Category: Life of Rob

Going Down? Till Horses Have Hands

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Till horses have hands: Humpty Dumpty reflects on healing and community

As my family, the church I serve (Westminster Presbyterian Church) and a host of medical and physical therapists are already aware, I did a memorable Humpty Dumpty impression on April 29th of last year. Remaining true to my compulsive tendencies toward immediacy and perfectionism I sat atop a 20-foot scaffolding seeking to fix one of our damaged church speakers. Could it have waited until some of our duly qualified building and grounds volunteers showed up to do it? Sure. Might we even somehow have survived without it for another week? Sure. Could I not have found something less perilous with which to occupy my time? Yup. Did I? Well, suffice it to say that I am immensely gratified that, upon completion of a magnificent gymnastic feat that garnered a concussion, a broken pelvis and a shattered left arm, neither the king’s men nor horses put me back together again. That was left to those eminently more qualified and possessive of hands rather than hooves.

Now, I am fully cognizant that many have experienced trauma in their lives vastly more significant than this. Therefore, I briefly reflect on my experience with humble recognition of that reality. Moreover, I’m uncertain how best to reflect on something so life changing without resorting to clichés or pat answers.

Although I love to talk theology, I am no theologian. No, I’m an artist of the post-modern contemplative variety. Artists in general tend toward narcissism (insert look of shock here). We are self-referential and, to a greater or lesser degree, see the world as revolving around us (a fact all the more obvious given an entire article written in the first person). This means that we make great dinner guests but not custodians! If it’s clever banter or a pretty tune you want, I’m your man. If you want a church speaker fixed quickly and without drama, perhaps less so.

Thankfully, artists in professional ministry gradually learn to be aware of their ego-centrism by tempering it with the language of faith. Furthermore, the faith community itself can be a powerful shaping tool for us as well. Their complementary gifts, more objective understanding of who we are (and are not), and their interest in shared ministry offer us opportunities to grow in mutual trust. This has been especially true at Westminster.

In my younger days I might have squirmed at the idea that music and worship ministry could in fact continue and continue well – without me. God forbid! I am the hub of the wheel, the bright and morning star, the gravitational force of the universe around which all things musical must revolve. Please God, anything but this! These days, however, in the throes of middle age and desiring to leave a legacy, I am compelled to proclaim my joy from the rooftops for this very thing. Because the people I am blessed to lead and serve love me and love their church they rose up in my hour of need (closer to 2 months actually) and made the proverbial trains run on time. As a result, I was free to mend without the distracting pressures of weekly worship ministry. This kind of self-propelled passion for “taking care of business” fueled these dear souls. I, along with our entire congregation, were recipients of their herculean efforts. They know who they are. God most certainly does.

Still others came day after day to sit with me, bring meals, swap stories or share encouragement. Numerous times, well-meaning but non-suspecting folks stopped by on one of those unfortunate occasions when I was in so much pain that all I could do was groan pitifully and gaze up at them with my “look-at-what-mighty-things-I-suffer-please-feel-sorry-for-me” eyes. Again, they know who they are. We have agreed that if anyone asks they will remember the story we rehearsed.

I continue to learn from this sordid affair. G.K. Chesterton once said, “if we have not mirth, we will have madness.” Learning to take our life crises seriously yet in stride is a part of our maturation into Christ. Nothing is wasted in God’s efforts toward making us into “little Christs.” If spiritual formation is what we want, then, by God, that is what we’ll receive. Best of all, I got to see just how much the universe doesn’t in fact revolve around me. In the body of Christ we are graced with each other. Some are artists. Some are custodians. Some, perhaps most, know the difference. Therefore, until horses have hands I’ll leave the work of ministry ultimately to God, believing that many hands have helped put this Humpty Dumpty back together again.

H.D. aka Robert Rife

Going Down? Faces in the Crowd

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Faces, many faces, unite into a single, generous community of helpers in this debacle. Without these individuals I’m certain that my present might have been considerably less bearable and outcomes considerably less promising. People are often at their best or their worst under duress. And, since I was too busy groaning and deep-sea diving in my battered brain for coherence, it fell to others to help me onto the healing road.

It’s anybody’s guess how long I waited on the church floor before someone found me. The first one to take their place among this kaleidoscope of holy heroes was Clarence, our stoic and humble custodian. My friendship with Clarence is glowing testimony to the unifying power of the gospel, he a Rush Limbaugh fan and me a Rachel Maddow disciple! Clarence is a man of few words but numerous qualities, gracious hospitality and selflessness being chief among them. I cannot readily recall his exact role but can feel quite certain of his strong and compassionate presence in the midst of the chaos. I feel better just knowing he was nearby.

