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.

In 2014, I promise not to pee in your coffee

On December 31, 2013December 31, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation5 Comments

Fine, I’ll throw my hat in the let’s-put-it-all-on-the-table year-end personal exposé and see what comes. For the most part I’m a pretty happy guy, well, inasmuch as any guy can be happy given our predisposition toward competitive postures toward neighbor and friend alike. “Ha, you call that happy? I’ll show you happy, damn it.” Come to think of it, I don’t even really know my neighbors. But, that’s a conversation for another time and place.

Because I’m so bloody important and people hang on my every word, how could I be so callous as to deny my legions of adoring fans a delightful tidbit they can read on their phone over and over again? No, really, it’s not a problem at all. Glad to do it.

Hence, in answer to all the emails (Mom, about that…), I begin.

2013. It came and has almost gone, taking with it 365 days, each containing 24 hours and enough accompanying minutes with which to continue in my patterns of living, some helpful, some not so much. Just enough time to sell tickets to self-adulation duking it out with self-loathing in the ring of life-lived-chaotically. In all honesty, the gloves came off in 2013. Not because I wanted to fight harder (although that does sound tantalizing), but because I wanted to quit fighting altogether.

Because I have nothing better with which to do battle I generally excel at doing so with my own personal demons whose asses have grown too fat from hangin’ around the refrigerator door of my life. It’s like the little bastards crouch just behind the kitchen door waiting for me to quietly slide on the hardwood floor in sock feet and grab what small victories might be forthcoming tucked behind the out-of-date mayonnaise. They know how to startle me and, when you wet yourself in fright as often as I have, it starts to get old.

This year, my mantra (breath-prayer to those friends more spiritually astute than I) was “heal and restore.” I gasped and belched it more than breathing it frankly, but you get the idea. I’ve spent far too much time feeling sorry for myself as a victim of any number of relational conflagrations with my wife, with myself, with others I love, only to discover that I’m merely caught up in a monkey finger-trap of self-pity and desperate grabbing after whatever leftovers might be still microwaveable.

2014. This coming year? My new discovery (apparently Jesus said stuff about this…who knew?) is that, love and laughter and life most often come to us when we’re not placing unfair expectations for it to do so. It’s the interpersonal equivalent of “fine, I’ll stop pissing in your coffee as soon as you straighten up and fly right.” I mean, with an attitude like that, what could possibly go wrong, right?

Grace, forgiveness acting as its best representative, is always easiest to reach but the hardest to hold. It’s a bit like trying to move the cookie sheet quickly from stove top to counter without the puffy mitts since that’ll save time in getting to the yumminess staring at us from on top. We must treat our dearest relationships with great care, due consideration for potential pitfalls, but also an ants-in-your-pants yearning for the goodness that will surely come when we are patient enough to wait.

(Beware of awkward segue): I don’t have many close friends. It’s a little baffling to me since I’m so incredibly awesome in every way, a fortress of humility and character. Therefore, I must come at this bewilderment from some other direction. My awesomeness can feel a bit overwhelming to people at first, like kissing a wild fire, hugging a pregnant polar bear or playing leapfrog with a unicorn, none of which are generally advisable given the intensity of the ensuing experience. I’m an intense guy and can be very off-putting to folks. I’m a really interesting pizza with too much garlic and a sizzling tomato sauce just waiting to remove the top layer of your mouth.

I am loyal – to a fault. It makes me a pursuer, which is great if one is caught in a rip-tide and needs someone to grab them from the drink. It’s not so good when that same person looks out and sees the pregnant polar bear as the one about to “save them” from the foamy deep. I have trouble knowing my own intensity levels, boundaries, opinions, and whose crappy fridge stuff I’m supposed to leave alone. It doesn’t feel safe generally speaking when one’s limbs are being gnawed off in the interest of neighborly interaction.

I need deep connection. As an Enneagram 4, I’m the guy you absolutely require at your company Christmas party. I’d hire myself out for the task but don’t want the paperwork. Most likely, I’ll offend your boss’s wife, belch a little too loudly at inopportune times, scare your kids with NR jokes even George Carlin wouldn’t touch, and eat too much cake but I promise you a better time than you’ve ever had. Ever. But, God forbid that you don’t think so! That, my friends, is a gauntlet that has been thrown down even before leaving the hand. I’ll take that challenge to exponential levels and leave you breathless, either from laughter (which is only the means to the actual end of “please like me…or else”) or from running from me as I chase after you with my next clever quip. “Wait, wait, this one’s even better…!”

I am brilliant at faking how not hurt or angry I am. Oooh, everyone loves a needy passive-aggressive. Nothing quite like finding out what they REALLY thought ten years after everyone else has forgotten what they were even arguing about. I’m discovering how much I actually DON’T practice grace by hanging onto things internally for far too long. It’s always better to leave a short-term stink early on than to let it brew like that well-fermented but highly toxic fart after an equally toxic burrito night. Losing one’s dignity and sense of smell for an hour is a better option than being paddled back to life in the ambulance on the way to the ER.

