A Replanting

On January 30, 2016January 31, 2016 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality5 Comments

I just returned from a denominational conference in Chicago.

That in itself is nothing particularly unique or special. But it has provided ample opportunity for observing, listening, and to a lesser extent participating, in the strange soup that is contemporary evangelicalism.

I love my newly adopted denomination of the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Among Protestant, evangelical denominations it’s at the top of the list for what I expect and/or prefer in a faith family with whom I sojourn. A big front door, a big living room, a big heart, big ideas, and a small theology ledger.

A non-creedal body by history and by choice, there is no dotted line awaiting my subservient signature to enter and serve. As such, the ECC provides a place in which to actually practice the work of theology on the ground – you know, where Jesus did before leaving to get his doctorate.

Typically, our post-Enlightenment milieu seeks to train up preachers like God scientists. Sideline the complexities of self and soul and stuff young heads like Christmas turkeys with doughy abstractions and crunchy data, then send them out as over-confident, naked children to fight lions with noodles.

I’ve written much about my twenty-year journey out of evangelicalism into a much broader ocean tinged in the light of a more mystical, pre-Reformation, eastern Christianity. For me to even consider climbing back aboard this ship required a pretty convincing package.

So far, the ECC seems to be that package.

In brief, the ECC is comprised of a complicated mix of Swedish Lutheranism distilled through North American Pietism. It has found its way forward, stumbling together through all manner of daunting issues, learning itself by means of diverse community, water-cooler (pub, more likely) conversation, congregational government, word and sacrament, occasional passive-aggression, all over micro-brew and cigars.

It’s enough to make C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton downright giggly.

An old world Lutheranism offers the richness of liturgical worship and sacramentalism while its new world Pietism places it in the hinterland where the ‘other’ lives. On the backroads, the rank and file are too busy surviving to worry whether or not all the right words are in all the right places.

It prefers connectivity over credibility, presence over power, and communal acquiescence over conversant apologetics. It may be the last bastion of evangelicalism where any hint of spiritual orthopraxy is wed, albeit tangentially, to theological orthodoxy. It’s tea cozies for some, bad whiskey in dirty cups for others. My kinda place.

This blog from the beginning has existed to give voice to the centrality of spiritual formation in all I do, think, say, believe, adore….How gratifying to know that this denomination has an entire wing dedicated to the promotion of the same. There is more than lip service paid to the idea of souls being satiated in the numinous realities of the ineffable God.

As one tasked with drawing a local congregation into the worship of God, this has given me a good place to explore. I can continue my journey into post-modern, eclectic liturgy rooted in a more robust sacramentalism.

Friends out on the town.jpg — A few of my music peeps out on the town in Chicago

But I can also do so with a view to reimagining the church’s ancient past for a very complex present. In this endeavor I am finding friends, co-laborers in the liturgical arts game with whom I can toss around the stuff of our trade. They are beautiful souls and have almost as many questions as I when it comes to how best to ply our trade in the murky complexities of local church ministry.

The ECC is not perfect. We still succumb to the temptation of hipster idolatry and the cult of relevance. We are still a bit too easily enamored of evangelicalism’s how-to mentality where every conceivable question has an airtight answer. The subtle presence of American pragmatism can be seen sniffing around the corners and we’re a bit too close to Christian industry-speak for my taste. Finally, we find ourselves mired in a safety-zone mentality on matters of human sexuality.

But in spite of this, it is a very healthy alternative to almost anything else I’ve seen within the vast dysfunction of the growing-by-division evangelical family. It’s been a good place to be found of God.

It is the garden in which I am presently planted.

And I am glad to be here.

ECC Worship collective.jpg — My new Covenant partners in ministry

Photos by Jessica Perez and someone else with a very daunting selfie stick

Building cages from fence posts

On January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 By robertalanrifeIn Words...always wordsLeave a comment

With robust assurances his heart gives him leave, and he chooses where to put up fence posts. A random job at best, like cliff jogging in fog, he dons a belt of desire with the tools of need. Soon, even the smallest creature will set its mind to the task of destroying what little is planted – turnips, sour, or lettuce, damp – sustenance an after thought to the insistent impracticalities of spice and garnish, sweet.

He hums a happy tune, just loud enough to drown out his wiser, elder self – safe but jejune, unlike the dashing rarities of a ripe and unpitted longing. It helps to take the edge off catacombed thoughts, still damp and painted brightly in drooping caves of swelling light.

III

He watches how her tongue dances from lips to teeth, teeth to palette and back again – mesmerized like too much moon behind too little cloud. He matches word for word, glance for glance and what started as picket fence has become an encampment. And his bludgeoned fingers bleed and weep only slightly less than his forehead, sweat-bedewed in the ritual of dalliance.

The stumps go down, first one, then another, haphazard arrangement built to harbor dreams, not capture dreamers. Nails leap from hammer in wood soft and easy, like feet in wet clay. And soon, the world watches in the laissez faire of bored repetition. Not even an eyebrow raised, curious about a man backing into his own battlements, a penned bird, stuck in a cage he built while looking the other way.

