Month: April 2016

Learning new songs

On By robertalanrifeIn Words...always words2 Comments

Don’t let the sadness of silent friends

become the muse of panicked pain.

Let, instead, a song of silent sadness

bedeck the mystery of patient place.

 

Don’t wait to hear the morning birds –

listen instead to the quiet humming

of trees whose secrets are theirs to share

with those, waiting, craning their necks.

 

Give what time is left in the weeks of minutes

in days of nowhere to wait –

 

wait

 

for what yet will come

in songs, freshly sung,

by voices, newly found.

 

God has not left you –

she only sings to others still waiting for

notes and what assurance is given

in the pin-pricks of light invading your dark. 

“Follow Me” – a Litany

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality1 Comment

How good it is whenever we leave all false agendas, desires, plans, schemes, thoughts – selves behind and obediently follow the Rabbi without hesitation.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to imagine a world where those without hope are given hope because the community of Jesus follow the leading of their Master and Teacher and bring this hope in all they say and do.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to be hosts of Presence keeping company with sinners, tax collectors, lepers and the outcasts of society.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to have ears that hear the voice of Jesus calling to us, urging us to follow him wherever he goes participating with him in bringing the new wine of God’s kingdom to light around us.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to live before God every moment with godly sorrow for our sin, fully embracing our brokennesses in honesty and authenticity.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to celebrate with all whose repentance brings new life and an accompanying deep life change even when such celebration causes raised eyebrows.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good never to allow ourselves to succumb to religious peer pressure that traps one in the smothering flames of imposed, ungodly parameters of faith life, ways of living that lessen the Gospel in us.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good never to succumb to the same judgmental spirit which produces and perpetuates religious peer pressure. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to taste the old, complexly rich and fragrant wine of our forebears while working in the vineyard alongside the Master Winemaker.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to stand in the middle of our lives, looking left and right, to find those of ill repute and the despised with whom to drink new wine.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to stand in the place where others are, be the voice of Jesus calling to them, saying “follow me” and teach them how to catch others in the net of grace.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to be those who hold the redemptive instruments of grace at the bedsides of the broken together with our great Physician.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good to bring encouragement to all whose “bridegroom” has been taken from them either by sickness, death or malfeasance.

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

How good…

How good, indeed.

Praise be to the Lord of all lepers, losers, limpers and lovers!

…and he said to him, “Follow me.”

back-roads-from-cascades.jpg

Roadside infatuations

On By robertalanrifeIn Words...always wordsLeave a comment

I have wandered down this creek-side road

with a kind of curious ebullience –

a roadside infatuation with hard-to-pull weeds.

The long cool of it disrupts the day long

enough to breathe in the dust,

to hear the gravel crunch beneath these boots –

and let my eyes wander

                                    upward

                                                where the clouds compete

                                                            with geese and hours,

and poetry the color of rain.

The sound of your laugh.

On By robertalanrifeIn National Poetry Month, Waxing Poetic1 Comment

I first posted this a few years ago. The reason I did so then is the same I do so now, to celebrate my wife’s birthday. In the digital age, discovering a person’s age is as easy as a cursor, a mouse, and a nosy desire to know something. But, in the interest of propriety, I say simply, “Happy _____ birthday, babe!”

Like thunder in rain-Rae's birthday16.jpg

Babe, you still brighten the road before me…