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.

Becoming Our Own Horizons

On May 9, 2014May 9, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation5 Comments

A new page.

Turning over a new leaf.

Hitting re-set.

Born again.

We use many terms that say essentially the same thing. Whatever lame or insufficient metaphor we choose to throw at the numinous mystery we call “life” sometimes offers its own prophetic tribute to the new reality to which it points. Sadly, there are times in my life where, upon deeper reflection, it comes to light just how dark I can be. Just when things begin to feel a bit more swept up and tidy, I find more nasty shards of the shiny mirror I misunderstood to be my life. A broken window is perhaps more accurate.

It is disconcerting at best, fractious and maddening at worst, when one is given a shocking awakening, at once freeing and burdensome; welcome, as it is unbidden. Such moments of epiphany, although rare, provide stark backdrop against which to see more clearly the indefinable truths by which we seek to live well. Just when there appears to be some small forward motion in the dangerous journey of formation, I am rudely reminded of the exponentially growing need for that very process. Although not entirely without joy or hope in bite-sized chunks, it reveals itself as the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Like the horizon, always moving at the same pace I am, coming to terms with my need for change and the slippery slope of progress toward it, never gets any closer. By definition, one never gets closer to the horizon (well, unless you are a theoretical physicist, existential nihilist, or Hallmark card). Beyond this one are countless others just the same. Only the scenery changes, never the distance. It will always be, in mystical (and, in my case, practical) terms at least, unreachable. What we can say definitively however is we have more miles on our spiritual odometers.

In the enigmatic, mostly squishy, process of sanctification, merely having more miles and less tread does not automatically make us wiser. It may only make us older and more run down, with less resale value. Even, at times, assigned to the ditch. It’s not in the miles alone. It’s in the degree to which we pay attention to whatever road is opening before us; wherever that road may be leading (if we can even know that much.)

“Are we there, yet?”

“How much farther?”

“I’m bored.”

These are the kinds of questions we ask as juveniles who, lacking a mature ability to remain patient, merely await the destination. The journey itself is something to get through as quickly as possible. It is most unfortunate that this is where most contemporary evangelicalism has grown wearily stuck. We miss the largest part of the gospel in our frantic need for geographical clarity post mortem. We speak often of going to heaven but seldom of waiting for heaven in us.

That said, the relative safety afforded us in the knowledge of ultimate blessedness in Christ allows for colossal failure along the way. Our journey to the destination allows the richly ubiquitous love of God to drive us, lead us and await us on the journey “there.” And, what of “there” anyway? In the Christian enterprise are many “theres” and yet one “there.” In every case, our “arrival” is guaranteed by grace, at least in an ultimate sense. In kingdom terms, even if not yet real ones, we stand where we are, looking at ourselves at the edge of our own horizons.

We no longer need to fear whether we may miss where we’re going. That is secured by grace, once and always. Our many mini-arrivals, though, still met with grace, are less certain this side of heaven – whatever that is. But, in spite of the many ambiguities of, and forks in, the roads we’re given, it is always and forever our arising to those roads that, in themselves, become our horizon. As those greater than I like to say, we are both on the way and already there.

In the gospel, we become our own horizon.

Images from here and here

Writing…about not being able to write

On May 4, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always words5 Comments

Oh, what a vexing irony: to sit and type out words about a losing game of hide ‘n seek with words. I will certainly not be the final voice on finding a lost literary voice. It’s just that, well, I didn’t think it would happen to me. So soon at least.

Shit, I’m only fifty years old. I’d hoped this wouldn’t happen until I had left an entire generation agog over my mastery of linguistic flare, and deftly adroit word choice. This is what happens to the aging novelist with one good one under her belt but finds herself paralyzed producing a second. Not me! I’ve yet to be published. By that I mean, more than the occasional University research paper, blogging, and the guy with the cleverest quips in birthday cards. As a writer, I am reaching for more than the guy with the best Facebook posts.