A Piper Toots His Own Horn

On January 6, 2016January 7, 2016 By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, life together, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation13 Comments

For forty plus years I have submitted myself to being assaulted by a screaming five-legged octopus wearing tartan underpants. To the lay person – I am a bagpiper. It is, under any circumstances, an instrument that, like a crying baby on an airline (or me), demands center stage. It is a sound that captured me even as a boy of seven years old.

Calgary, 1971
I grew up in a tiny bungalow in Calgary, Alberta the adopted son of a brewery worker and his wife, my mother. As I, along with my younger brother and sister, continued to grow, it became abundantly apparent that our consistent brushing of shoulders would only lead to heartbreak. My father set about building me a bedroom in our not-quite-finished basement. For some fifteen years to follow it would be my sanctuary – my monastery – the place where I found music, booze, girls (keep that bit a secret, they only know about the first one), and years later, Jesus.

The spring before my eighth birthday I moved in. Kismet. Changing channels one afternoon I happened upon a presentation of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, filmed live at Edinburgh Castle. It is an annual display of pomp, circumstance, bright lights, booming cannons and bagpipes – lots of bagpipes. I was hooked. I begged my parents to let me learn to do what I had just seen, but thought I had dreamed.

A love affair had begun.

Christmas, 1974
All other parcels had been destroyed and gutted of their contents by panting, over-wrought children. My Mom turned to my Dad and asked, “is that everything then?” (Oddly, in recent years, we’ve found ourselves performing such non-Shakespearean works with our own children…sigh). They went into a bedroom and reached under the bed, pulling out one final, unopened, present. As kids do, I skinned it in seconds only to discover contents that set me reeling (no extra charge for the bad pun) for an hour afterwards.
I owned my first set of bagpipes.

Okotoks, Alberta, 1992
Those bagpipes became a close friend. Extensive traveling, piping for dignitaries and royalty, numerous television and radio appearances, and two piping albums later, and our lives found us church planting in the urban-cowboy sleeper-community of Okotoks, Alberta, south of Calgary. It was idyllic. Rae worked for a local travel agency. I worked as an industrial painter for my father-in-law’s painting company.

As the call to ministry grew too loud to ignore we found ourselves scrambling to get our affairs in order for a move to Vancouver, B.C. where I was enrolled at Regent College. Bills were paid, scores settled, ‘t’s crossed and ‘i’s dotted as we made preparations. In a move I thought noble at the time but which now seems utterly foolhardy I sold those pipes to help pave the way toward ministry and the next chapter of our lives.

I have regretted it ever since…and I never did attend Regent College.

A Serendipity
I have taught for many years at Bagpiping Seminars, Celtic Performing Arts Schools and the like. A dear colleague and one of my best friends is a man named René Cusson. Not only is he one of the world’s great pipers but he is a collector of instruments. Knowing me to be bagpipeless, he selflessly loaned me a set he’d picked up from a garage sale for $75. A keen eye, some research, and a sacred serendipity revealed them to be a rather famous set of MacDougall of Aberfeldy bagpipes probably made in the late 1890s, ultimately finding themselves to a legendary bagpiper killed in WWII.

For 25 years, from 1992 until September of this year, I played those bagpipes.

A Request
René’s daughter, Ceitinn is a champion Highland Dancer. But, as is the case with many purveyors of Highland arts, one skill is never enough. She wanted to begin bagpipe lessons and follow in her father’s footsteps. This of course meant a message to me that, although not unexpected, stopped me in my tracks. He would need those pipes back for his daughter to have something upon which to learn.

The process began of disassembling and packaging them for transport to their home on Vancouver Island. In September 2015, at the Greyhound Bus Station in Nelson, B.C., I said farewell to a comfortable friend and began a life of bagpipelessness once again.

Thankfully, as a piping instructor, I’ve been blessed to borrow student’s bagpipes as required.

Christmas Eve, a Good Time for Miracles
Selling bagpipes my parents bought for me is only one of many regrets. But it’s a big one. In spite of having had a set to play all these years, that memory is not easily erased. And I may yet be a novice in this whole Christian enterprise but I know this much, God delights in reversing the irreversible; in repairing the seemingly irreparable damages of our past.
In Gospel terms, regret is a wasted emotion.

To my surprise, shock, and delight I was gifted with a brand new set of McCallum bagpipes at our Celtic Christmas Eve service this year. Completely unknown to me, pastor Duncan and ??? colluded in a series of conversations and scheming, phone calls and plotting, sideways glances and squishy secrets to research, obtain, prepare, and gift me – publicly no less – with this amazing thing.

Best of all, my Mom and her husband, Sam were visiting us from Alberta, and were present to see it. If anyone knew just how inconceivable it is to play a bagpipe “fresh out of the box” (bagpipes are frustratingly moody and don’t follow directions well), you would understand just how gratifying it was to pipe folks out of the sanctuary with this new instrument!

I’ve played them for hours since then in a mixture of awe, tears, and bewildering joy. To say I am grateful is a woeful understatement. To say thank you just feels so utterly lame.

But let me start there…

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