For Emily Dickinson

On November 27, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

“Hope is the thing,” she said,

that one thing most real for one who looks.

Her lips, so full in Heaven’s unmeasured smile,

speak outward still to a land more rich for the kiss.

“He ate and drank the precious words,” she intones –

a wiser breath slicing through the caustic

din of monoxidic madness. Someone sees

what, in its dim appearing, shows itself bright.

“If I can stop one heart from breaking,” we hear

her moan, the pained and paining alike her cast.

Though hell would be her suitor, more suited

to Heaven the language of this child.

Let us then lean into the dawning day, delight

our closest friend and, as she might urge us,

look East where all is birthing and good is free.

For “none can avoid this purple.”

Image found here

The bricks in our walls, chapter 3

On November 15, 2014October 19, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental livingLeave a comment

I had never played this game before. I was just fourteen at the time and was apparently comfortable with the fact that I was doing so not just with new friends but also with my older, female cousin. Boys will be boys as they say. To add further daring-do we were playing this dangerous game in their kitchen, mere feet from aunt and uncle’s bedroom. Perhaps it was the adrenal rush of knowing that, to be caught out here in rural Nowheresville, British Columbia, meant no one would hear the screaming.

Strip poker is fun.

Jim played blues and ragtime guitar. I’d never before heard Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer or The Heliotrope Bouquet played on a six-string. It was a lunchtime folk club at my high school hosted by a friend, Barry, who also happened to be my guidance counselor. Jim was our guest performer that day. It was an hour of seventeen-year-old musical bliss as we enjoyed the most effortless guitar acrobatics I’d yet encountered. With my natural expertise at charming flattery and acerbic wit, lightly salted with otherworldly humility (translation: bullshit), I sat in his living room as his guitar student less than two weeks later. Only after apprenticing under this demure genius could I say with some level of honesty…

I play guitar.

It tore me apart. It was a toss-up what was worse – the insult of my best friend holding hands with this girl, or the salt-in-the-wound – only days before, she’d been my girlfriend. The sense of injustice was overwhelming. For matters of suitability I’ll refrain from the Old Testament metaphor of freshly plowed fields for another’s enjoyment. But, I digress. My heart couldn’t decide which was worse, the jealousy of seeing him next to her, or the pang of longing self-pity. Is anything more insufferable than such a friend asking relationship advice with the previous participant in that same relationship? Eventually, the melodrama subsided and was replaced with a delicious vindication when, mere weeks later, she was engaged to yet another man with whom she’d been “friendly” right under everyone’s noses.

Relationships are so easy and uncomplicated.

Terry was the extravert in our musical partnership. His effervescent personality, literally brimming with electricity, always overshadowed my quieter, albeit charming, demeanor. We made a great team, both as performing duo, and as life-of-the-party tornadoes. Through Terry I was introduced to what is actually possible as a player of strings. His deft mastery of guitar, mandolin, banjo, and ukulele made my own growing skills seem elementary at best. Hence, I was the singer. More important however was the easy, hospitable faith of a man six years my senior, lived out among the strange, ne’er-do-well ruffians who were our nightly audience. It taught me that those rough-‘n-tumble souls were under our care.

Terry is still my best friend.

Picture found here

The heart that John heard

On November 14, 2014November 16, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic2 Comments

Many times and seasons pretend to sway our way,

and drop their hints of monotony – but fail.

Few are the banks of shuddered-down snow

on pathways already hidden from our feet.

Many are the pedals on wayward flowers

refusing a lesser share of their own song.

Few are the words ill-spoken from lips

more accustomed to smile or kiss.

Many the moving notes from the still page,

to still the ravaged breast will come.

Few, or none, the children, playground-found,

whose voices, loud and ardent, disappoint.

Many weary eyes are pointed upward where

hills, apart and distant, croon.

Few there be to quell the wish of

night-fallen star-gazers seeking.

And altogether, met and threaded down,

in aching stillness from the heart that John heard.

Remembrance day

On November 11, 2014November 11, 2017 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

O dear page, waiting and empty,

could there be a day better suited

to the recollections of a soul, overripe and

forgetting its light? Those things that once were

a willing fountain of refreshment have become

the sublimations of tired whimsy.

Sparrows only frolic where there is the bidding

of happy water, the promise of baptismal song;

the welcome of Maundy-feet in shared coolness.

When pools freeze over they are

fit for nothing more than a crystalline table

for airborne detritus, the gleanings of

the woeful. It mirrors itself, parody of warmer times,

more reflective but less refreshing.

Let no more the satisfactions otherwise suitable

to the salubrious spirit be hidden among

mournful weeds of forgotten bounty.

Rich the soil into which dreams are buried.

Light the step of the grace begotten.

Still are the waves of the undying.

Yet we call this to mind and

therefore have we hope…

Photo by Stephen Elliott

the art of wasting perfume

On November 9, 2014November 10, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Beauty, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, worship2 Comments

There are smart people out there with books and articles and quotes intimating that the wick of the worship wars flame has burned to a stump. Now, only sticky wax remains out of which we may safely pull something shapely and useful. Whether that is true or not I can’t really say. But, we’ve been sailing post-modern seas long enough to have emerged in a somewhat better place regarding shared worship practices. What interests me most however lies much deeper than mere ritual.

