I realize that I have a wide variety of people who read my blog. Some of you are connected to me through The Bikers’ Church. Some are friends on Twitter. And others have found your way to this blog after following the daily devotional I write called The Oil Change. Many of you have a strong spiritual faith and love it when I focus on spirituality. Others of you are not that interested in spiritual things and yet share my love of motorcycles and enjoy those types of posts more.
Pro Bloggers would suggest I am better off writing two separate blogs. One that focuses on spirituality and the other that writes specifically are my love of riding. And yet, I cringe at the thought of doing that.
You see, this blog is about my reflections along the journey. What journey is that? The journey of life. A journey, that for me, includes my spirituality and my passion for riding. It would be almost impossible for me to separate the two. When I ride, I experience some of my most profound spiritual moments. And when I am connecting to God, I often feel my passion for riding increase. After all, it was God who wired me to love motorcycles the way I do.
I have come to believe something very strongly: your spirituality is not something you tack on to everything else about your life. In other words, you can’t truly relegate your spirituality to a one hour slot on Sunday morning (or in the case of Bikers’ Church, Thursday night). There isn’t the spiritual life and the secular life. There’s just life. Period.
My spirituality should permeate everything about me. How I watch the news, the entertainment I enjoy, the conversations I have. My spirituality should influence all of those things. Because it’s lived out in all those things.
The same is true of my biker lifestyle. I view life from the eyes of a biker. I see fashion from the eyes of a biker (some would suggest it’s a lack of fashion). Even though we have a few feet of snow on the ground, my heart still skips a beat when I go into my garage and see my bike sitting there. It’s “naked” right now, because my tank and fenders are off the bike, yet I still smile when I see it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is maybe it’s time to stop segregating your life into all kinds of different compartments. Rather than seeing each aspect of what makes you the person you are as individual traits, it’s time to see how all of those things combine together to make you the person God created you to be.
One of my goals in 2010 is to stop referring to “my spiritual life”, “my biker views”, my “canadian attitude”, etc. and just start seeing it all as “my life.” Me.
What do you think?
January 11th, 2010 at 6:40 am
I agree with you on this point – we are all so busy trying to be all sorts of different people to suit particular situations or relationships that it is easy to forget who we are at the core. In fact, I think our society thrives on it but in a frenetic, disjointed way.
Selah… such a simple word but to me it means to stop and just “be” all you are, even if just for a short time – not trying to sort out who you think you’re supposed to be at that moment.
God bless,
Derek
January 25th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Very well put Rob. I enjoy all your posts, spiritual or biking or otherwise. I agree that life is a journey. I, like you, blog about other things and do not confine it to just one thing. I like being able to blog about anything that I’m experiencing, or thinking about, or that interests me. We all have many different parts of our lives and that’s what makes us the people that we are.
I do, however, have two blogs and the other one is solely for my poetry. That I wanted to keep it altogether in one separate place.