Last year, I learned a number of things about myself that, under the right circumstances can be really good things. I’m the most loyal friend you’ll ever have but only if you massage my feet or wash that trouble spot. I’m one with whom you can deeply identify and find meaningful connection, as long as you reciprocate, or I’ll find you and come to know well the taste of your gizzard. I am profoundly forgiving, unless the infraction was sufficient enough for me to silently hate you for years…giving just enough time for it to pass out of memory. Then, I do my best work of lashing you back to a pole you only thought had been uprooted!

So, you see my dilemma? And, of course, my dilemma is instantly yours.

I have a new mantra this year. It’s one that leaves less potential of my dropping the baby on its head in the driveway and more to the God who is the only one who truly fixes this stuff anyway. “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Jesus said that. He says a lot of cool stuff like that. But, this one is for me this coming year. I intend to go on loving who I am. I mean, you adore me after all. How bad can it be?

More than that, though. I’m going to love who I’m becoming as much as who I am right now.

That was a long and complicated way of saying this: I love my wife, my family, my colleagues present and past, my friends close or lost enough to stay on top of my idiosyncrasies (they’ll look a lot like hypocrisies to you, but…tread lightly, I’m unpredictable, remember?). I’ll continue basking in my delightful self but only to the degree that it helps you to see the same. Where my beauty begins to wear thin, be patient with me.

I’ll eventually get to it. You’re worth it.

I guess perhaps I am, too.

2013 in review

On December 30, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Uncategorized2 Comments

This is fun. Thanks to all you wonderful people who keep showing up here and making life so much more fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Love you all…R

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,600 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The non-rhymes of indentured servitude

On December 27, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

There are the non-rhymes of indentured servitude,

like our darker shadows served up as a litany of disgrace.

The dog keeps eating his shit and it reminds me that

sometimes what we think is tried and true is merely

dying to escape and find its way back, unseen, to soil.

We cramp up, our innards telling us a hard truth:

lap up this fish water and eat the stale tree bark much longer

and the ground won’t know the difference between you and your vomit.

Bitter weeds entwine roots with the vegetables, rape them for nutrients

and laugh all the way to the bowl where even the Ranch Dressing

can’t cancel the happy devils’ rotten trick.

So, I guess we either get used to the taste of bitter herbs in the salad,

the indiscriminate odor of our own feces among the riches of earth,

or we remain satisfied to let it all grow up together.

Maybe there’s an accidental rhyme of dirt and sky, earth and heaven?

Maybe rhyme isn’t the point?

She ate the fires

On December 26, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic2 Comments

For my mother, Doris. You will always know where I live…

She ate the fires that burned our feet,

but kept us dancing still.

An outsider to her own life,

she dwelt in the shadows with others,

unadorned, weary and unnoticed by

those who mattered most.

She was a woman of family loyalties

seen through the well-pictured mantle;

of a burdened sensitivity filtered through an indomitable strength;

of shrewd candor minted in the currency of honesty.

* * *

His love was real enough but

tentative, unsure, safe – he saw her

as through a glass, dimly; sideways, peripherally.

Though his arms were strong,

they were no match for her constitution,

mammoth by comparison; a roundness

of stalwart purpose swimming in a barrel of uncertainty.

* * *

Though his word was law, hers was heard,

and heeded in the hours, in the minutes,

in the places where we actually lived.

Wrestling one child with words, another with shrewdness,

still another with a ping-pong paddle

on which was written “for a better future,”

she forged us in fires not of our desire but her design –

on the requirements of character and truth.

* * *

Mirrors told her what they saw

not what she hoped for and always, just behind her,

skulked the injustice of vengeful time.

All the words nearly rhymed to songs sung

just a little out of tune; pleasant enough at a piano with a broken back.

Despite her stature, there was never any doubt

who stood tallest, whose shoulders were broadest,

whose voice spoke loudest, and whose purpose was sunk deepest.

No scars ran deep enough, no bruises blue enough

to raze this spirit from the earth’s deep places.

* * *

She ate the fires that couldn’t devour her…

Maybe this Christmas

On December 25, 2013December 25, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation5 Comments

Christmas Day. My eyes are like twin harvest moons of bloodshot fatigue. There’s a roller derby taking place in my head. My church music ministry gig ramps up something fierce this time of year leaving me satisfied and happy, but a shivering hump of quasi-humanity. The solution? I sent my wife, Rae, out to find anything resembling coffee, if only for a most yummy and effective remedy for my pounding head. God bless her!

