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.

15 Things Jesus Didn’t Say

On By robertalanrifeIn Uncategorized3 Comments

This was my first visit to Jim’s blog. It was that good I felt it necessary to hang it out here a bit, too. Enjoy. I sure did.

jimpalmer1's avatarJim Palmer

 

shamegirl

15 things Jesus Didn’t Say:

“For God was so disgusted with the world and you that he gave his one and only Son.”

“I have come to bring you a new religion.”

“By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have correct theology.”

“If anyone would come after me, let him disparage all other religions and their followers.”

“If you love me, you will regularly attend a church of your choice… within reason.”

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This Holy Skin

On By robertalanrifeIn Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic4 Comments
This is a piece originally posted on my innerwoven blog on August 28th of last year. I thought I’d post it here, too. You know, for fun…

We stand and crane our necks

reaching for heaven’s bright smile,

upon shoulders of brown and moving green,

and in the act forget ourselves as one and there and good.

Made from unmade to make again,

these arms outstretched with fingers hoping

to touch the air and the unseen,

we hope for less than our skin suggests.

And yet, in this, there is no shame

since we ourselves are of the dust – rooted,

embranched and gnarled but numinous and whimsical

as the clouds and rain.

To escape from this is not as good

as other fingers poised to touch,

to show what we weren’t looking for…

ourselves, God’s fingerprints smudged

on the pane of humanity,

in the humanity of our pain-

on us.

Having sung with the choir – an evening examen

On By robertalanrifeIn Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic4 Comments

combined-3-choirs-singing-balaio-juiz-de-fora

Having sung with the choir, this evening’s venture

brings light to the night and a dark covering of

powdered stillness descending, descending still

upon these battered brows. Hear, O hear

the silver notes, sliding out from cleaving tongues

pressed up against our cheeks, the very cheeks

now flushed and warm with the post-song glow of

happy hearts. O Dancing One, how lightly you move,

alight and glide where clumsy old oafs yet banished in

the wooden feet of sin are forced but to watch.

But watch we will until, our laces loose,

we cast off iron shoes, and at last

our feet fall in time with yours.

Tonight, our songs have burrowed into

heads prepared for pillows,

hearts prepared for love,

eyes prepared for sleep,

souls prepared for eternity,

and voices prepared to sing once more the songs

that wonder.

Photo found here

.

I-You-Holy Ground

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic2 Comments

I am the dusty ground, low and dry

thirsty for the imprint of holy feet.

Despoil with radiant prints, this virgin ground.

___

You are the rain, falling deftly

upon my brown soil. Now is left

your footprint on this ground.

___

I am the ashen leaves, curling and broken

awaiting but a whisper. For only then

can I fall on solid ground.

___

You are the soundless wind, howling, still.

You creep up behind me and

exhale me to the ground.

___

I am the snow, disembodied worlds of cold

and chance encounters with hand, or tongue,

eye-lash or palm needing ground.

___

You are the frozen air in which I am held

aloft, drawn slowly down

to meet with others on the frozen ground.

___

I am the waning autumn death

soon to give way to the long silence-when one Voice

becomes the loudest ground.

___

You are the Voice that speaks

heard best in dying, power given for

rising from this shivering ground.

___

I am the distant hours, the midnight passing-

the refusing minutes, trapped in hours,

running from the years of ancient ground.

___

You are the many, and the one, and all time

and nothing and everything from nothing

where time has no ground.

___

I am the weeping, the squalid groaning,

the unrequited miseries of misery’s company

laying crippled and diffused in the ground.

___

You are the end of tears and years, the question

and the answer, the sutured nerve of joy, not suggested

but present, here, on this Holy Ground.

Poetry: rebuilding the world through the un-wasted beauty of redemptive syntax, cont.

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Music and the arts, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

When, as a boy, I was expected to be cleaning my room, doing homework, weeding the garden or any of a host of other chores, I would more often than not be listening to music in my room. Or, perhaps I’d be teaching myself to sing like Robert Plant or Burton Cummings or Dan Fogelberg. I might have been writing music once I got to Junior High School or touring as a musician by the time I was a senior in High School. Suffice it to say, art, music, poetry – literature in general has shaped my life and provided many hours of delight and avoidance. It’s the mirror into which I’ve learned to see my own face. It’s also the looking glass through which I’ve learned to see others.

