 50g. which seemed like alot for what they wanted me to do but that is beside the point. When i had to make the decision God totally confirmed that I just needed to live within my means and stay at the Glen because there was still alot for me to do.

Right after that God gave me a vision for what the Grounds at the Glen needed to be. I dream of little sitting areas all around Glen Eyrie that give people a place to be by themselves and spend time with God and if they need feel isolated from the rest of the world in the prescence of God. I also see this as being in line with where the leaders at the Glen say God is leading them. They want the Glen to be focused on ministry and not just focused on making a profit which is what its aim has been for the past couple years.

A blog is a hard thing to waste

It is incredibly hard to blog when you do not have internet hooked up to your computer. Probably the biggest thing that has happened in the past month is a strong desire to seek the lord. I wished for that desire for the past two years. For those 2 years despite all my efforts, I felt so distant from the Lord.

One day, about two weeks ago, I set down and started reading this book again called 'A Search for God Knows What?' by Donald Miller. The thing that stood out to me the most and changed my perspective was realizing that Christianity really is relational and not a formula. I think that I have been living like Christianity was a formula for my whole life. Just a set of rules and not a God who cares for me and is not coming down on me whenever I screw up. He loves me in spite of all the shit I do. Alot of this is so clear in the Bible but I think the traditions of the church sometimes tend to erase much of that in peoples minds. It seems all about rules sometimes.

Jesus hung out with the dregs of the earth, not the upper class. Sometimes he almost seemed to scorn the upper class. i know he didn't but he sought out those that need his help.

Who do i seek out that is unlikeable or uncouth?? I have to honestly say no one since I started working full time at the Glen. I have hung out with people who do not meet the churches standard of perfect people, but then again if you are not decently well of many times it seems as if there is no place for you in the church. i think that most of the people I have met at church are pretty well off they are not in poverty, and if you do not wear nice close will you get thrown out. I was thinking that as an experiment at peirced we should have one of us not shower for a couple days and dress up as a homeless guy and see how people react. I'm sure it has already been tried but how would people react. How would I react if I was not a participant in the experiment. Would I embrace the homeless guy if he came up to me or just shrug him off and go the other way.

Witnessing is just showing people there need for Christ not preaching.

Normal Life

I find life goes on normally here. In the face of tragedies around the world. I find that while I want to help I feel money, which most organizations ask for is ineffectual. I do not have much money so would my time be more valuable to these people then money??? I want to go serve these people, but I think that until everything gets more organized their is no reason to go down here. I feel helpless, I have to trust God that he has everything under control.

My dad went to a conference down in New Orleans one time and he said like he has said about Las Vegas and Atlantic City that He could almost feel the darkness pressing in around him. I have talked to a couple people who have felt this way.. Was New Orleans more depraved then Las Vegas or Atlantic City or just more depraved then most normal cities it's size.

Either way people need help and the most I can do right now is pray. The thought just occurred to me that maybe this year instead of taking a vacation to Europe or some other country they I should help out wherever I can in New Orleans or the surrounding area. I know that If I go down that I need to be willing to do the dirtiest, worst jobs I can imagine. I guess I will have to see what opportunities the Lord brings forth for me.

As I said life goes on as normal, going biking, riding the XB9 and working on the car. I have also been doing a general job search to find what is out there. I am not totally unhappy with my job. About 75% of the time I love it and the other 25% it is oppressive to work at. I have been praying about whether God wants me to stay here or if he has something better/different for me. I was thinking that if the do decide to rebuild new Orleans then I could go down there and work/volunteer depending on what ends up happening.

Chopping the frame/body installation and many other things

It has been a very busy summer. I worked with joey to supervise the NCP crew at Glen Eyrie. I was taught a lot about why I can infuriate my boss sometimes but also how valuable communications skills are when relating to people working under me. I have been told it relates more to volunteers then to employees but I do not agree. Most work environments would be so much better if the boss effectively communicated his desires to the employees and included some praise and encouragement.