Shit, I’m already fifty years old. Shouldn’t I have something significant to say by now? One would think that this well-earned silver crop of thinning hair and commensurate wrinkles might have shoveled a thing or two into the loading bay. This sagging, white ass is well deserved I say. It’s watery impression sadly shaped into my favorite writing chair.

So, what happens when the words dry up? When the notes that come from pen or strings or keys no longer woo, titillate or otherwise amuse? When, instead, they are the stale, reused, overused bag ‘o tricks of a modern hack? When nothing sings anymore, but mutters imperceptibly under its own muffled (bad) breath? When one becomes a caricature of oneself – a sorry lump of stigma buried under borrowed artistry?

Can good art descend as easily from the ordinary, unadorned lives we live at kitchen tables, card games, and board meetings as it does from our bungee jump moments? Does one’s life, in order to become pregnant with words needing midwifery, require the overheated backdrop of anger, anxiety or joy? Perhaps then the super cooled, glacial faces of fear, pain, doubt, foreboding, even despair? Can the altruistic and universal issue from us as easily when our feet are ablaze with the dance of heaven and running onward to new adventure as when they’re encased in the cement of toilsome drudgery?

Men love when women laugh at their sorry ass jokes. I’m convinced that far too many women are far too polite as to give our jokes what they deserve – looks of disgust or grunts of disapproval. My wife still laughs at mine, oddly. I think, in part at least, it is because she’s often funnier than I am and feeds well off my fumbling attempts at humor. Mine is the bump and set. Hers the spike. Mine the missed lay-up. Hers the rim hang slam. She knows exactly what I’m about to answer when someone asks a question or tells me something either stupid or clever. If that was you, nothing personal.

My tricks are used up. Nothing surprises anymore. Little takes her by storm. This is okay in a good marriage. Not so much if one is the keynote speaker for a plenary address. Tell a bad joke to a packed house met by stony silence just once and you’ll never forget it (or so I’ve heard).

The flaccid, often noodle-y jokes that belch out of me these days are a good example of what I’m after here. To the uninitiated they may still speak or cause a chuckle or two. But, they’re not exactly earth-shattering stuff by any stretch. And every writer wants that – to be earth shattering, hugely entertaining, eternally perceptive, generously intuitive; all topped off with that orgasmic metaphor that leaves the reader with tousled hair and a far off look. We want to write that paragraph that causes readers to light one up afterwards.

I feel stuck, like the last dander of spring, clinging perniciously to the dandelion stalk refusing to admit summer. I’m that solitary bat hanging to the brick wall humming happily to myself while everyone else made it to Batman’s photo shoot an hour ago. Okay, so I exaggerate to make my point.

As a musician and songwriter, I’ve crossed this bridge before (there, see what I mean?) and what I’ve discovered is there are only three ways to overcome composing dry spells. One, write. Two, write. Three…well, you get my point. Best of all is when I’ve emerged from the songwriting dust heap I am always the better for it and have generally gleaned something helpful along the way.

So, here I am. I write to be a gooder writer, writing even gooderer stuff than ever before. It may feel awkward, like walking straight with one leg shorter than the other. But, at least it will be. I will have refused to be stifled by something, which, itself, refuses imprisonment. It barks insistently for release into the atmosphere it craves for its own freedom.

I’m not asking so much for the words as to dive deeper into the life from which those words await the pickaxe to dig them out. I don’t ask for inspiration as much as consternation that what comes has passed through the honing tapestry of a life, fully lived. I don’t ask for clever turn of phrase (well, that’s only partly true) as much as an honest churn of thought, where the ambivalence, arrogance, innocence and yearning that, together, form my life, blend and cohere into a face and a name to call my own.

Did I mention I’m only fifty?

Images shamefully taken from here

Thoughts gathering. Still listening. Longing.

On May 2, 2014May 2, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Words...always wordsLeave a comment

He strode as heir apparent to a memory

in galoshes filled with dust

and leaves of threadbare

thoughts.

Gravel, like a road of broken glass,

bundles itself together in

tousled lumps of the old roads,

gathering.

Footfalls, freshly faltering,

appraise themselves of what had

gone before – like a wagging tongue, never

still.