Music and poetry can become for all of us an answer to our disheveled hatreds, our worn out prejudices, our tired judgements and our need for a language with which to say, I see you.

Traveling light in serpentine winds

Traveling light in serpentine winds

this haughty craft, held aloft, sequestered

inside hints of journey’s end.

 ***

Earth’s edges, blunter now but rippled and dented,

provide the places safe to sing

the bawdy songs of youth, sung too soon, before

the second hand is wasted on the whirling clock.

 ****

Were it anything more than salvageable

solitudes, trapped in their dusty orbs,

such voices might bloat to consume me,

dine on my liver with older words,

rich but thick and unchartered.

 *****

So then, forage I shall for colors unmuted,

songs yet without voice, paths full-trod, seen with

eyes withholding nothing but a flute and a scalpel.

One to begin, the other to end

the sharper edges of this catastrophic

beauty – this undulating goodness.

 ******

I think I’ll take a walk.

Poetry: rebuilding the world through the un-wasted beauty of redemptive syntax, cont.

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

There is a darker underbelly to our lives we tend to ignore, to our peril. It might be said that we don’t find our lives. Our lives find us. And, when they do, it’s not always with a welcome and a click of the heels. Life can storm upon us, raging and lusting for more than its fair share of pain and woe. What we do with these tumultuous moments ultimately defines who we are becoming. They also birth great words if we let our pencils down from the rafters.

Hear the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:

What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights with us is so great!

If only we would let ourselves be dominated

as things do by some immense storm,

we would become strong too, and not need names…

This is the next piece in my foray into meta-poetry.

II

You hide under the precipice of your own misdeeds,

your miscalculations act as the belt around

the pants of your own shame.

Here, the rains can’t come.

Here, the foes of restraint and full-plumed capacity

can’t find you splayed out, legs spread,

skin available and raw. Here, you can

hide what lawns of leverage have provided

growing spaces for the personal politics of

hatred. But, make no mistake, though the ravished

rumps of these unsuspecting fools as you call them

might be your bitch, love’s poetry

is your garment, a hand to pull away

the guise of the cylindrical. It will give instead –

a horizon.

Poetry: rebuilding the world through the un-wasted beauty of redemptive syntax

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

Dylan Thomas, a favorite poet and writer, says this about words in poetry:

And these words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milkcarts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone, deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing…There they were, seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the other vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great, and bearable. -as quoted by James Hillman in “The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart” (a must read, by the way).

I bemoan earlier days when poets were the prophets of the people. Words, stories and cultural anecdotes were the food-stuff of our existence, not the quaint, winter-hazed mist on the edges of our choked, windowed lives. They took center stage where the very words themselves were the Homeric epic of small existences writ large through bardic retelling to others thirsty to feel their enjoining on the stalk of shared time.

I begin here a short series of poetry about poetry, words about words; the metalanguage of the language, lost but longing to be refound, non-linear and non-pragmatic, seeking instead to rebuild the world through the unwasted beauty of redemptive syntax. To that end, I give you…

I

There you lay, face down in a puddle of

old dreams. Your brow, damp from

sweating out doubt-filled promises-

the mantric words of small men, of sullen women

bathing on stolen rooftops of run down tenements.

* * * * *

Goliath has defeated David with small,

pebbled words, slung out quietly across

the distance between them, too far

for slings filled with ancient anger.

Gruff prayers traded for slick threats.

* * * * *

Setesh broods his flustering fare. He sits

at the table of the unmemoried death,

serving up sighs and groans – the language

of lusty crows, too boisterous to still

their cantankerosity; too new and

untested to feed even their open-mouthed young.

* * * * *

Brush off the fog that settles on

your hunger for colored story, embattled songs,

for words floating and submerged under the borders,

planted in places too deep to be found

by spade, knife, wallet or hammer.

Longing letters taste like a lover’s kiss.

