Hiraeth – making peace with our longing, conclusion

On August 7, 2015August 9, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, sacramental living, spiritual formation5 Comments

“Our longing is an echo of the divine longing for us. Our longing is the living imprint of divine desire. This desire lives in each of us in that ineffable space in the heart where nothing else can satisfy or still us” -John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Throughout our series I’ve sought to define the Celtic concept of hiraeth in the following way: “a longing, a homesickness for a home to which one can never return. It is the unrequited hope that produces ever more unanswered longing. It is a grieving for the lost places and moments of one’s past – a sense of loss for loving moments and places, fondly remembered. It sits in the dream world where longing, belonging, home, and wanderlust meet.”

We’ve looked at the necessity of metaphor in our efforts to understand this, or any, spiritual concept. I’ve invited people into my own personal salve, applied generously on my own longing – writing. We’ve discussed how the spirit of childhood and its built-in mysticism (Jesus called this childlikeness or, humility) is our truest home and the perfect allegory for our own longing – the return to that elemental time of wonder and chaotic delight; to mystery. Finally, we’ve adopted Ronald Rolheiser’s idea that our spirituality is what we do with our longing, the end of which can lead us to God’s greatest gift: self-knowledge.

Longing, as rooted in hiraeth, is a double-edged sword. It pricks us with the sting of yearning while simultaneously acting as a reminder of our finitude. We long for what we most want but which we so often least require. In this way, Hiraeth can be a longing for longing itself. Except, when we return, we discover WE have changed. Capturing even the essence of something is then an impatient storming of the gates of the reality itself. We chase a shadow as though it were the substance of the shadow.

So, where does this leave us? This enigmatic Welsh word seeks to describe an idea without clear English equivalent. But it’s a start. It gets us somewhere. It has helped me grapple with an incessant gnawing thirst within me, never completely satisfied. And, as is the case with so many of our bugaboos, healing often comes with the process of articulation.

There is still a deeper level to which I am drawn as an apprentice of Jesus, for if anyone understood the exile of hiraeth it was the Son of God. It is here that I diverge from hiraeth in order to turn my attention to longing as understood and experienced in the harbor of Christ.

All our discontinuities, our divestments, and disenfranchisement are subsumed into Christ Jesus, the exiled One. In the contemporary evangelical mind at least Jesus belonged anywhere but where he willingly chose to come. His truest “home” was within the eternal Trinity, that mystical scaffolding for all human relationships. If indeed one believes Jesus to be the image of the Divine Essence we call God, then his enfleshment becomes that much more jaw-dropping.

Prior to the Incarnation of God in Christ, the archetypal longing in the human soul was crooned in the poetry of the Psalms:

“My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times” (Psalm 119:20). “My soul languishes for Your salvation; I hope in your word” (Psalm 119:81). “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.” (Psalm 73:25). “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Psalm 42:2). “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). “I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land” (Psalms 143:6).

Biblically, it is an ubiquitous concept. And, with the coming of Jesus, who understood the exile of longing better than anyone, we’re introduced to the promise of a never-ending thirst that is always and never slaked. It is the fulfillment of what hiraeth begins. The richer vein from which we draw means that boring underneath the irascible sea of our lives is an Artesian Well of nourishment. Jesus spoke often of the possibility of satiation found in the existential oneness we experience with God in his name:

“Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life”” (John 4:13-14). “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst”” (John 6:35). “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal” (John 6:27). “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink”” (John 7:37).

From these sacred words we’re given a glimpse into what lies at the root of all our longing – the need to know and be known, to love and be loved; to be one with the One whose roots alone bring the nourishment from which we will capably thrive in our world fraught with the ache of hiraeth.

I anticipate much more thirst to come. But my life will never be without water.

Series image found here

Shadows image found here

Bucket and well image found here

Hiraeth – Making peace with longing, part 4

On June 22, 2015July 6, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, sacramental living, spiritual formation3 Comments

“Longing is the deepest and most ancient voice in the human soul” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

I’ve written much about longing; of home and exile and the mystical realities available to me as a child that seem these days so elusive. And I suppose I’m just Freudian enough to believe that it’s no coincidence. I write of these things because, in a very real way, I long for longing itself. And even C. S. Lewis would agree that often the sweetest longing of all is unrequited longing tinged in hope.