Even the magpies mock their

cowboy choir – their country for

cajoling cowards, crowing without

listening.

Crumpled into corners of hours,

crouch the days of famished weeks. Years

rake up from the ditch, staring down his borrowed

longing.

Image found here

Finding a voice without one

On May 1, 2014May 1, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

He ran out of words right about the time

his hope hit a wall like winter in June.

Lucidity escaped through loss, and

a life runs its twisting course

beside another’s parallel stream, just out of view.

Where to the waning West became of

words that once transfixed golden-souled,

silver-penned pirates of the journey?

They scaled the hull of pitch and yaw ships

laden with gifts from the sand of distant shores.

There it is again, once song of the Muse,

now the Siren’s cry like a whip of lustrous thought,

piercing ears, thirsty for the music of sojourn.

“Listen, listen,” she sings and, by singing, hopes

to be free from something that never bound her.

He would answer but his voice is drowned

in the shriller insistence of a mermaid’s lonely tale.

A single wave-tossed rock provides her stage.

But loudly though she sings, louder still the waves

that divide. All others are silenced against her solemn tones.

Laboring under misapprehension of invisible dangers,

she notices not that all ships have left. The song she

knows well has merely chased all hope of rescue.

Soon, her shrinking solo speaks no longer to gods nor men,

for without a voice, there are no more voices.

Picture found here

Eyes for the Alley

On April 29, 2014April 28, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Beauty, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, Lent 2014, Lenten Guest Blog Series, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation1 Comment

The journey of Lent starts in ashes and ends at Easter’s empty tomb. The leftovers of our charred and dying selves have been replanted in ground upon whom walks, impossibly, someone newly alive. Our ashes, only the carbon possibility of something else, leads instead to some One else. Emptiness, spent and without purpose, leads to emptiness, welcome and full of promise.

If we manage to let the entire Lenten journey of self-inspection do its work in us, we will not only benefit from the two ends of the equation but will have as our journey the very steps of the One whose ignominious death ended in glorious life. The Jesus Way becomes our ‘way’ with ‘forever’ thrown in as a bonus.

Easter has come and gone leaving both questions and answers in its wake. We’ve risen along with Christ, and all that means. In the backwater stench of our lives, those void, stale places, we still wonder how such a humungous mystery could possibly shape us.

How this Lenten road, the arena of spiritual formation thereby, and the lost ones we find on the shoulder has been the subject of our inquiry. We have titled this series, “Eyes in the Alley.” This signifies a need for honesty and vulnerability in the midst of our precarious, sometimes sinister lives. Whatever language a person uses to describe their experience of the Holy, combined with the mess and mystery of our own experience, leads us to ask the primary questions; questions that might, in turn, lead us to the streetlight of hope and safety. To Jesus.

We who are “the convinced” have ready access to centuries of holy dictionary and sacred stage upon whom great men and women have acted out their influential lives. We have learned to find comfort in the theological work of our forebears even as we engage in our own. But, as is so often the case, we can quickly “Pharisee-ize” this good stuff to such a degree that it becomes insurmountable to the very souls most in need of its Jesusy nutrients. Without our even recognizing it, we turn the language of freedom and rescue into the insider language of church potlucks, the monastery, or the country club. Although often unintended, where bridges are needed, we build gates. Instead of a boat, we offer an anchor.

Christianne Squires helped us do this by learning to see, along with her, Jesus hanging out in “the dark and dingy places…Jesus with his back against our wall.”

The meandering faith journey of Bob Holmes resulted in his deepest discovery: the love of a God who is love.

Valerie Hess reminds us of the deep restoration to be found in the Gospel by means of confessing our powerlessness, similar to the life-changing experience of those in A.A. She equates the resulting freedom to hitting a re-do button, birthing for us a new beginning.

That very love, made fully human in real time, enters an extraordinary conversation with an unexpected woman by a well. Her humble responses to his unexpected questions leave her empowered and rejoicing. Dr. Elaine Heath recognizes just how purposeful and powerful such a story can be for women even today whose sense of shame and rejection can overwhelming.

