The Holy Spoke
For those who read the short statement of faith, please be advised that it might have the sense of irreverence to some who are trained in the standard religious format. The intent is not to offend anyone, but to give voice to a slightly alternative view of the spiritual world. There are those who feel the spirit especially strong while bikin'. It is comforting to know that many others are connected to the spirit in their own bikin' way.
Mission statement of the Holy Spoke Fellowship
BCB-1
Membership to the church is open to anyone with any beliefs. Atheism is perfectly OK. One can have ‘religious moments’ regardless of embedded dogma. The heavy overlay of any belief systems only cloud one’s ability to experience life in its unfettered, simple reality.
To ‘believe’ is nothing more than a guess at the truth. It is not to be confused with ‘knowing’. We know the sun is shining. We believe Wal Mart will have AA batteries. One can only know the truth in the present moment. All past notions and all future predictions have no root in knowing. The past is sealed; the future is a mystery. How boring it would be to know the future.
Spontaneity is celebrated and honored at the church. It is through accepting each moment as unique that we become open to the vastness or our universe. In that knowing we become truly religious and a member in current standing of the entire universe.
The Holy Spoke Fellowship recognizes those moments of bliss and abandon whether in work or
play are the true moments of being fully alive, fully present and define religiousness.
There can be no words, concepts or theories to define GOD. GOD is the ‘is-ness’
of living. GOD exists beyond mental activity in the realm of the eternal here/now.
Therefore, since GOD is indefinable, it furthers one to waste not a moment in pursuit of the ever-illusive ‘concept’ of GOD. The Holy Spoke Fellowship has been established to provide a forum for those people who see God on the otherside of the handlebars.
The Church has the power to absolve of sins. You are hereby absolved of any sins you may have committed in your life. Go forth with joy and abandon; try to do no harm. All future sins are absolved, you’ve got a free ticket.
Religious passage occurs with each turn of the wheel. A shift of the cogs represents the ever-changing nature of the world. Shifting is a metaphor and formula for living. It furthers one to be flexible to handle differing terrain. To stay in a fixed gear is bad news on the trail, is bad news in life. There is such a myriad of experience out there, that one must be willing and able to change speed at any given moment. If one is to grasp at the concept of GOD, he/she can be realized in any living item on the earth. It may be a flower, a tree, a blade of grass or a rock. Each item on this globe is connected somehow. When one strays from the ‘rules’ of the church (rule one: don’t stack!), one may hear the church bells ringing in the head after contacting GOD (Good Old Dirt).
The H.S. Fellowship is unbounded by the usual dogmatic constraints. The Holy Spoke Fellowship insists that all notions of living are acceptable and have their place in the big scheme of things.
Basic Church Blather - #2
The church of the Holy Spoke was borne from the ashes of the industrial waste pile that we call modern living. In the haste to conquer and dominate the natural world as well as human world, mankind has headed pell-mell into a spiritual garbage heap. Without the connection to the spiritual/experiential realm, the human navigates rudderless in a sea of material wealth never reaching the further shore of meaning, fulfillment and the truth.
In the context of mountain bikin’, the participant is drawn unwittingly into a state of consciousness that begs communion with the holy, high spirit. The combination of exercise, focus, drama and strategy guide the Bikin' Individual to the precipice of the great paradox: The almighty, bliss filled void .
It appears to the untrained mind unlikely that cycling would be a venue for visitations to the Holy Trinity. The Trinity consists of; the Holy Rim (outer world, the material plane and the drama of life, where the rubber meets the road), the Hub (the center, the origin, the spiritual basis for all life) and the Holy Spoke, the Divine force that connects it all together.
Mountain bikin’ can be the portal to a higher truth and glory, a glimpse associated with the very core of life. In this world of work-a-day busy-ness, a society of perverted values and a life permeated with junk, it takes extraordinary measures to slip the tenacious teathers of normalcy. It is in that departure from the norm where one has the chance to:
"Go beyond the valleys and climb the distant mountains
And stand, for a moment, as God above the dizzying fray."
It is imperative that one quiet the mind to experience a higher truth. The mind with all of its cleverness is limited. It has difficulty in being witness to the here and now. It has little capacity for pure openness. The mind is a cleaver and fascinating machine that is in constant motion, forever working on the future and on the past. It is a computer to figure out the balance sheet. The mind is a tool that keeps the roof overhead and food on the table. Yet, it is helpless in the quest of the Divine, for the very paradox of the spirit requires deep quiet in the Holy presence of life.
The Spirit can descend upon the Bikin' Fool between the 45 minute mark and all of the time remaining in a ride and beyond. It takes at least that long for the mind to drift from the mundane to the sublime. Then the phenomenon of the void finds fertile ground to inoculate the soul of the Bikin' Fool with an orgasmic sense of well-being in the universe. Suddenly the bike ride loses all meaning, and the naked truth of the moment surges to the forefront of the here/now. The experience of now is the Hub of life. The integration of bliss into the world is the Rim, all is connected by the Holy Spoke. We are all connected in all ways; from the drama that the tread experiences to the blissful silence of the Hub. The Alpha and the Omega. In the void we are the beginning and the end.