For me, to feel is to live. To live is to experience that life in magical, almost indescribable ways. A lofty goal considering the numerous inconsistencies, injustices and unpredictability of it all! In fact, I believe many of the issues that have troubled me in my adult years have been my unrelenting, but futile attempts to return to places I have been, or may have been, or perceived myself to have been.

Hiraeth.

When I was younger I never had to look far for the sheer magic of life to come to me. It just came, powerfully and often. I remember feeling exceptionally safe as a boy, smothered in the sun-drenched kindness the God of my understanding allowed into my young life. Although it is hard for me to determine the veracity of many of those experiences, given my penchant for romanticism, there are a few memories that return faithfully every time.

Staring out our front room window into a snow-pocked night sky, heavy flakes of snow floated effortlessly past the streetlights on our street performing dances of joy on their way down. I was transfixed. I cannot remember if I was alone or if my Dad was in the room, but it is a memory that has stubbornly stayed with me. Other instances include the simple joys of hunting for unique rocks in our back alley to add to my growing collection. Or, perhaps sitting on our living room floor playing with my dinosaurs, rockets, or reading my favorite “Book of Knowledge.”

The concept of hiraeth is one that has been part of my experience since I was a boy. I just didn’t know it at the time. It is inexplicable really but is most readily compared to that feeling of homesickness for a place to which one can no longer return. It’s not just physical space or actual friends. It is a state of being.

Finding the true home for my entire being has been difficult. Either my geography is wrong or I have the right address but my soul is off-center and the address is lost in an ardent cry that both will find each other. But thankfully, “Location, location, location,” for the mystic, means something decidedly broader. The soul needs so much more than just a return address.

Think of a place and time when your life was particularly magical. Then, return there five years later. The place remains the same. Many of the same people may still be there, in similar capacities, even living in the same homes. But, as good as it can be, one’s experience can never be the same.

Growing up a mystic was challenging. First of all, I cannot properly define a mystic now, let alone that of my childhood. Oddly satisfying experiences of the eternal goodness of things would wash over me, leaving me almost breathless in their weight. For a few moments, all was remarkably well and as it “should” be. Nothing changed particularly, but what was normally benign and unremarkable, became perfectly “right” somehow. I saw the world as it was meant to be seen. Then, nothing.

It would vanish as inexplicably as it came. Sometimes I would cry afterward from the sheer beauty of it all and would wish for it to return.

Hiraeth.

With age comes the aspect of nostalgia. With chronology of course we gain the benefit of hindsight, experience and, hopefully, wisdom. More of our lives are behind us than ahead of us. We can become whimsical about the richness of past experiences, faces, places, etc. However, as good as it can be reliving them, the exact same experience will forever elude us because WE are different and are therefore incapable of perfectly replicating what we FIRST knew.

It is the “glory days” twenty-five year old still hanging out at high school parties. It is the “rose-colored glasses” mentality in which every memory, even of circumstances bad at the time, is a warm bath. It is the “everything was better when I was young” headspace, something empirically unverifiable but emotionally undeniable.

Hiraeth.

“Our bodies know that they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless,” says O’Donohue. And, there it is, a key to those like me who experience some sense of ongoing dis-location. We are all much more “home” than we realize. Perhaps we stand at the edge of God’s great sea of promise, the shore of possibility, but do so with hands covering our eyes. Our mind has somehow convinced our eyes to remain tightly sealed against all that lives before us as we cry out for what we think is yet to appear.

After all, what really is longing if not the soul’s insatiable desire for communion and reunion with God, with others, with oneself? And, simply being awakened to its presence is the first step toward its fulfillment in real terms, and to joy. He concludes: “The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within oneself.”

For now, that’s good enough.

Hiraeth – making peace with longing, part 2

On June 12, 2015June 12, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, sacramental living, spiritual formation7 Comments

“Longing is the deepest and most ancient voice in the human soul” – John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Fellow poet-mystics understand how gratifying metaphors can be. They build a much bigger backdrop upon which to mess about and articulate those things that defy such articulation.