Tara Owens’ story reminds us, once our fences come down, we discover grass really is greener on the other side since it involves the lawn of someone else, just as lonely as we are. Where there are no obstacles, either real or imagined between us, friendship and community result. Complacent proximity becomes warm friendship.

Much of what I have been struggling to say about what we struggle to say is the subject of Giff Reed’s piece. In it he makes the important observation, “The problem comes when the same language that created the space begins to define its boundaries of in ways that deny ‘outsiders’ the ability to understand, engage, and embrace the God we are attempting to talk about in the first place.” His conclusion is an apt one, “God’s grace is grand enough to make up for any deficiency of description.”

A fitting denouement to our Lenten exploration is found in Valerie Dodge Head’s heartwarming story of finding Jesus in a homeless man, whose presence allowed her and her granddaughter to be ‘present’ to him. For them, laying a blanket on a smelly, hungry, tired stranger became the Eucharist. “It felt as if the three of us had just shared the Eucharistic feast together, on Holy Thursday, at the park, in ordinary life. God had awakened me to something so good, so true and so beautiful.”

Whatever we don’t readily understand, we submerge under the waters of our safe controls. To gaze into a night sky, exploded in the shrapnel of light year stars, is to have our tiny selves contextualized rightly. We are given perspective that leaves us wondering more than calculating, praying more than dissecting. The same is true when we gaze at the mysteries of Easter.

As I see it, our task as people of faith is to help another’s jaw fall agape, like our own, in the humble fear that accompanies awe. This gives birth to…something; faith perhaps, or longing; perhaps even seeking. Our theology, our orthodoxy, our language, our shared values-all of these is important. But, a beautiful life lived fully and well brings more glory to God and more souls to the table than all of the above combined.

Therefore, armed with the very love of God in Christ Jesus, let us strive to enter into the Gate, named Jesus, with that love writ large upon our lives. It will be the most convincing Gospel argument for those for whom mystery means darkness, the cloud of unknowing feels like the smog of unseeing and lectio divina just means homework. If that is the result of our Eastertide, then “I believe that God the Father, almighty, maker of heaven and earth, will keep them coming…until we all wake up.”*

May it be so.

____________________________

*Valerie Dodge Head

Ashes photo here.

Tomb photo here.

A wet morning in Oregon

On April 28, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Silence, except for the insistence of ocean.

Backdrop for seabirds, arguing in a grumpy rain.

I let contemplation keep company with

a stubborn fire warming wet wood,

hungry for more than it is willing to give.

Morning.

These mangy hills, full-cliffed, sprung from

the deep places of the earth,

thrust their faces out to greet

a colorless sky, too dark to laugh,

too green to die, but not too proud to cry.

Spring.

There is a stooped and bent feeling,

cast abroad in the air, breathing heavily.

A tangled scene, untimely brought,

coils itself, unprotected against the beauty of

a moist, unsatisfied wind.

Oregon.

Teased by a Daffodil

On April 22, 2014April 22, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

You may feel sweet and affectionate to the touch,

sporting so pungent and perfect a fragrance,

look inappropriately wild of color, heaven-hued,

in your pinkling glow of impish immaturity.

You may wink but an eye, lilting out

your childish humming in Spring-borne perfection,

and sit, alluring and still, batting new-soiled lashes

in expectation, summoning your lovers.

You may catch us staring and return a wink,

a petaled exhale, whimpered and whimsical,

breathing deep your own headiness,

oh silly girl, so boisterously quiet.

You may be all of this and more,

but to kiss your lips, folded and full,

is to kiss the longing lips of heaven.

It is God teasing us with a daffodil.

