This past weekend, I attended the Newsong Men’s Retreat at Forest Home. The retreat was pretty good with speakers from the Newsong leadership team. The retreat site is well equipped and the food was slightly better than most camp food. It was a good time to connect with the men at church since most of the time we are too busy to meet each other in the regular church setting.

One of the things that we were also looking forward to was using our free time to ride the Santa Ana River Trail, which is supposedly one of the epic singletrack rides in Southern California.

We got up early Saturday morning for our first ride to do the loop from behind the post office. We were able to find the trail fairly quickly, but unfortunately, it was not as ‘epic’ as we expected. The trail condition was really loose and there were several trees that had fallen across the path, so we had to keep stopping to climb over the obstacles or walk through unridable patches.

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In the afternoon, we took a friend along for his first mountain-bike ride. Aside from falling off the trail at one point, he did great. This time, we rode further up SART from where we turned off in the morning. It had some short interesting sections, but for the most part, it was pretty much more of the same as the morning ride. One thing we didn’t account for was how quickly it would get dark, so at the end of the ride, I pushed up the fire road to get the van and drove back to pick up the guys who were trailing behind.

There’s still another section that I would like to try the next time I am up in the area. In the end, it was good to get out to ride, but SART doesn’t really standout as a destination ride.

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Then last night, one of my friends told me that he was fasting dinners and also from listening to the radio when in the car. I was thinking, “Ok, so now God has told me this twice”, so if I don’t act on it, I’ll be like young Samuel who heard God’s voice, but didn’t realize it until the third time.

So this morning, as I started my incredibly long 15 minute commute to work, I tried turning off the radio, and realized how quiet it was, without the constant stream of information flowing into my ears, it was like, I had to actually think on my own. I reflected briefly on how this is really like what I was saying in my last post, that I need to create space to reflect and process life. Then after 5 minutes of that, my mind started to get flooded with work, and I figured that I would rather hold off those thoughts and the stress that come with them for a little while until I actually got into the office.

My plan now, we’ll see how long it lasts, is to start off each morning’s commute with the radio turned off so that I can reflect, process and pray for 5 minutes (or at least until I get onto the freeway, whichever comes first). Then on my way back home from work, I will turn off the radio once I get off the freeway for another 5 minutes so that I can start processing my day before I get back home. Hopefully, this will help me to create a buffer between work and home in which I can consciously make the transition in between without simply allowing it to happen.

Oh yeah, as to the title of this post, when I went to turn off my radio, I saw that my radio doesn’t actually turn off when I press the power button, it just mutes with the following symbol displayed:

I noticed this before, but didn’t really make an impression on me at the time, since I so rarely turn off my radio. Anyways, I just thought it was an interesting metaphor on our lives today where we are constantly bombarded with information from all channels of our lives to the point where we can’t shut it off, and all we can do is just try and mute some of it so that we can hear ourselves think.

1. The nails didn’t keep Jesus on the cross, nothing could hold the Son of God to the cross, it was Christ’s love for me that kept him on the cross.
2. The Calvary scene that Keith’s kids made was great, we can do that with our girls.
3. “I need it!” I needed and continually need Christ’s sacrifice to cover my pride and unworthiness. (text in red to symbolize Christ’s blood covering my brokenness)