Hiraeth is most helpful here. It is an older word from an older culture at a younger time. It has the thickness of time-honored usage by countless others just as curious and longing as I.

Admittedly, at times when I really should be listening intently to our pastor preach his stellar sermons I find myself writing in my journal instead. These times are often quite fruitful. Perhaps it’s just the delight in foregoing the reality right in front of me for the one I keep trying to build in my head! Och weel, be that as it may…

A fatigue so deep has set in that I’m calling it depletion. The river has run dry and much of what I’ve done for years feels more like duty than vocation. A restless, ceaselessly searching spirit has been my lot for as long as I’ve been breathing. So, the light of experience tells me that quick and easy answers are not on the menu.

No, this must be borne quietly while I discern alongside it what’s to be done, if anything, to find some inner dampness again.

Hiraeth – the spiritual weight of longing. It’s how I would imagine a 10-mile portage through dense forest carrying a 90-pound canoe might be like. And, without the aid of a decent compass, readable map, or clear reason for the journey in the first place.

Some things just kind of creep up on a person – age, anger, addiction, fatigue, desire, love. They boast a surprising stealth, deftly dodging every conscious attempt at control or even self-understanding. But, perhaps the hardest to pin down is that of longing. It is the most elusive. Like humility of character, it’s the greased pig of spiritual experience. Wrangling it successfully with anything close to keen insight, all with a growing weariness, is like the vain admission of one’s own humility. It’s elusive as it is ironic.

In the morning I glance in the mirror and see a 6’1″, grey-haired, green-eyed Libra with surprising levels of energy and two pages of life goals. At lunch, the same mirror reveals an older, albeit content and generally successful man, happy for a measure of stability. As evening comes however, it brings an uncertainty. The image is still recognizable with all the right stuff in all the right places.

But the mirror has changed.

It seems farther away somehow, and murky, like soaped up windows in the carwash. The fingerprints could be mine. But, if so, I can no longer tell and, worst of all, I no longer care. What are mirrors good for anyway beyond advancing one’s own skewed self-image? Gawk into one as long as you like and one is none the wiser – only more vain, and sometimes increasingly less satisfied, with a penchant for forgetting what one has just seen.

Self-understanding is the greatest of God’s ‘under the sun’ gifts. But it comes at a high price. And it comes indirectly, peripherally, sneaking up on us from behind. And its deepest insights generally come at the expense of pain, loss and suffering. It also comes only in proportion to the willing clarity of a long, loving gaze into the eyes of the Self of all selves; the I Am, the ever-existing font of all personhood and is-ness.

God is stirring. I believe it is why I’m suddenly paying attention rather than affixing to it some scripture on faithfulness that, though informative, speaks at cross purposes to yet others yelling at me to slow down.

I can’t breathe. But God is my aim. And, so, I am once again looking for God.

Photography by Laura Aldridge

Out Through the In Door

On May 9, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn bagpipes, celtic music, celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation8 Comments

It was 1970. I was under-ripe, but hoping for the best at 7 years old. My Dad was developing the basement in our tiny 1000 square foot bungalow in Calgary, Alberta. Part of that process was building my own bedroom (let applause dwindle before carrying on). I was elated. During part of the process I was sick and recall sleeping on a movable cot in an unfinished room into which my parents had brought a TV that I could watch while convalescing. Poor me, I don’t know how I managed under such rigorous conditions.

My life forever changed one evening upon watching a live presentation of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo from Edinburgh Castle. I was smitten.

I had encountered something so pristine and wild that I told my parents the next morning I wanted to learn to play the bagpipes. Instead of the response generally expected, perhaps even advisable, for any parents, mine were intrigued and supportive. In less than a year I’d become part of a local Boy’s Brigade company hosted at the nearby St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church where I would also begin my first lessons.

Perhaps the biggest discovery however was that I was becoming aware of my beginnings. My parents made it clear to me (as clear as such things can be to an eight year old) that, as the oldest of three adopted children, I came from Scottish DNA. Spooky to some. Intriguing to others. My response to this growing revelation of my biological roots was an insistence that I was finding my spiritual ‘home.’

Alongside many others through the centuries, I am one who uniquely identifies with what we believe to be true about the Celtic way of life.

