Chairmen and chairwomen of the boards

‘Cool’ sacred images take faith to skate parks and ski slopes

After two decades working in media, Lisa Fixler started an online religious goods store. Naming it Full of Grace USA, she began creating items using images from traditional Catholic art.
 
“Most of Catholicism’s imagery is out in the public domain, so that means I had access to it,” Fixler explained. “Then it was simply a matter of curating, digitizing, and figuring out my supply chain.”

Then her two teenage sons got into skateboards and scooters, and she noticed all the “dark and demonic imagery” printed on much of the equipment sold in stores. She had an epiphany: “Why can’t we make faith-based art attractive to youth and teens without being overbearing about it? Why can’t we make it cool?”
 
So Fixler set out to “create a counterculture to the counterculture of boarding” by creating boards with religious imagery on them. So was born her new enterprise, Motherboards, named in honor of the Blessed Mother.

As she is based amid the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, she soon added snowboards to the mix, and more recently has expanded into custom surfboards via special order, collaborating with a manufacturer in Virginia. More recently, she added longboards — longer, wider skateboards with larger and softer wheels that handle more like surfboards on land.

OLLIE-LUJAH

Both of Fixler’s businesses are e-commerce, but both product lines have a presence within The Retro, her religious home-goods store in the Denver suburb of Arvada. Although her wares are distinctively Catholic, her customer base includes many of other Christian traditions and faith groups.
 
“I’m just happy that we can use the store as another tool to help spread our faith and maybe, just maybe, get people on the fence to explore the beauty of God,” she said. “I’m on a mission to conversion here, and if anything that we have to offer can germinate that small kernel of a thought or a conversation, then that’s what I’m after.”
 
As for the skateboards and snowboards, “I rejoice in the fact that our boards are making the rounds in skate parks and on the slopes and that they, hopefully, are creating a little bit of discussion. Sort of a passive evangelism,” Fixler said. “Because in these sports, you don’t want to necessarily shout it from the mountaintops so much as quietly but consistently send your message.”

Her most popular skateboard designs are the St. Benedict Sword and the Virgo Potens. The St. Michael snowboard has been extremely popular “especially with adult boarders who like a longer, faster board,” she noted.

SKATING EVANGELISTS

There is even a Team Motherboards — not a competitive team, but rather an endorsement, Fixler said, of “those in the sport who perform at a high level but more importantly who embrace and wear their faith proudly.”

Among Team Motherboards members is Mathias Ledum, a Norwegian presently studying and discerning his vocation in Rome. When home in Norway, he frequents the skate parks of Lillehammer.
 
“If a Catholic on a Catholic skateboard is what it takes to get some people to start thinking seriously about their life and how God might be what their heart is yearning for,” Ledum recently told Aleteia, “then I’m more than happy to contribute to that.”

Another is Melanie Wiggin, a homeschooling mother of three who can be found practicing her skating tricks at Stevens Point skate park or her backyard halfpipe on her Our Lady of Guadalupe deck. Then there’s Brother Gabriel Cortés, a member of the Friars of the Immaculate, who uses his skateboarding skills to gain the attention of young people and spread the lessons of faith.

Skateboard evangelism is “an avenue that not many people have,” Cortés said in a recent interview. “[It’s] making use of all the analogies that go along with skateboarding, of falling down and getting back up” — an apt metaphor for living the Catholic faith in the midst of the world.

As for Fixler herself, a former Division I college athlete in volleyball, she’s relatively new to both skateboarding and snowboarding. But she takes Cortés’ message to heart.

“Falling hurts, I can tell you that,” she quipped. “I have a tendency to want to be proficient at all sporting endeavors, so picking up the board sports has been a lesson in humility.

“While I don’t have a strong ability on either board,” she admitted, “I’m trying my best to get better!”

Riding the waves of God’s perfect plan

Bear Woznick was an accomplished surfer long before he rediscovered the Catholic faith of his youth. The path he followed took him away from the Church for a while as well as from the breakers and rollers that once beckoned him to the beaches. He eventually reclaimed his Catholic faith, and after years of working behind a desk to support his family, he returned to his beloved waves and soon became a skilled tandem surfer — so good, in fact, that he won consecutive Tandem Masters World Championships in 2007 and 2008.

His spiritual growth coincided with his sporting success, and the connections between his passions for God and for surfing were not lost on him. He has since made use of his talents in surfing and other adventure sports to proclaim the Catholic faith to others — as an author, men’s conference speaker, EWTN television and radio program host, and founder of Deep Adventure Ministries.

“When I became a champion tandem surfer, I knew it was only by God’s grace, and that it would be an empty award unless it opened the door to share the incredible good news of God’s power and love,” he writes in his book Deep Adventure: The Way of Heroic Virtue. “I knew that day, as I know now, that the trophy belonged to God, for He used my weakness to demonstrate His glory.”

Woznick has developed a creed that defines his evangelizing message: “The most radical thing you can do in life is abandon yourself to the wild adventure of God’s will.”

In his talks and his writings, he often draws insights from his experiences in extreme sports. He likens the search for God to the surfer’s quest.
 
“Like surfers, we must leave the shore and seek Him, always hoping for that perfect wave,” he writes. “Once we’ve paddled out, we wait. We look to the horizon for what we long for. We hope. Once we’ve turned out back on the land and abandoned our will to God’s, we’ve given up all control…. (W)e wait in hope and in prayer for the presence of the Lord.”