Making Every Day My Masterpiece at the Y

I always feel smug for a couple of hours when I make it to the Saturday morning spin class at the YMCA. I tend to refer to it as extreme cycling because it sounds more impressive  like I've spent half of the morning hanging off the north face of the Eiger, and while an hour of intensive workout felt extreme for the first few sessions it doesn't feel so extreme now.

It also feels less cutting edge when I look to my left and see the 82-year-old man who shows up here far more regularly than me.

Nevertheless, the Y can still freak me out on a Saturday morning. There are too many kids and parents, too many cars in the parking lot and too much noise, Today a photo session with kids had been moved from the outdoor pool area to the gym which was full of parents jostling for position and looking angrily around for a member of staff to shout at.

At such times I sometimes feel the urge to become Sanctimonious World View Man (SWVM) - a sort of superhero without portfolio or bright blue underpants, and to go up to them and yell: "Look Soccer Mom. There are kids now facing bullets in Syria, and you are about to go postal over waiting 20 minutes for a photo which won't be much better than one you could have taken on your smart phone."

I didn't.

The other thing that bothers me about the Y is all the slogans and references to "Judeo-Christian values."

What the heck does that mean? In layman's terms you either believe Jesus was the main man or just some beardy dude who was great at parties because he could turn water into wine so as you didn't have to go out and pick up a crate at Total Wine.

As I slogged up imaginary hills to Mumford and Sons I allowed my mind to wander as to the meaning of the slogan on the wall "Make Every Day your Masterpiece."

It got me back to thinking about Jesus again and the fact most of my days look more like this...

In 2012 an elderly woman who considered herself an artist took it upon herself to restore a crumbling fresco of Jesus with his crown of thorns at the Sanctuary of Mercy Church in Borjanos in southern Spain.

The result was quite unlovely, although ironically it brought worldwide media attention to a little known and inconsequential fresco.