I’m happiest when I’m a little sad.

Life is always better in the rain.

Green will always be the best color.

Everything is a metaphor for something else.

When I wander, I long for home. When I’m home, I long to wander (translation: whiny and impossible to live with).

Stories, music, poetry, and art are still the best way to teach anything.

Men look best wearing colorful dresses, tossing around telephone poles, and making themselves dizzy blowing ridiculously loud instruments.

Women are best when allowed equal voice in the community.

The forest may still be the best place to worship together.

Dark skies are a sign of hope more than weather.

The best life is when one day we sing together, the next we die together.

And, learning means more about living than just knowing.

What I’ve loved most about my place on the Celtic role call is that life for the Celts wasn’t neatly compartmentalized, as it is in our western, rationalist world. The idea of one’s “spiritual life,” or “physical life,” or “social life,” or “sex life” would have been quite foreign to them.

It was, quite simply, life. Everything mattered equally. Everything counted. Nothing was completely meaningless but contributed to their daily and eternal existence.

They lived very outward lives from very inward places. They spoke of “thin places;” the nexus where one could feel the outline of God’s hand touching theirs from behind the thin sheath of reality. The thin place, where transcendence meets the here and now, was where the Celts felt most comfortable.

It contributed in forging a Christianity deep enough to pray ceaselessly, strong enough to endure a pushy Roman empire and countless robust threats, and bold enough to sail into the unknown and share what they had experienced.

I like to call them “practical mystics.” They rehearsed the soul well enough to sing its song in the byways and the unforgiving wilderness. Their memory of mystical encounters with God propelled them outward to meet innumerable dangers to preach and live the Gospel.

They possessed a unique zeitgeist I like to call “shared home.” Hearth and home, food and fire, pain and process, bird and beast, wine and women, song and celebration, faith and family, God and neighbor, self and sacrifice, love, laughter and loss – all of a piece, one undivided garment of singular living. What they shared with the world they had already experienced in their daily lives.

They were perhaps one of the most genuinely whole peoples the world has ever known. I would even go so far as to suggest that they exemplified a very biblical faith. They marched to the skirl of their own bagpipes!

As a result, Rome absolutely LOVED them and offered their undying support (pry tongue from cheek here____________).

What the Celts understood is that there would be no outward “success” without honest, inward labor. The great, wide sea that would lead them to countless would be Kingdom-citizens awaiting their hopeful voice could wait long enough for them to be well acquainted with the reason for their journey. Boats easily sink when left untended for too long.

They went out boldly to see God at work in the world, but did so through the in door of communal spiritual practice. They had more than ideas to share. They took their photo albums and welcome mat with them.

The insatiable longing to belong so pervasive in the Celtic spirit changed their way of living. They willingly and consistently explored what it meant to be “home,” all the while sailing to the ends of the earth in pursuit of what they sought. In so doing, they brought the hopeful message of Jesus’ new Kingdom to those people everyone else called “barbarians.”

The Celts called them neighbors.

The Celts loved silence and the life of the soul. But they loved it too much to keep it a secret. They went out through the In door. And, with this inner treasure in tow, they sailed the great deep to change the known world.

We are their legacy.

Great Guardian of hearth and horizon, soul and sail,

I have lifted my feet in obedience to an insistent wind.
I have lifted my head up above this tiny-rimmed being.
I have sought again what once was too costly.
I have set out once more upon a wildly restless sea.

And found what was looking for me.

Words – A Good Friday Meditation

On April 27, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, spiritual formation2 Comments

The first word: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

As people, we assign significance to many things, deserving or not. But, if there is anything to which we assign particularly deep significance, it is to the words spoken to us by others we hold dear. A jaunty “good morning” from a work associate could never hold the same weight as if the words are spoken by that special someone whose attentions we’d been trying to attract. The regard we give to words spoken to us is directly proportionate to the one from whom and the context in which they are spoken.

For example, if we’re honest, how many of us would admit to twinges of discouragement, disappointment, or even anger at statements on social media that seem dismissive, flippant or maybe even abusive? They may never have been intended that way. But, devoid of a significant person’s voice and presence, and accompanying body language, we’re left to interpret from one-dimensional communication a multi-dimensional message.