So much of our corporate experience of ecclesiastica these days is about efficiency, effectiveness and euphoria (no extra charge for the cute alliteration). Even big box churches like Saddleback and Willow Creek are recognizing that it’s much easier to draw crowds than deepen congregations. Spend enough money in the right places, position the right people in your dream team staff and learn the angles (this, apparently, means relevance or some such thing) and success is all but guaranteed.

A scourge, not just of contemporary faith and practice, but of early New Testament times as well, is that of pragmatism; visible, quantifiable, “helpful” theology. If some practice of faith doesn’t yield measurable results it is considered suspect, superfluous; even useless. Dead-weight. Dross. The average church building boasts classrooms for every grade, meeting rooms for everything from Ladies’ Teas to A.A. to Family Ministries. Closet space is dedicated to coats, robes, wedding paraphernalia, soup bowls and Christmas decorations. Signs in the Narthex (lobby, foyer) proudly point to these rooms, giving visitors the impression that this is a church on the move. Look at us, we’re not idle. We’re doin’ stuff. Good stuff. Lotsa stuff. It’s exhausting just to consider the dizzying possibilities, let alone dive in.

In our culture, if an idea or practice isn’t immediately and continually beneficial for coffers, volunteers, or givers, it is suspect at best, anathema at worst.

I committed my life to Jesus while driving home to Calgary from a pub gig in Edmonton. A creeping loneliness blending with a troubled psyche was replaced by a lightness of mind and heart I can only describe as…good. Really, really good. I was barely eighteen and living at home. That very evening, my own gratitude and joy spilled over to my Mom, who became the surprised recipient of a fifty-dollar bill for doing my laundry. There is nothing quite like the joy of lavish waste in the name of thanksgiving. Well, and the look of delightful surprise with concerned consternation on someone’s face on the receiving end of such magnanimity.

As I’ve been discovering ever since, such acts are nothing new. Happy hearts become ready harbors for such ships of gratitude, over-laden with desire to be offloaded onto the object of their affection. The Gospel is all about waste and abundance in the name of love; the praise of those who get what it means to be seen. To be known. If you don’t believe me, ask your wife if the time spent making love might not be better spent painting the guest room. I dare say it might be a venture that just prepped your new sleeping quarters. The scriptures are replete with examples of extravagance in the name of love.

I am rather fond of a seedy picture of a woman, obviously swooning in gratitude for the courteous and loving attention of a well-known Rabbi casually saunters over and basically pours her beer on Jesus. Well, actually super expensive perfume. Like, way expensive. A rather sexual act by any standard, it alone deserves volumes for it speaks of much more than simple extravagance. Jesus affixes theological significance to the act. And, of course, the pragmatists in the crowd, thinking themselves in-sensed out of high ideals jump all over it.

Of course, as we can always expect under such lavish displays of unadorned praise offered inappropriately to the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong way, self-proclaimed keepers of the moral gates then, as now, cry foul. They either spit out their tea or drop their knitting needles. By the way, have you ever wondered where those sneaky bastards always come from? They’re positively creepy in their ubiquity as though finding crevices behind rocks, under the dining room table, or behind the rhododendrons.

The scriptures are replete with such acts of selfless wastefulness. Joseph of Arimathea, one of Jesus’ wealthier followers, became his post-mortem patron in the form a top tier burial plot. Not the magnanimity one would generally prefer, but there it is; another example of a heart needing to express itself in wealthy waste. King David craves water be brought him while facing the brutal Philistines but decides instead to pour out the most valuable currency in the desert back to the desert. He too knew the art of worshipful waste.

Although an overused example, it serves to illustrate my point here; if this woman by her act has openly laid bare her heart, swollen in the ache of gratitude, then she shows us what worship truly is. What it means to adore someone. And her risky act of risqué devotion mirrors God’s own character. Jesus is God’s wasted perfume. Jesus understands her because he understands his own journey into the dark abyss of broken humanity. It is a pilgrimage of pain, not the pain of the cross primarily, but the pain of loss and loneliness.

She mirrors the heart of God who knows only too well the art of wasting perfume.

Silence; a Sonnet for Remembrance Day

On November 6, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

As Remembrance, or Armistice Day, approaches, I felt a few thoughts to be in order. Malcolm Guite’s, not mine. Please, enjoy, and…reflect.

Malcolm Guite

As we approach Remembrance Day I am reposting this sonnet about the two minutes silence, which is now published in my book Sounding the Seasons. I’m posting it a few days early so that any one who wishes to can use it in services or events either on remembrance Sunday or on Remembrance day itself. As you will see from the little introduction below, I wrote it in response to the silence on Radio 4, and last year it was featured on Radio 4’s Remembrance Sunday Worship.

So her is how it came to be written. On Remembrance Day I was at home listening to the radio and when the time came for the Two Minutes Silence. suddenly the radio itself went quiet. I had not moved to turn the dial or adjust the volume. There was something extraordinarily powerful about that deep silence from a ‘live’ radio, a…

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