Here are some photos of a recent snowboard session…….Click on the photobar below to view them.

feel free to buy these for my birthday…..

click on Clark to see the others

exerpts from Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

“Questions, no matter how shocking or blasphemous or arrogant or ignorant or raw, are rooted in humility. A humility that understands that I am not God. And there is more to know.”

“Central to the Christian experience is the art of questioning God. Not belligerent, arrogant questions that have no respect for our maker, but naked, honest, vulnerable, raw questions, arising out of the awe that comes from engaging the living God.”

“Maybe that is what God is looking for - people who don’t just sit there and mindlessly accept whatever comes their way.”

One of my main beefs with mainstream Christianity is the lack of room for doubt and questions. I always felt like a heretic for simply wanting to know for myself. And I’ve seen the fear in people’s eyes when I’ve asked questions. They tended to shut me up without really hearing me, afraid of where my questions would take me or them. I learned to keep them to myself.

Critical thinking. If you are that afraid of your belief system falling apart, then it is not worth that much.

I remember sitting in church thinking that everyone was just allowing themselves to be swept up in the charisma of the leader and not having any real passion or thoughts of their own. And each week, they came back for their next fix.

Perhaps I’m being judgemental. I really don’t know whether or not they actually felt it. I just knew I didn’t and I couldn’t pretend I did anymore. This led me to start asking a lot of hard questions. Some I’ve seen more clarity with. I’ve also gotten a lot more questions. But I’ve also discovered and experienced God more than I thought possible. The real God.

“A Christian doesn’t avoid the questions; a Christian embraces them. In fact, to truly pursue the living GOd, we have to see the need for questions. Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any.”

So I quit. Had a few too many close calls with my blood sugar. Situations like……forgetting where you are and where you are going- in sight of your house. Not sleeping ever. Blah blah blah. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while and kind of putting off. But it came down to the line and it needed to be done. So yeah. I eat meat.

Well maybe it’s just me. Had a woman in my class, she did well yesterday. Today wasn’t as smooth, she also was crying through a good portion of the lesson. She was a heck of a lot tougher than yesterday’s fellow but still pretty frustrated. You have to be patient and understanding with them though. It can be really painful and really frustrating when you’re not progressing as you would like. Every day, these students are putting themselves outside their comfort zone and sort of at my mercy. They have to trust me that I will give them solid advice and not push them beyond what they are able or beyond what is safe. And because of that, you see many different sides of people. You see their fears and their ways of dealing with those fears- whether they face them head on or make up excuses. Also how they deal with pain and failure. The first day can be pretty rough on your body, I send these students home bruised and battered. Sometimes they even come back for me.

The evil side of me enjoying seeing people outside their comfort zone. I always liked pushing people past the norm, you really get to know what’s underneathe the masks when you do that.

I had level ones today in my class. 4 of them. Relatively this is a very small class and should be cake. It was the worst class I’ve EVER had. It was quite interesting. One of them, a man about 40ish, married, with a kid, went into the woods and cried after the second run. I saw real tears.

Grown men should not cry over snowboarding.

And he wasn’t even the worst student. But whatever, it’s all part of it. It wasn’t really that bad. At the end of the day they all leave. Going to see Ice Age 2 with some friends tonight. I’ll let you know how it is.