We may read on our Facebook wall: “so, you’re happy with that, then?” Pretty benign really, isn’t it? Or is it? We don’t know. Those same words feel quite different when heard directly from the mouth of our best friend standing in front of us with a quirky grin on his or her face…”so, you’re happy with that, then?” We don’t have to “fill in the blanks.” We “get it.”

The generally agreed upon “7 last words of Jesus” from the cross have the deepest significance when understood in the broader context in which and by whom they were spoken.

To a group of men called out of their settled lives into the nomadic, unsettled life of Rabbinic apprentices, Jesus’ words already had weight. They may not always have understood. But they respected the source and therefore the words. But, remember that, by this point, they were busy licking their emotional wounds from having dismissed, betrayed, denied, disowned and finally abandoned him when he needed them most. They were literally swimming in grief and shame.

Therefore, it was significant that the first words from Jesus’ mouth were not of condemnation as one might reasonably expect. No, they were of forgiveness. They are also of particular importance given the shady circumstances surrounding his death.

Jesus had been handed over to be killed, not as a religious heretic or prophetic martyr, but as a political revolutionary. Jesus’ ignominious death was never really about blasphemy, or heresy as the religious leaders were fond of contending. Those were surface issues that made it easier to get rid of him. They were the straw man that became the elephant in the living room. Since we can’t seem to deal with this guy by theological means, let’s play the political card. Let’s throw him at Caesar and see what happens. Let’s appeal to the mass hysteria induced by authority figures telling people what they should be thinking about something. It was about a threat to power and control. He represented a genuine threat to the religious establishment.

The cross tells us many, many things. It tells us firstly, that Jesus didn’t give up, either on his mission or on the first recipients of that mission. He saw it through to the end. Not just any end, but an ignominious end at the hands of his own people willingly handing him over as nothing more than troublemaker to the Roman powers-that-be. It also tells us that his own people distanced themselves from him spiritually by insisting on crucifixion as the means of his death; a form of torture reserved for enemies of the state, not the nation of Israel.

That’s the context. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Under such shameful circumstances, no other words could possibly hold more powerful meaning.

Before Jesus says, “It is finished” he says, “Father, forgive them.” We are drawn to faith not in the hope of forgiveness but in the reality of forgiveness. We rush into the arms of a God not waiting to forgive, but a God who has already forgiven. The first words from the cross frame all the rest. We do not have to assign any other significance to them because God himself is the one who has answered the cry of Jesus.

Friends, forgiveness isn’t the end game of the cross. It’s the starting point. It isn’t the result. It’s the means of revealing a result. Our journey with God doesn’t come to a point of forgiveness. It begins there. Relationship doesn’t happen once forgiveness is offered. It can happen precisely BECAUSE forgiveness has been offered.

Amen.

Image found here

The changing face of prayer

On April 20, 2015April 19, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn celtic music, celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, music, poetry, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts, worship1 Comment

As I deepen, glacially but surely, in the Way of Jesus I am finding freedom in the manner, frequency, and creativity of spiritual intercourse. There are a number of factors in these discoveries. I am getting older – a fact, apparently, applicable to all. The passing chronos lends a certain gravitas to the focus of kairos. And, the slow-cook crockpot of my formation adds fewer ingredients every year to an already complicated soup. Sometimes it’s not more, or even better, ingredients that are required for the quintessential meal. Sometimes it’s the right ones at the right time that leave the palette happy and wanting more.

As I’ve written numerous places, the past few years have been richly experimental in regions of contemplative prayer. Learning to love silence. Seeking out solitude. Making friends with simplicity. Studying the nuanced coup d’etat of lectio divina. Prayer walking. Being enriched through congregational liturgy. Journalling the works.

All these and more continue to contribute to whatever Rob, slightly enhanced, may be forthcoming off the stove.

But something is changing. With the increasing 20/20 available through the grace of kairos and the experience of chronos, I’m latching more and more onto the fluidity and ubiquity of unceasing prayer, specifically as it has come to be associated with who I am more than an action to which I commit. If in fact it is true that God is omnipresent, theologically, and an unceasingly constant spiritually, then it should come as no surprise that prayer can and perhaps should be, everything.

