The church, Christians and faith in God.

Looking back over my blog the past couple days I can see a thread running through it that I had not realized had been going for so long... 

It seems it started and then tapered off after Glen Eyrie.  I still wonder why so many times working for a Christian organization can serve the purpose to drive people away from God instead of drawing people to him.  I wonder if it is the intense exposure to Christians at there best and worst all the time?

One thing that it is easy to forget I think is that all people who are Christians are still human, they sin, they doubt, they run back to God and they put fish bumper stickers on there car and then drive horribly.  Sometimes I think that do and have forgotten that.  One of the main struggles I have always had is separating Christians the people, from God.  I think most of my struggles with my faith have been related to that. 

Since we are all fallable and broken it makes sense that we will never be perfect...

Over the years the main thing I have had to learn is that my belief in God has to be separated from how his followers act.  It is so much easier to remember the bad then the good and the experiences that I had with people who called themselves followers of Jesus when I worked with the Navigators jaded me for a long time.  I know I had so many wonderful experiences there and made so many life long friends.  Sometimes in the past I failed to realize that.

None of this is to say that it should not drive you crazy when Christians do or say stupid things.  When Christians spout hate in the name of God or express racism in stead of love towards any of our brothers and sisters.

We need to bring Christianity back to its core where it is focused on us showing God's love to others, not focused on what they are doing but what God wants us to do for them.

Even the people who drive me crazy, because I think "How can they do that and still call themselves a Christian"  I need to be showing love to them to.  I am thankful that after the couple years of my doubts having a war with who I knew God was, I am able to say that my eyes are open to both the good and the bad the Christians do, and that to a large extent when I see Christians including my self doing things that are the opposite of what God wants that I can still believe in Him.

writing...

What is it about putting words on paper.

I had forgotten how therapeutic it is and how it lets me work out some of my thoughts that tumble around in my head and never reach a conclusion.  Over the past couple years there have been so many thoughts tumbling end over end in my head and never finding a place to stop.  I think that to an extent the thoughts would be worked out if they were written down and pondered over.

In the past year or two or three I watched TV or a movie or who knows what else instead stimulating my mind.  My reading has gone down hill... the things I ponder all the time do not seem as deep as they once did.

How do I get that deepness of thought back?  Is it through working out my thoughts in a medium such as this blog or a journal or both?  Is it through searching out books to read that stimulate all the dormant brain cells that I haven't used over the past couple years?  Maybe it is also about finding friends who want to have those conversations about life and love and how we should interact with the world as christians.

Local

Local

Lately I have been thinking about how to buy local...

It is not necessarily to support the USA, cause honestly I am not much of a patriot.
It is not to support the local big wigs
It is not to give the local government a much needed cash infusion.
And it doesn't come from a desire to be more green.

Buying locally should be something that all of us support because it means supporting our neighbors and our community.
Buying a couch off craigslist and having it reupholstered by my neighbor Kat
Buying or bartering for seeds to plant my garden next year
Buying coffee from a local roaster

 All these things enable a tighter knit community,by enabling us to get to know the people around us. It gives us opportunities to serve others and get to know them and find out what is going on in their lives! For me the point of buying local is to get to know and support the people around me.

The culture of community strengthens everyone as a whole and helps people to become others centered instead of centered on themselves. I dream of starting a tool library to increase the community in my neighborhood. It has been an ongoing dream and I have not started it yet. I think I will start once I get done with my house. I will start out with my own tools and add tools as needed. I like the West Philly Tool library as an example of what could be done. Minimal fees and great selection. westphillytools.org/ . I would like to include my truck as part of the initial tool library so that anyone who needs it can borrow it.

Community has the potential to make everything it touches better...

Lifting the House

Its has been almost a year and a half since I posted...

Kind've crazy. for a while there I was posting what seemed like every week. I have debated whether it was because I got rid of my laptop and could not sit outside, smoking the hookah and looking at the stars while I wrote a blog post.

Some of the posts in the past were more contemplative and philosophical, I have seen myself move away from that in the past couple years, I think mostly due to watching to much TV and giving into being a couch potato. I didn't really grow up with TV and for some reason I tend to binge on it when I have access to it.

But to move on. I realized I have not wrote anything or blogged or anything else in a long time.

I will mock up ideas I have for designs on CAD but that in terms of creative, that is about the most creative I get.

I have decided (and this is not a new years resolution) that I will limit myself to at most 1 hr of time wasted in front of Netflix or Hulu everyday. I live in such amazing country and have no excuse to take advantage of it. Hiking trails start within a block of my house and you can hear one of the waterfalls when you sit on the back patio.

Lately, I have stayed inside and watched a TV show vs. getting out and hiking or writing or drawing or something besides vegging out.

I got on the blog to start documenting my thought process on restoring the foundation on my house. I researched all different kinds of ways to repair the foundation and level the house cause it is a scary prospect. Then for some reason I started thinking about all the thoughts that started brewing inside my head about 3 weeks ago as I set in front of the computer watching hulu and had the little warning pop up saying that I had watched it for 3 hrs and did I want to take a break.

So here it goes... Now if it would not bother my neighbours when I use my circular saw after 9 it would be even easier to start the process of de-vegging. As a preview, the first picture is how my house looked to begin with, and how it will look once the process is done. I am kind've in the middle right now.

