Church – A building for public Christian worship.
My butt hurts. The padding on this wooden pew is doing nothing for me and all I can think about is the fact that my little sister is hanging out underneath the pew playing with her dolls. I don’t remember the age when I was no longer allowed that privilege, but I do remember how awesome it was to be down there where I could lay down, play, sleep. Now, I’m stuck upright on this bench. The only relief is pushing my head up against the pew in front of me. This works until I realize that sleeping for 30 minutes with one’s head resting on wood leaves a giant red mark. I guess I finally learned that others were watching.
It was in Chile that I first learned of different types of churches. The cathedral in the Plaza de Armas was church. It wasn’t my kind of church, but there were people there walking around, singing, praying, doing churchy things under the backdrop of pomp and circumstance. Which was in stark contrast to the services being held in the small home in Parinacota where 15 people had gathered and a man with one eye was preaching. He had a Bible in one hand and was pounding on the pulpit with the other. When he was done with this, the guitar started up and the group sang.
There was one church I didn’t step foot in but happened to walk past the door during its services. There were about seven people standing while a man on a slightly raised platform chanted some scriptures. There was an odd, bright florescent light burning making the whole room bright like a room during surgery. Once he stopped chanted, he descended from his platform. Some of the group started ranting nonsensically. He approached the others and putting his hand to their foreheads, he ranted something I couldn’t understand and then they fell down. It didn’t feel right to me.
It was in my teens that I started to wonder why sitting in a building made by men listening to men speak was considered a way to worship God, but spending the same day outside in the open air enjoying what “God” had made was a sin. Yet, I felt closer to the ethereal, to the spiritual, to the beyond when I was hiking in complete solitude than I ever did while my butt hurt listening to some old man.
I guess what I am trying to say, is everybody has their own way of worshipping what they believe and they have their own idea of what a church is or should be. My church, the Church of the Holy Alliance of Mooseknucklers, is open air. The cathedral walls are the sandstone ledges that make up the Zion Curtain. The only chandeliers are the Juniper trees and their berries. And my pew? My pew is a bike seat.
In almost all religions there is some or a ton of repeatable ceremonies that are performed to ensure forgiveness, self-worth, righteousness or whatever. In the church I was raised in, this is found in the Sacrament. A couple of young kids go before the congregation, blessing the bread and water before it’s administered to the church by other young kids. For others, it may be the singing of certain hymn, the repeating of mantras whilst dancing in the street with those little symbols you attach to your fingers. Or prostrating yourself every day at the exact time and facing a certain direction to pray toward a city you have never been to. I think you get the point.
For the Church of the Holy Alliance of Mooseknucklers, we are more of a physical bunch. Our rites and ceremonies are performed within our cathedrals and designated by our priests that laid out our trails before us.
For me, the highest rite is that of the triple crown, ride the Bitch, the Cock Blocker and Rattlesnake without a dab. It’s not easy. It takes practice and if you don’t bring your best self, if you are having self doubt, if your chain isn’t lubed perfectly, you will fail. And a dab cannot be erased. It lives on in infamy once it is placed on the ground. You may session the move, get it right after a couple of tries, but the dab stands like a stain on your soul. It is as erasable as taking another human’s life. It’s not as bad, but it stays the same, a dark mark on your record that you can never get back.
As a Mooseknuckler it is essential to always be practicing the faith. Always be aboard that pew, that place of worship. It matters not if you are able to make the pilgrimage every day to the highest cathedrals. What is most important is that you spent the time in your pew practicing your ceremony and making the world right by pedaling wherever it may be. We don’t require that you make an expensive, time-consuming pilgrimage to some far away place. No, jump a curb when you get a chance. Take the long way home and session that rock drop you have been looking at. The most important thing is to ride.
Church – Church is wherever you pedal.
P. L. and R.