There is a state of being available to all persons everywhere that is readily found in that which most thrills the soul. For some, the ticking clock, counting the passing hours immersed in good literature. For others, it is the choir of smells united in one explosive song on a nature walk. For still others, it may be culling from the raw ingredients of the earth, something rich and flavorful with which to delight the tastebuds of friends and family.

For me, it was music and writing.

MASFL Pix 009 copy — Me, roughly a millenia ago

As a teen, and a budding musician, I would often sit for hours on the front step of our house simply playing my guitar. The notes, some of them good, others lined up for the shower, collided together to produce more than just music. They created space; a kind of generous openness to whatever the universe was at the time. A particular kind of peaceful “zen” or as Thomas Merton might call it, “contemplative awareness” resulted, leaving me just where I needed to be. This was true even as I spent countless agonizing hours learning impossibly difficult melodies (I certainly thought so at the time!).

In recent months, as more conventional understandings of contemplative prayer have waned a bit, I’ve had a certain yearning to resurrect this practice. And resurrection has been the result. To plant myself on a lawn chair a few feet from my rose bushes (such as they are) and play music inspired by the same, in tune with the wind, has once again ushered in a holy Presence. It has centered me like nothing else lately.

Rob-singing on Okanagan Lake — Taken on Okanagan Lake, Kelowna, B.C., 1999

It has also brought a much cherished simplicity and deepening unification of all I am into pulsating notes, maybe not always in tune, but always tuning. Music, once again, has become for me the changing face of prayer, changing me.

Regret, and second chances for chances not taken

On April 10, 2015June 16, 2019 By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, faith, Family, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation13 Comments

He died of lymphoma on September 15th, 1985 at 10:22 pm. I was 21 years old. At that moment, a man I never really knew, passed into the aether, and was crushed tight to God’s bosom. Found by God and lost by me, he is to this day, an enigma and my regret. He was my father.

We spoke precious little while he was alive. A sense of quiet desperation peppered his disposition. A staunchly stoic individual, his upbringing in the wild, velvet foothills of Maple Creek, Saskatchewan burnished a certain leathery sheath to his already withered spirit.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Maple Creek, Saskatchewan

I saw my father cry only three times. Once, during a conflict with my younger brother, whose pained cry (he was only a kid after all) of “yea, well, you’re not my real Dad, so I don’t have to listen to you,” saw him descend into bitter weeping (all three of us are adopted). On another occasion, my Mom was reacting to my new but immature faith, a faith terribly demeaning to anyone outside the tiny club I then called Christianity. My own inability to navigate the complexities of this new life of faith had thrown a monkey wrench into the heart of our family. My Mom was hurt and let me know about it. Dad tearfully held my hand, recognizing in me his own lostness in the world and responding as he generally did, silently, but deeply.

I had driven him to Rockyview Hospital so he didn’t have to be alone when he got his biopsy results. The very fact that the doctor couldn’t tell him over the phone had already primed the pump as to what we could expect. I sat in the waiting room while he consulted with the doctor. What seemed like days passed until he finally emerged. Tears drew lines down his ashen face. It was the third, and would be the final time, I ever saw him cry. His words haunt me to this day, “well, looks like I got a touch of the cancer.”

The denial in his words bespoke a terror I had hitherto not seen on his usually emotionless face. He was genuinely afraid and communicated as much in the only way he knew: cautious deflection. Perhaps if he treated it like a bad cold it might just disappear like a bout of coughing or a snotty nose. And, as we would discover later, he had most likely lived with the growing cancer for a number of years, successfully hiding lumps even from my mother. These may have been the actions of a man too rough ‘n tumble to be bothered with such matters. More likely, they picture someone lacking the interpersonal skills necessary to build a supportive foundation upon which he could pilot these stormy waters.

He was as lost as we were.