Just as a point of reference the area to the left of the futon is what the first picture is showing. In the model below the kitchen is moved to the opposite side of the house and the column in the middle will hold cabinets, all the home theater equipment including the projector and then will have indirect light coming out the top and bouncing off the ceiling. Takes some imagination though...

Epic Biking...

Today was a great day...

I may have destroyed a helmet, cracked a rib and ended up with lots of scrapes, but the riding was worth it.

I mountain biked the Monarch Crest Trail with my friend Roland today and the trail was amazing as always. Lots of fast, flowing riding combined with views that beat most other trails I have been on.

I don't think I mountain bike enough. Even as I am growing to love other forms of biking, the mountains and thin curving trails are always calling. I need to work on finding a balance between commuting and mountain biking.

In other news. I am still working on a Bighorn sheep made out of bottles, cans and bicycle rims. The epoxy is setting on the bottles now, more pictures to come once it is put together.

Biking, Biking, Biking

It has been far to long.

I got the creativity back about sept. 2009 but that definitely did not translate to blogging more. I could use the excuse that my computer took a dump soon after that but it would not be true.

I have had a couple adventures since I last posted, biking in Arkansas, finally buying a car, getting more into bike camping.

All of those adventures have come together to just give me a hunger to bike more and help others bike more and I wonder where that will lead.

I always said I was a mountain biker and not a road biker, but I am even moving away from that. I am realizing that I love the adventure. If it is on the road is great, if it is on a small path winding through the mountains even better. If I meet up with other random bicyclist as the adventure progresses that is the best thing of all.

What is even more crazy, is that for the last 5ish years most of my big adventures have involved a motorcycle. I think that might be changing. Is it another chapter in my life or just a gradual move to what I have always loved?

I have even been considering selling my car, but then I think about the state of public transport and all the friends I have been able to go and see during the winter since I got it and I realize that I might want to keep it for trips. Biking is awesome but seeing good friends is much better.

I pushed past the first barrier to really having amazing trips on bicycles. I actually road from Colorado Springs to Breckenridge. On a cargo bike even...

About 2/3 of the way there I met up with some guys doing the Colorado Trail Race. And I kept up with them on my big massive cargo bike. It was kind've exciting. I got to have dinner with them and meet some very cool people.

I rode about 5 hrs a day every day and discovered the secret to riding longer distances as I pushed through the wall that would come up every day. Walls are not pushed through in my life. Normally they are skirted around. Pushing through the wall gave me the confidence to start pushing through a couple other walls in my life such as starting to look at where I really want my life to end up. Working for a corporation is not where I want to be the rest of my life. I want to work in a place where I see the same people and build relationships and friendships. Not a place where I am locked away at a desk all day!

Hopefully more to come. But of course I said that last September...

Finally...

I think that the creative bug finally came back!!!

I took most of the month of August off work to bike the Colorado Trail.

Only part of the Colorado Trail was biked. I rode most of the sections between Breckenridge and Denver with my little brother. We camped out a couple nights and I realized that inbetween both of us being in much worse shape then we thought and lots of little things going wrong that the week with my brother would be better spent staying at my aunt's house and biking with my brother up there. Luckily I was right and biked a lot and cooked alot. And got some really quality time together. After he left I headed back out on the Colorado Trail made through one section and realized two things.

1. I was not having a lot of fun cause of the bike I had.

2. I was in much worse shape then I thought and the Colorado Trail was much harder biking wise then I had expected.

The night I decided to bail out, I sat on a log for 2-3 hours and thought about my thought process and how overly optimistic I tend to be about accomplishing goals. In the end I realized that I would have to ride the whole trail some other trip. So I rode back to Breck and got a ride back to the Springs.

I arrived back in the springs and fixed up the Kaboom and started biking as I waited for my motorcycle to get fixed. The Kaboom was such a revelation. To prepare for the Colorado Trail I had set aside the single speed and rode a full suspension. The purity and the simplicity of the Kaboom was amazing. I fell back in love with mountain biking. As I rode instead of concentrating on getting somewhere I just felt the flow of the trail and actually took the time to notice the scenery. When I was on the Colorado Trail I focused on getting to the top of the next hill or to the end of the next segment. The scenery and the trip are so much more important the accomplishing the goal.

I planned to head out to Durango a couple days after I got back to the Springs, but fate intervened and my motorcycle decided to need a little bit of TLC the day before I was going to leave. As I was waiting for parts I rode the Kaboom everytime I got the chance and realized once again that I do not want to live my life in an office. I want to interact with people in person, and I want to work with my hands, I want to create.

After my motorcycle was fixed I headed out to Crested Butte which is one of the coolest mountain towns I have been to yet. I rode all kinds of cool trails around the town and heard all kinds of amazing music. All the tourists were gone because school had already started in most of the country so I got to hang out with all kinds of local Crested Butte people every night at the locals bars. I think that there tend to be a higher ratio of people I really connect with in mountain towns then on the Springs...

On the way back home I rode one of my favourite trails in Colorado. It is called the Monarch Crest trail and if you ever get the chance you must ride it. It runs right above tree line for most of the trail and all the views are amazing. Plus it flows like nothing else.

Ever since I came back to the springs, I been restless, but that restlessness has led to more biking and also more drive to create instead of sitting around. Right now I am working on turning my porch into a small bedroom plus redoing the bike rack to be cool looking at fit in with the house better, and adding recycle bins into the bike rack (pictures soon to come). I can tell I am out of practice writing, it does not flow quite as easy as before.