Author: robertalanrife

I have spent the better part of my life as a professional musician. Primarily, that has meant the fun and challenging world of church music. Most recently, I have transitioned out of my role as worship and music director for Yakima Covenant Church, Yakima, Washington to global service in Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm a singer-songwriter, liturgist, poet, and writer. I love words. I love to read them. I love to write them. Most of all, I love the many intersections, like a sacramental tapestry, of life, liturgy, literature, the arts, and spiritual formation...oh, and I love haggis.

Kathleen Norris, acedia, and uncorking the wine

On October 18, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

I suffer from an all too common writer’s ailment. It is an elusive demon, refusing easy corral, and lives on in spite of my best efforts to subdue it. Kathleen Norris, a favorite writer of mine, stakes a claim on this little inner hurricane of acedia, well-known to the 4th century desert monastics, and suffering from much needed exposé in books like her bestseller, “A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life: Acedia and me.”

This thing is attacking me where it hurts, writer’s blah. Frankly, there are times when writer’s block would be the better option. Better to write nothing than derivative bullshit, right? At least that’s what the self-pitying artist might be tempted to say.

Now, to be clear, I’m certainly not in a huge doldrum necessarily. I still love to write. I think I’m fairly good at it. But, at times, I wake up in a cold sweat and realize that I just read a collection of poetry by a 17 year old more intriguing, probing, and disturbing than anything I recall writing.

This poem is offered from such musings.

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Uncorking the wine

Breathless like wine, still corked and waiting

in its darkness, sits that one, a one, this one.

Wheezing and sick, that soul, a soul, this soul,

like leaden clouds coaxing out un-fallen rain.

Sometimes bitter is a sky, unwilling to cough up

her best stories and wait for an audience.

What little disturbances, these sagging wits,

trying in vain to see into the sap of things.

What small crescendo to so great a symphony,

the song-less word, peals back upon itself,

just enough to pair with a mind in domino.

What a blunted song, gutted and safe,

lost in its own impotence, a flaccid regale.

What a forgetful space, its shape insufficient

to bear the weight of dents and denials.

What fraternity of the inconsistent, sparing nothing

in pursuit of everything, to gain nothing.

What a pale sentence, well-intentioned illness of

the crouched and waiting, waiting for anyone to come

and speak.

On the eve of memory

On October 8, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic1 Comment

On the eve of a memory,

when the daylight streams through

old clouds, carried in the bucket

of yesterdays, there comes

a clarity. A bidding of dues

in clues from tiny feet,

now braking for beer and girls

and the particular geistlieb that

only says hello to newcomers.

Severed as one gets from

the possibility of possible, of eventual –

of always – it’s never really

too late to ensure what little time

remains to pour out the slop

from the bucket that once held

our best intentions.

These two, grasped from out of

hands held tighter still

to our deepest dreams.

I’ll Carry You: Companions On the Dark Journey

On October 5, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality3 Comments

Just recognizing how utterly dependent I am on the companionship and wisdom of others.

innerwoven

He no longer knew the day. There was no more separation between the sweet, calm of morning light and the creeping fingers of night. All had turned to the grey ooze of nothingness. For him there was only the long, unending dark of time’s unwieldy march onward, onward, ever onward – the relentlessness of burning necessity. All that once was had thrust its long, oily arm down his parched throat and wrenched from him all remaining strength. Hope was but a word, void of substance, reality’s parody of happier men in better days.

Or so it seemed.

There was another; a soul knit to him not by mere chance, but by sheer devotion. It was the kind of centripetal friendship known only among the angels and those about to face their doom. The lostness of his friend only served to drive deeper the tent peg of determination into the heart…

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Prayer of the Blind

On October 3, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality4 Comments

“There are none so blind as those who will not see” – attributed to John Heywood, 1546. A response to the Umpqua massacre of September, 2015

I pray, O God, for those of squandered chances,

(if mine remain available and plentiful.)

I pray for those with withered hopes,

(if mine remain consistently fresh.)

I pray for those without the means to self-sustain,

(as long as I remain winsome and productive.)

I pray for lives, untethered,

(if mine blissfully carries on.)

I pray for the lonely and un-gathered,

(while on my iPhone, among friends.)

I pray for hearts in atrophy,

(as long as I remain emotionally nourished.)