Picture found here

Eyes in the Alley – When Easter Meets Us in the Margins

On April 20, 2014April 20, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, Lent 2014, Lenten Guest Blog Series, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation11 Comments

I had every intention of attending the Triduum during Holy Week this year. At the beginning of the week I received a call from a single mother who happens to be my daughter. She needed child-care on the same evening as Holy Thursday, which meant I would need to take my grandson with me to a very long Mass. I decided to help her while keeping my reluctance to myself. Thursday afternoon came and after having experienced the precarious mood of a crabby two-year old, I discouragingly gave up the idea of going to Mass. My lament started giving birth to mounting negative thoughts. I know well that when I give my own pity parties a welcome mat, it almost always turns into a mudroom of resentment. So with everything I could muster, I tried to let go of the fact that I felt gypped out of a holy practice in which I longed to engage. Though the thought of it “felt unholy”, I decided to take my grandson to the Children’s Museum.

We drove over, walked in and paid our entrance fee. My grandson watched intently as the curator stamped both our hands with green turtles. I rolled the stroller into the exhibit area where my grandson made a sweeping gaze across the giant hall of wonder. His curly lashes blinked slowly over his brown eyes, now as big as saucers.

That is when I was invited into a sacred space.

The dance in his eyes made a great leap into my heart with a very clear invitation, “Grandma, let’s play right here, right now!” He grabbed my hand and in the wake of his screaming delight, we were flying to the first station. Val and Ezayiah 2

After a lot of hard and fun play, we bid our farewell until next time and started walking toward the car. On the way over we saw a man whose disheveled head was lying on the cold ground with his coat covering only half his body. There was some leftover food next to him all bound up in a wad of used tin foil.

The resentful heart I had donned earlier that day was no less hardened than the ground on which was laid this precious man’s head. I sat next to him while my grandson watched silently. The sleeping man was completely stripped down to the very depth of his nakedness. It really moved me.

Softened through the sacred act of play, my heart broke open like an alabaster jar.

That is when I entered into a sacred space.

In grief, I felt so deeply connected to him. Whatever he lost had now exposed a shame that was obvious to the whole city. This was no different than the way I feel when my morals and my efforts to be “holy” are not covering me – like missing Mass on Holy Thursday.

That was the holy moment I had longed for earlier. I thought I would find it at Mass, but God led me instead to a child, and through a shared brokenness with a homeless man. In that broken place, both of us had missed the very message that Jesus died to give us.

That….

we are shining like the sun even when we don’t know it.

we live in shame though God sees us whole.

our true selves lie beneath our shame.

we need to die to that shame so we can be resurrected.

I strolled my grandson to my car and fetched a blanket out of my trunk. With blanket in hand we walked back to the homeless man and we covered his dignity.

It felt as if the three of us had just shared the Eucharistic feast together, on Holy Thursday, at the park, in ordinary life. God had awakened me to something so good, so true and so beautiful. In a strange way, this moment felt even more holy than going to Mass.

There is no doubt that the traditional Christian story of the Lenten journey always lands on resurrection. Yet, without a personal experience of true resurrection, these Easter stories, heard over and over, eventually become like pennies wasted in our wishing wells. Not every Easter resurrects.

Maybe one of the best places to find resurrection is in the margins of life. This seems to be a way that God brings us into union with Godself and others. This is where all lines are erased. This is where we can see the unseen. This is where we find our brokenness and our connectedness. I believe it is also where Jesus secretly sets his table and calls us all to dine together.

I believe that Easter is less about our sins and the coming day of our salvation than it is about waking up right here and right now. I believe Easter is about resurrecting our deepest intuition. That life with God is as good as we hope it to be (those things we are too afraid to name). Jesus’ death and resurrection became the inaugural Lenten journey and Easter of many more to come.

I believe that God the Father, almighty maker of heaven and earth, will keep them coming…

until we all wake up.

So be it!

Image of homeless man found here

__________________________________________________________________________________

Val Dodge Head, M.A., lives in Grand Rapids, MI, and serves on the CenterQuest staff and board. A trained spiritual director, she will be entering into a year long residency program to become a chaplain in the Fall of 2014. Val’s favorite roles in life are that of mother, mother-in-law and especially being a grandmother to a two-year old boy and a 2 month old girl. She loves to build bridges between the good and bad and to envelop herself in various forms of contemplation, all of which have helped her see God in all things good, true and beautiful, wherever and in whomever it leads. You can find her on the CenterQuest blog, Instagram and Pinterest.