Tom Baker Cancer Centre, Calgary, Alberta — Tom Baker Cancer Centre

In the months that followed we learned well the half hour journey from our home to the Tom Baker Cancer Center where he would be subjected to one test after another, one trial after another, one failed approach after another. He lost half his body weight and was an eerie shade of grey-green. Ultimately, he was admitted as a long-term patient. I learned how to help my own father shower and use the toilet. Any preexisting awkwardness was forced out in this new and vulnerable frontier. Old fears and presumptions fell away every time I helped pull his pants back up or helped him into pajamas before he fell, exhausted, into bed.

I was studying classical voice and choral conducting at the time and would often sit by his bedside reading and even humming pieces I was to have memorized for the following morning. From time to time I’d look up from my textbook to be sure he was still breathing, only to catch him looking back. Our words were few to none. But, to us, those looks bore volumes of communication unnecessarily crowded by such things as talk.

In the early evening of September 15^th we had been made aware by the doctor that he had contracted pneumonia as a result of increasing weakness and the pure oxygen that was keeping him alive. Ironically, in so doing, it crystallized his lungs, turning them into glass shells. He was given zero chance to live off the respirator. Despite the knowledge that this day was coming, we stood like plastic dolls, unable to speak.

This reality had us cornered, and we succumbed to its horror, saying our trembling goodbyes. I bent over to kiss his forehead, whimpering quietly in his ear, ”Goodbye, Dad. I love you. I always have.” It was one of the few precious “moments” we ever enjoyed together. He would be dead two hours later.

My father was that man about whom one says, “He was someone I never knew.” I cannot say however that he wasn’t the father I needed. I was as negligent and uninterested as he was tense and unable to forge anything substantive in our father-son relationship.

They say regret is a wasted emotion. Maybe so, but few emotional triggers are more difficult to undo. It lies in wait every time we are reminded how our successes bowed to failure, our fears grew through inaction, our relationships dug themselves deep into a quicksand of mutual ignorance or naïveté.

In the years that followed, I’ve been forced to come to terms with my passivity and self-driven carelessness regarding my father. It has left me struggling with mountains of regret and the self-loathing it can generate. Left untended, regret can cloud the soul and create blockages to the inflowing of new love, new relationships, even newness in old relationships.

With my Dad it wasn’t about forgiveness. It wasn’t even really about misunderstanding. I am ashamed to say that, for me it was, quite frankly, lack of interest. He was everything I was not but secretly wished to be: unyielding, unflaggingly committed, self-denying, self-forgetful, self-reliant, with a willingness to forego relishing in his fears in the interest of those he supported and loved.

My lack of interest and passivity crashed headlong into his inability or perhaps tentativeness to face something he’d never known himself, tenderness. The casualty? Relationship.

Since then I’ve done a poor job, although with lessening self-flagellation, at honesty and intentionality in human relationships. Friends, pastors, colleagues, and spiritual directors have all shared in this journey with me. The one message most readily cobbled together from their loving advice is this: if the gospel tells us anything it’s that there is always redress for regrets. The Way of Jesus keeps open the door that leads to new and renewed relationships, to companionship for the lonely and an anchor for souls adrift.

I miss my Dad. I regret never really getting to know him. I miss what might have been. But, the Way of Jesus, lived with courage, promises second chances for chances not taken.

Picture of Maple Creek, Saskatchewan found here

easter morning

On April 5, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, faith1 Comment

funny how mornings come so pleasantly uninvited

stolen sleep to some

pushing daylight agenda to others

there once was a morning whose

heavy eyelids saw less than what was

more than what should have been

she gazed into the heart of darkness

and found a sudden slow haziness

and then there was nothing

and into nothing burst everything

Turning up the lamp – finding a convergence

On March 20, 2015December 15, 2022 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation3 Comments

In much of the incendiary debate (a generous term, frankly) surrounding matters of human sexuality in the church, one is often led to believe that there is now and has always been a single view with which all faithful souls must immediately and consistently adhere. This is an unfortunate proclivity for the prevailing church, to make assumptions out of a majority view and, on that basis, unquestioningly consider it biblical.

When my wife and I first moved to the U.S. from Canada (at the time of writing, almost fourteen years ago). I recall numerous conversations that went something like this, “oh, you’re a Christian. So, you must be pretty happy about getting a Republican in office then, huh?” Now, given that we are not American citizens and cannot vote, and wouldn’t automatically vote one way or the other dependent on a party name, this still strikes me as disingenuous at best, dangerously misinformed at worst.