I pray for he whose place is gouged, whose work, ravaged,

(if I remain safe among the secure and blessed.)

I pray for a church, united,

(if it doesn’t cause me discomfort.)

I pray for the addicted,

(as long as no one checks my history.)

I pray in gratitude for my wife,

(as long as she stays pretty and polished.)

I pray for the poor and emaciated,

(while eating prosciutto and gruyère in my car.)

I pray for others to “find Jesus,”

(assuming I don’t have to forego anything.)

Most of all, God of life,

I pray for an end to all the killings,

(if it doesn’t ask me to quit worshipping the means of their demise.)

Thanks be to God.

Passaging well

On September 23, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spiritualityLeave a comment

On the occasion of my fifty-second birthday, I repost a few thoughts I had just prior to my fiftieth. Those thoughts remain the same, even if the numbers do not.

innerwoven

Our lives are a series of passages. One tributary leads to another, which in turn yields to something else on its way to waterfall or harbor, estuary or eddy. At times we are stuck, unmoving. Or so it seems. To be stuck can actually be a decision not to decide something. Perhaps it’s a slow, deep spot before being sucked back out into the rapids where we easily lose our sense of direction and the not unreasonable expectation that we’ll fly ass over tea kettle into the frothy spray. There are even times when our boat slows almost to a crawl and we find ourselves in the enchantments of a Pirates of the Caribbean style rendezvous with delight.

Whatever the case may be it should be our goal to passage well. That is, when faced with life’s bone-chilling decisions, we learn to listen for the most gracious, compassionate means by…

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10 Ways American Christians Are Compromising Our Own Testimony In The World

On September 1, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spiritualityLeave a comment

Nothing to add. I will let his words do the talkin’.

john pavlovitz

If this were a prize fight, organized Christianity wouldn’t quite be knocked out yet, but it would certainly be on the ropes and we’d be way behind on points coming to the bell.

It’s no secret that people are leaving the Church in record numbers and although they may not all be rejecting Jesus, they are surely saying no to the faith that bears his name—and for many good reasons.

I spend a great deal of my time each day listening to many of these good folks and they educate me. Based on what I see from where I am and what I’ve learned from nearly two decades in church ministry, here are some ways we Christians are obscuring Jesus and hurting people, and severely damaging our testimony in the world in the process:

1) Vilifying non-Christians.

In the face of attrition and growing public ambivalence, too many Christians and Christian leaders lazily lean back on attack language…

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Chasing fire, feeding smoke

On August 31, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

First drops, like navy-seals, tease out of

their smoldering burden the wheezing

lungs of the forest, barely breathing.

Into the steaming chaos they fall,

teeth gnashing at carbon vomit, leftovers

from Lucifer’s meal.

Into the quiet orgasm of their poetry,

straight-shouldered, whispering

the old stories, not soon forgotten.

And the forest inhales again

her dawning frailty.

But, wait, there’s more –

From the attic

On August 25, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Forged in the the magma of numberless sunsets

they dance lightly with butterfly footprints.

There, after the moon rises and hangs loosely

in the boneless night, they shine like new, red

carbon, back-lit to the moisture of ruby lipstick.

Floral-patterned dresses and scent of lilac

perform their ritual of sensory recall. He still

remembers what she smelled like that first time

in the back of his 1941 Buick.

She glowed and he burst. Sixty years

and many grandchildren later,

and he still cries when he sees her picture.

Forget about the rippling gifts of

the chatty stones, bellies rubbed and flat

from so much time dancing with the river.

Just point me toward the places where

the wise ones still dance with the expectation

of getting lucky – lucky enough

to hold her hand just one more time.

Feast of quotidian delights

On August 14, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Words...always wordsLeave a comment

I reblog one of my most popular poems in celebration of my new blog theme. Bon matin, mes amis!

Rob's Lit-Bits

Swollen palettes, satiated on mystery meat, bread and corn

husked beside the red swing-set after splish ‘n splash at noon.

Summer’s silly sprinkler dance anoints the day

with laughter fit for kings’ tables finely festoon’d.

Checkers played with pennies and monopoly pieces,

and, later, fake dollar bills found buried in the car seats.

Dinner table taunts from Mom and Auntie June

to remove from there our sad and smelly feet.

Now when moon and sun compete for sky,

I chuckle one last sigh before I hit the hay.

My buddy’s fresh, new farts remind me

how soon, in restful sleep, he’ll pay.

