Soul riding

I’ve been reading Rev. Neil Elliot’s draft thoughts for his PhD on ‘The Spirituality of Snowboarding’ this afternoon. He looks at the snowboarding term ‘soul riding’, which is the term used to describe the peace and solitude that backcountry snowboarding brings to a snowboarder riding ‘out of bounds’. I guess this might be equivalent to the feeling of being the first to criss-cross the snow when off-piste skiing or ‘powder-hounding’ for the skiers amongst us.

A snowboarder doing this (soul riding) experiences something ‘spiritual’, perhaps related to certain elements which Elliot identifies as: awareness of mortality and dealing with or facing the prospect of death; themes of freedom and escape from normal life; experiences of transcendence and detachment including ‘out of the body’ experiences; renewed senses of community, senses of identity and significance; the discovery of meaning in/of life; a closeness to and awareness of nature; a commitment to a set of ethics; and finally, a rediscovery of playing. He describes these ‘spiritual’ elements as part of the sacralisation of culture.

I was also listening to a radio interview by Brian McLaren (http://godcomplexradio.com/2010/01/season-1-episode-1-brian-mclaren/), who talked about the Christian’s need for spiritual disciplines, particularly the need for solitude and silence. The link between solitude and silence, freedom, individuality, transcendence and playing connected with me. I was also reminded of the infamous line from Chariots of Fire when Eric Liddell is supposed to have said ‘When I run, I feel God’s pleasure’.

My questions are: why do we feel a connection with God when we do something we really love, i.e. something he made us for, and why are we so surprised that we’d feel a connection with Him, when He made us like that?!