The summer was also a really dry time spiritually. I love being around people and so I sometimes let myself get distracted by all the fun people around me. I probably spent a total of 3 or 4 hrs of time in the word the past two months if you do not include church. I did not participate in the Bible Study I usually go to because of time. It has been really encouraging to spend some time in the word since NCP left. I sometimes forget that I need to be rejuvenated and spend time by myself with God.

I just got done reading a book called Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. It was funny but at the same time really depressing. The guy was so self-involved and had such low self esteem. He was always worried about his approval by others. I think the most depressing thing was that it did not seem like there was any point to his life.

I tend to be pretty generous with my stuff and I try to separate the two but it does not always work. Case in point. I really like this girl at church and I knew she needed some help this one particular month. I felt like God was calling me to help her out so I gave her some money for the month, not even thinking that she might find it awkward or that it would have any appearance of me giving her the money to get her to like me. I knew the second I gave it to her that I should have figured out some way to give the money anonymously, because she totally flipped out. I left real quickly and I am not sure how to deal with the whole situation. Has this doomed any thoughts I might have of something more then friendship?? I struggle with whether to pursue anything more now. I realize I may have put her in an awkward situation but at the same time... ...was god showing me something by the way she reacted. I am just going to give it some time and see which way God moves the whole situation later.

On a totally different note

This summer I made slow progress on the hybrid jeep. No this does not mean electric/gas in this case it means a combination of an old school wagoneer and a 86' cherokee. Back in April we cut the top off the cherokee and it just set their for a while. Then the engine went kappoot and it set their some more. We pulled the body of the wagoneer and shortened the frame. Then sometime in July, Jev and I stripped all the drivetrain off the cherokee and we were ready for the frame fitting.

Last weekend and today I fit the body to the frame and now it almost looks like the cherokee is supposed to sit on the wagoneer.

The saga of the bikes

My new bike!!!!

The saga all started about 2 weeks ago when a car pulled out in front of one of my friends when they were riding my motorcycle. (He only had a broken thumb). The headlight and turn signal were broken on it so I went to the Harley Dealership to get a new headlight. To make a long story short I had been looking at buying a new buell in about 2 months, but I went in for a headlight and came out with a new bike (a really good deal).

Alot has gone on since the last time I wrote. We took the body off my Wagoneer to get ready to shorten the frame and put the cherokee body on it. Eventually I would like to make it so I can switch a cherokee body with a roof and one without off and on in about 30 minutes. During this whole time I have been debating the role of the church in alienating many non-christians. Sometimes it feels like an elite club where entry into the church itself is barred to those who do not conform to the churchs standards, not neccessarily moral standards but standards of dress, culture, and the like. I guess it would be moral standards to. How many people who struggle with homosexuality feel alienated by the church because there sin is considered by so many to be so much more taboo then many of the other sins. Even if people do not consider it worse in there mind. Even people of a more liberal mindset in politics can feel ostracized because there views do not tow to the party line of churches. I'll admit that there have been different small groups I have been involved with where I felt like I would be alienated if I shared some of my views on the environment and big business.

I think the church should keep poltics out of its sancutuary and focus on winning people to christ. They should trust that the Lord will lead people who come to know him in the right direction and not feel that they need to control what people think. A liberal exchange of ideas that allows beliefs to be challenged will cause people to think and either become stronger in their beliefs or realize they are not correct. I really like the church I go to right now because the pastor will bring in people to speak who have very different views from the mainstream church. I have agreed with alot of what they have said but some things I don't. It makes me rexamine my beliefs and question why I have those beliefs and come up with cold hard facts for most of my beliefs.

Springs is here. It was such a nice day to ride.


Bike after hitting car (surpirisingly will cost alot to fix according to estimate)

Killing the Roof

The chop is complete!!!

Jev and I chopped the top off the jeep yesterday. It is so much fun to destroy stuff. Especially when I know that something really cool is going to come out of it. We drove it over to the porters last night (which was totally illegal but oh well). I did find out from Jed who runs armorology that we could run without a windshield legally in colorado so we chopped the windhield off to which I hadn't been planning to do but it is so much fun driving around without a windshield. In two weeks I am going to order a tubing bender and we will start building the roll cage.

After that we will start to build a new frame for it so I can put the v8 and axles from my wagoneer onto it.