Sometimes, when pompous stars have fin’lly come and gone,

and, creeping on the ledge beside my window, at this height,

I wonder when, once more we might revel in

this feast of quotidian delights.

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Solace outside the monastery walls

On August 9, 2015August 21, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation6 Comments

“I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the strivings and sufferings of the world…Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day. One by one, Lord, I see and I love all those whom you have given me to sustain and charm my life…All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase; all those that will diminish; all those too that will die; all of them, Lord, I try to gather into my arms, so as to hold them out to you in offering…” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – from Hymn of the Universe

The history of Christian mysticism is peppered with rich fare, the heady extrapolations of soulish delight uniquely the territory of those fearless ascetics, monastics, hermits, and contemplatives who journal their journeys. It is the stuff of heavenly lore with heroes of inner battles fought and won, the likes of which we lay-folks can only imagine. One finds there a burning cauldron of purgation, a gleaming mirror of illumination, and the sweet rest of union. I read them lustily, with an aching expectation of tiny droplets of light for my faltering journey.

–

That same history is fraught with the cheap thrills of mystic wannabes, hucksters, and spiritual amateurs unsuited to such a dangerous pilgrimage. The existential nature of mystical theology makes it particularly vulnerable to either deep-diving into shallow waters or worse, shallow-diving into deep waters. And it can be hard to tell the difference. Even the Church from whence sprang these instructors of the spiritual way had difficulty determining where mysticism ended and heresy began.

–

Here’s the deal. To be honest, as I read the mystics, I am struck by a number of things. Firstly, there is an undeniable courage required to mine the depths of God. From Augustine to Thomas Merton, women and men of rigorous faith coupled with a thirst for perfect union with their God, have sought to unpack their way in the Way. The literary legacy left behind has formed for us the corpus of Christian spirituality. It is the library to which I turn time and again for a way out of my tunnel and into God’s cave.

–

The more I read however, the more I see that they can be just as systematic and linear as academy theologians even as they describe the inner motions of the soul on its journey toward union with God. The roots are similar, but there are only so many ways to peel a banana. One has this threefold way, the other this sevenfold path, still another refuses steps altogether.

–

This is my struggle, one not unique to me – what is so often lacking is a clear connection between the complexities of the soul’s journey to God and the equal challenges of the dusty and broken world that is the home for all souls under construction. Inordinate amounts of time and energy is spent discussing their own soul’s progress in their own conversion. They almost seem to be in competition with one another as to who has experienced union with God most profoundly. There is much talk about God but turned, as it were, consistently inward.

–

Make no mistake, I love the mystics and will read them for the rest of my natural life. Moreover, I am usually combating the prevalent North American spiritual philosophy of ‘git ‘r done pragmatism. These matters are not generally ones that concern me to this degree. But, some questions vexing me these days: What is the relationship between the soul’s call to continual conversion and the call of the Church to be the redeemed and redeeming community? If one can discover the mysterious movements of God in the deepest parts of one’s own soul, what use do we have of one another? Of liturgy? Of Word and Sacrament? Of the Moral Law? How does all of this translate to the peasant farmer with far too little extra time on his hands to even be concerned about the threefold way, or the thirteen steps of Marguerite of Porete or anything close to an Interior Castle? Not everyone has the benefit of monastic solitude, a spiritual director, access to helpful resources, perhaps the ability to read the same(!), or a brother/sisterhood of likeminded seekers intent on finding their souls. Without that clear connection, it would seem to be too similar to the program of gnostic therapeutic dualism of contemporary evangelicalism.

–

The Gospel has both an inner and an outer intent. The aim of the Gospel is the ongoing restoration of the cosmos, souls and all. And the cruciformity of the Gospel calls us, nourished or not, whole or not, unified or not, in sacred ecstasy or not, into a world that badly needs these discoveries. Everyone must learn to find solace outside the monastery walls, mystic and lay person alike.

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The above piece by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin gives me a peek into that kind of active contemplation. It speaks of offerings and gatherings, of sustaining grace amid the sufferings of the world. My soul cries out for the depths of the contemplative life (“as a deer pants for flowing streams…”). But my heart cries just as loud to share what I see with those around me who have no frickin’ idea what I’m talking about, but who long for it all the same.

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Does that make sense? What do you think? Help a guy out, will ya?

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