A rather poorly decorated poor excuse for a Christmas tree tries unsuccessfully to stand guard over the precious few gifts tucked under her skirt. A single strand of multicolor lights graces her awkward presence in our living room. Perhaps fewer than a dozen ornaments hang suspended, lifelessly, from these poor, little green arms – flimsy and weak.

I speak of symbols, those tried and true geiger counters of the meaning and truth they represent. Many, many thoughtful souls have sought to unravel the ontological mysteries so delightfully pictured by this meager scene before me. As such, of that at least, I must forego.

For me, Christmas this year is a bittersweet remembrance. Every dangling bauble, twinkly light, fireplace pop and suspended sock boasting itself on our mantelpiece seems to me nothing more than sad reminiscences of loved ones gone before us; of friendship, once robust and real, now ruined; of bad things said and good things left unsaid.

Anyone who knows me knows all too well my utter loathing of all things Thomas Kincaid (sorry for the random, awkward segue). Oh, make no mistake, his practical gift at the canvas is indisputable. It’s of the vision, or lack thereof, to which I take issue. This “art” represents the shallowest of wishful thinking, whimsical, Pollyanna non-reality. It is resurrection without a crucifixion. It sets out to illustrate a fantasy world where evil has never existed; a place we all long for but which must be arrived at through God’s channel of self-forgetful love that dies an ignoble death to prove that love.

Back in my living room, my wife and I are writing in different parts of the house. I squeeze out these wandering thoughts while she continues editing her novel. Our eldest son spent the night at the home of dear friends one state away while our other son snores peacefully in his room. We don’t expect his angelic, trumpeted emergence anytime soon.

Every year that passes heaven claims more of those we love. Both of my wife’s parents are gone. My father died in 1985. Those whom we have called friend are strewn about the globe in a flower arrangement of well-memoried laughter and familiar faces. It aches.

This Christmas, all of the regular trappings have escaped me. Instead, it stands as glowing reminder of three things. Life is not as Thomas Kincaid or Barney would have us believe. If this little evergreen means anything it illustrates that our hope springs eternal and that life stubbornly wins out over death. Second, the imperfections which pervade our not-so-Christmasy living room are our own. In the heavenlies, whatever that means, all manner of thing shall be well. Sorrow and sighing trade places with gladness and rejoicing.

Finally, in the words of songwriter Ron Sexsmith, “maybe this Christmas will mean something more; maybe this year, love will appear deeper than ever before. And maybe forgiveness will ask us to call someone we love, someone we’ve lost for reasons we can’t quite recall. Maybe this Christmas.”

Indeed…maybe this Christmas.

A Christmas Poem by Holly Ordway (Hieropraxis)

On December 24, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ll just let this speak for itself. Oh, and a Merry Christmas to one and all!

http://www.hieropraxis.com/2013/12/a-christmas-poem/

Life in post-it notes

On December 22, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

You live your life in post-it notes

pinned to the outside of balloons,

shaved, polished and properly named

for your amusement.

Skipping through fallen leaves, all with names

of used to be friends, now just concerns,

you pepper your imagination with pretty bird calls

and nice stories with happy endings.

The bad people, the ones unlucky enough

to fuck up somehow are safely tucked away

in the soles of your shoes, right next

to the dried dog shit you leave for posterity.

“Come, love me,” you say.

“Come, watch me live,” you say.

“Why are you here?” you say.

So, I came and loved and watched.

Now you say nothing. Why would you

when life is a singular word with only two letters:

m, e?

Perfectly imperfect

On December 21, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Beauty, Christian spirituality, sacramental living, spiritual formation2 Comments

Our Christmas tree, rather smallish and completely unimpressive this year, stands as a reminder of many things. First of all, it’s green. A kind of middle green not too forest-y for the rest of the trees who might think it pretentious and showy. But, not that insipid, noncommittal green that might cause others to look down on the poor bugger. Second, it’s delightfully imperfect…like the place it now calls home. Like the occupants of said home. Also, it is a daily reminder of the fact we are alive, but imperfectly so. It is transient, clinging tenaciously to its quickly waning life. From time to time, nutrients must be found from within when not forthcoming elsewhere. It looks rather forlorn in its present state; shoddily adorned, incomplete, perhaps even a little awkward.

But we totally love it. Why?

We are often too busy this time of year to properly Christmas-ify our house, let alone the poor tree. Like our sad, little tree, in our lowest state of being we retain so much of our original beauty, our verdant smell so pungently alive, our prickliness that tells the world not to get too close too quickly and to treat us with tenderness; our delightfully obvious imperfection. All of it becomes a unified, shining mess of perfect wonder under the labors of loving decorators. Upon its branches are things old and new, classy and kitschy, profound and facile.

Then, step back a minute. Breath it all in. Let this sorry little wonder be ample evidence of loving hands eager to participate in the process of making something so simple and unadorned into something still simple, but also beautiful, whole, communal…perfectly imperfect.