The Church has disagreed on almost everything since Pentecost. Even the big stuff. The great Councils helped build a consensus, not a unanimity on matters of deepest concern to the gospel. Even the very scriptures from whence we derive our most treasured theology was a canon of strife and woe until well into the fourth century C.E. There is not even universal agreement to this day on what books even belong in the canon!

Perhaps the most diverse “rag-tag fugitive fleet” of souls ever assembled were the original twelve. Levi/Matthew, a materialistic, corporate yes-man on one end and Simon, the Zealot, a leftist revolutionary on the other. It certainly was not ideology that united these two apprentices of Jesus! It was their Rabbi, and the self-giving love he exemplified that cut through to the core of all matters.

Since the Reformation, something I see increasingly as The Giant Overreaction, the church has fractured into 40,000 denominations, more or less, most claiming sola scriptura of one form or another. Hence for me, the question becomes not if sola scriptura but whose? It leads us to ask the yet bigger questions related to the spirit in which we disagree on secondary matters. Is there room for loving disagreement, or “faithful dissent” as my colleague would say?

Despite the fact I’ve spent my entire Christian experience in that narrow hallway of Protestant enterprise, in at least one of those 40,000 denominations, the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), I’m finding hope that, in the LGBTQ discussion at least, there may be room for such faithful dissent. And it is here where Dr. Clifton-Soderstrom is at her best, bringing home her point within that shared context where we both live, move and have our being.

This has been a threefold exercise for me in stretching my spiritual legs a bit. It is a rarity for me to engage in these, shall we say delicate, matters on a blog designed more to journal my journey than document my ideas. That said, I can think of few better to assist me as I stick my head out of my cell long enough to sniff around and discover places suited to engage the world with what I’m learning down there.

You can find her final installment here. I did, and Dr. M…it’s been an honor.

Dr. Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom is Professor of Theology & Ethics at North Park University in Chicago, Illinois where she has served since 2002.

Rainbow pic found here

Turning up the lamp – when head and heart collide

On February 28, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formationLeave a comment

My first contribution in this short series suggested that we, as the church of Jesus Christ, are in an ongoing cycle of retuning; a self-correction, sometimes almost subconscious, that reverses excesses and unhealthy trends. Further, I hinted at a kind of misgiving in posting a series of this kind, given the nature of Innerwoven as primarily a place for reflection and growth in Christian spirituality, not a clearing house for theological hot-topic-du-jour.

This is how I’ve come to terms with this: sometimes we must rouse ourselves from the beautiful silence and push out into the dark once more with light gained from those quiet spaces most abuzz in the presence of God. For me right now, this is that.

If we are willing to be completely honest, it is common, especially in all things theological/existential, to suffer a certain degree of cognitive dissonance; a rift so to speak between what we think we know, what we actually know, and what we want to know. Our heads and our hearts, like pieces of a broken mirror, struggle to find their place such that a pretty picture may emerge.

For example, if one can say with clear conscience, (or for that matter, a straight face) that one understands the incarnation, the trinity, or the hypostatic union, then there exists more self-induced deception than any real desire for broader understanding through a willing “unknowing” – a fancy way of saying, humility. Such a one is not even ready for this discussion. They have far too many ‘answers’ when in fact a truer posture before such numinous matters should produce more ‘questions,’ questions that often remain ‘answer-less.’

The LGBTQ issue as it relates to Christian formation, a faithfully biblical exegesis, and equally faithful local church ministry (specifically in the Evangelical Covenant Church, the denomination I share with my guest contributor) is one of those cognitive dissonance issues for me. Years of teaching and background in one direction have collided with more years of rethinking, spiritual formation, and reconsidering this issue, coupled with my actual experiences with beloved LGBTQ sisters and brothers, have left me torn and looking for fresh thinking and a way forward.

Dr. Clifton-Soderstrom is helping me in this regard. I believe she can help you as well. As she encourages, “When we are in over our hearts and over our heads, the habit of befriending and the exercise of freedom around God’s word can only take us where the Spirit leads — toward renewal.” If you trust her as I do, go here.

MichelleCliftonSoderstromTall