My ongoing prayer experiment

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, liturgy, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worship14 Comments

A while back I began to write about my big prayer experiment. In that piece, I shared the three greatest gifts to my prayer life:

1. Contemplative prayer, I.e. prayer without agenda/lovingly gazing at God.

2. Total honesty in the presence of a God who already knows all my shit.

3. The gift of Intercession.

Nothing has changed with this experiment. I do want to add something, however; something that has utterly revolutionized my prayer life, turning it into something to which I cannot wait to return.

I pray the Rosary.

Big deal, right? Millions do. Well, here’s the thing – I’m a Protestant. We’re supposed to look with suspicion, pity or even hatred at such wayward, Medieval practices believing them to be the rote, meaningless prayers pooh-poohed by Jesus in the Gospels. How could such a ridiculous thing, something held in regard by little, old ladies and superstitious saintly wannabes possibly lead one to the expected spontaneity and relationship we’re led to accept through our more enlightened “salvation prayer” at the end of the 4 Spiritual Laws booklet? Or so we Protestants are taught to think. You remember…the “Accept you’re a sinner/Believe in the Good News/Confess your sins” prayer that, like magic, whisks us from the apparent hell of our present existence into the Thomas Kinkade wonderland of Jesusy goodness? It’s actually a very good prayer. A necessary one.

It’s just so…incomplete.

Actually, I prayed that prayer once, too. Not necessarily that exact prayer, but one just like it. I credit that prayer for bringing a keener sense of articulation and focus to my otherwise meandering picture of me and God. I suppose I could even credit that “salvation prayer” as my come-to-Jesus moment, with the beginning (continuation?) of a journey even deeper into the heart of prayer.

The Rosary has been an important step in solidifying my need to regulate my prayer practice in chronological, tactile and organized ways. It also invites me to see prayer as more than just talking at God. Here, I can sit with another, Someone whose indelible presence ought to leave me breathless and speechless anyway. Although I’ve owned one before, it wasn’t until my dear Catholic friend, Val Dodge Head, gifted me with one I could actually wear around my neck that I began developing a daily practice. Here is the historic Rosary Prayer:

Rosary Prayer

The purpose of the Rosary is to help keep in memory certain principal events or mysteries in the history of our salvation, and to thank and praise God for them. This is the mountain rapids version of the Rosary Prayer. It begins with the Sign of the Cross and the Apostles’ Creed. This is followed, successively, by The Lord’s Prayer (the Our Father or Pater Noster), 3 Hail Marys, the 1st Mystery of Our Father and Hail Holy Queen. There are twenty mysteries reflected upon in the Rosary, all of which are divided into the five JOYFUL MYSTERIES, the five LUMINOUS MYSTERIES, the five SORROWFUL MYSTERIES, and the five GLORIOUS MYSTERIES. The Hail Mary is recited ten times (called a decade) between meditating on the mysteries in question. After each decade is said the following prayer requested by the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy.” The whole undertaking is a most imaginative blending of redemptive and mystical theology.

Here is my own adaptation.

I begin and end with the Sign of the Cross. The crucifix acts as The Lord’s Prayer both in and out of my Rosary. For morning prayer, the first bead is always Psalm 63 (King James Version), which I memorized many years ago. If in the afternoon, I’ll choose some other Psalm or a Prayer of St. Columba: “Kindle in our hearts, O God, the flame of that love which never ceases, that it may burn in us, giving light to others. May we shine forever in your holy temple, set on fire with your eternal light, even your Son Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer.” The Hail Mary beads are replaced by 3 Kyries (Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy). In turn, these are followed, respectively, by the well known Ignatian Prayer, the Anima Christi and the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. The decade beads are breath prayers. With these, I practice more contemplative or centering prayer. Phrases such as “peace, be still” or “in the Lord, I’ll be ever thankful” or “holy is your name, O Lord” or, most often, The Jesus Prayer punctuate this time. It is unhurried and allows my mind to cleanse and my soul to pulsate to the sound of God’s own heart. The Mystery beads form a wonderful place for me to pray the daily Lectionary Psalms, various scriptures I have memorized or, on more creative retreat days, I’ll write or read poetry I’ve written. I exit the Rosary the same way I entered, although in reverse order.

The Rosary has been great respite to me since I am living nowhere near the Monasteries I used to frequent in Oregon. God has shown me just how holy even the most unholy places can be. In those places least ideal for luminosity, God has been busily proving me wrong about my previous misconceptions. The mysterious geography of prayer must begin in the cracks and fissures of the human spirit before it gets the added benefit of the babbling brook heard just outside the Monastery gates.

The Rosary has helped. 

Lord, fashion the slow calligraphy of your name

in a once stone heart, broken now as sand.

Spit out the bones of my old, gristled soul revivified on your tongue,

reattached to the sinews of your own holy arm. 

Sear the brand of white hot remembrance into the skin of my brazen back

so that only those I lead can see it.

In the wordless chatter of our silent conversations,

bring up the topics closest to your heart that breaks so much easier than mine.

Let the voices of a hundred thousand saints

crowd out the stifling arrogance of my solitary blethering.

And into that holy community of singing silence,

sing, Holy One, sing.

 

PIcture of Rosary can be found here. Rosary Prayer instructions can be found here.

Driving school, autumn nights and thoughts on poverty

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic5 Comments

Poverty never ceases to surprise and disarm. What is truly alarming however is whenever I grow indifferent or worse, apathetic, to its crying dishonor. May I never be unaware or distant and always prepared to enter into the suffering of others. Lord, have mercy.

I

Don’t let me be found waiting when,

like water on a mirror, I slide

from corner to corner,

unwieldy and unpredictable,

the scab before the fall,

the tears before the pain,

the gain before the loss.

Running toward is always better than

running away when haggard eyes

silently proclaim my complicity in

the hollow halls of ownership.

II

I need to simmer long in cauldrons

of grieving for ones lost on the loom,

dismembered patterns refusing collision

into any kind of shape. Can you smell

the paint on my brush, richly bristled,

bent away from their needy canvas,

dry and parched, stretched too thin

to hold more than grey or black?

Colors here only reveal what stolen

chances never offered have done to ones

who just might wear them best.

III

Plumbing these altitudes, I grow weary

from my swan dives upward,

expelling all reason for some ritual,

denying them time for tome,

confusing their ache for my art.

Fixed, stuck am I on stolen intrusions

of short memory too bent to sort,

too cold to move, too sharp to soothe.

But forward brings me closer

than any other path, not placating,

or even prosaic but parallel with promises

unveiled only through the repetition

of laughter, laughter and

the solemn, sweet, irrepressible smiles

of the poor.

Dismissals – on considering responses to things

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Parables, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

That same girl passes him in the hallway, more aloof than ever;

like the neighborhood cat that pisses on my door.

There is no response to the constant

calling of her name. Just an unambitious purr,

the casual dismissal of a creature to

unreasonable expectations.

_

I passed him on the street yesterday,

that guy I met at the poetry reading.

It was hard keeping his eyes long enough

to finish a sentence, let alone fragments

of a conversation fraught with the dismissal of a

 “yes, it’s really me here” mystique.

_

She stood with a cardboard sign that read

hungry and unemployed with kids pls help god bless

I could see her through the Starbucks window

where my second Americano was already cold.

That second guy wasn’t as good as the first.

He never leaves me room for cream.

Is that too much to ask?

_

She wasn’t typically a make-up gal

preferring the girl next door simplicity

of less-is -more. But tonight

she dressed up, even eyeliner and dark,

red lipstick and skin-tight black dress.

He glanced at her twice at dinner

through the glare of his cell phone screen,

 that never dimmed.

_

I sometimes shudder to think what remains

in the shadows of what’s left after encounters

dense with the unwieldy results of non-praise,

of missing the open doors, sips not taken from

frosty mugs of welcome, the sleepy

dismissals of what’s right now,

hesitant on the stoop of another’s hopes.

What can they expect from me?

Gratitude? Platitudes? Assuredness? Distraction?

A snotty hanky full of rare humility, raw and pink?

_

The game starts in half an hour.