The next on the scene apparently was Lisa, our Children’s Ministries Director. Lisa is a gal of extraordinary energy, passion and determination. Having won a not inconsiderable battle against obesity she stands head and shoulders above many whose exploits, though laudable, pale by comparison. Her love for children is matched by her joyful effervescence – a quality put to the test upon finding me and then calling 911.

Either coming with Lisa or a short time later was our Office Administrator, Denise. She is a girl blessed with that rare combination of razor-sharp administrative skills with an easy-going whimsy that help her avoid the total pain in the ass syndrome most admin types can be (well, to whacked out, right-brained, artsy types like me anyway). Now, since I remember this story only in pieces, much of this first responder type stuff is borrowed as second-hand news from those who were participants in it.

At the hospital, the faces of these colleagues were joined by that of my doting wife of over 23 years. She is a firecracker of a girl, loyal without hesitation, buoyant and unapologetically extroverted. Someone blessed with quick wittedness, deplorably lacking in me I must admit, she was in this instance beside herself with anxiety and uncertainty. This was exacerbated by the fact that a women’s retreat she and her friend Lisa from Nashville had spent weeks organizing had been planned for that very weekend at our place in Ocean Shores. While waiting dutifully beside me (while, as you will recall, that husky fellow is cutting my pants off from stem to stern) she is busily making phone calls to Lisa, already en route from Tennessee.

Shock and delirium do strange things to one’s thought processes as I recall thinking that I could still sort this out and find a way for her to go ahead with her weekend plans. Knowing Rae and Lisa as I do, those plans would involve not an inconsiderable amount of off-color humor, laughter complete with obligatory snorting, and generally unsightly behavior. Together with their other estrogenic cohort, they would create a veritable storm of holy misdeeds that would end in tears of prayerful joy; the kind of parties Jesus not only attended but started. Heck, I would have gone myself if I didn’t hurt so damn much. Oh wait, I have a penis. Maybe next time.

Going Down? part 5

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The next thing I remember (and wish I couldn’t frankly) was the sound of my head bouncing off the concrete floor. From this point until my arrival in the Emergency at Memorial Hospital, memories are scant at best. I can recall profound pain in my lower back and total blindness in my left eye. Yes indeed, good times.

Once I was actually taken from the ambulance on the transport gurney I became slowly aware of my changing surroundings. Questions. Someone keeps asking me questions. I probe my mental storehouse for something approaching answers. I can find neither words, nor sentences, let alone answers. My less than ideal lucidity denied me access to any coherent response. Or, any response at all.

It was becoming increasingly obvious that things were less rosy than I persisted in believing them to be. This notion was confirmed as someone proceeded to cut my pants off with unnecessarily large scissors. Now, there have been times when having some nice nurse remove one’s trousers could conceivably be a rather welcome experience. In this instance, however, the nurse in question was a rather beefy looking fellow with a biker beard and possessive of none of that delicate finesse one might reasonably expect from someone engaged in dissecting one’s trousers from stem to stern. That is to say nothing of the discomfort of cutting devices of any kind so close to my body’s southern hemisphere.

I glanced to my left long enough to see a most disconcerting sight, one that would only take root in my conscious mind much later. A different nurse, female this time, who enjoyed a healthy and welcome ability for bringing a breezy levity to an otherwise not so chipper circumstance, held in her careful hands what appeared to be an arm. The hand at the end of this arm was pulling the very cool geometric feat of reaching all the way to the forearm with the fingers and was tilted to one side. It was just this physical impossibility to which I was awakened some weeks later upon my return to what would become my new “normal” for some time.

It is at such moments when I realize what a gift shock can be. Hence, in the growing light of my situational gravity I cackled some ridiculous quip or other, pleased with myself that the tough dude on this table still had “it”, even on royally shitty days like this one. They did not need to know that historically, my best defense against the worst circumstances is to dish up an extra helping of cheesy humor.

The nurse lifted the hand-like thing so it was once again parallel with the arm-like thing it was (thankfully) attached to. She proceeded to bandage it and then box it up in some kind of triangular splint that looked more like the packing inside a TV shipping box. She seemed delighted with her work, hinting that she was perhaps a new kid on the medical block. That said, I was elated that my arm was once again a straight prairie road instead of the physical version of a u-turn; no longer a tangent but a vector pointing in the proper direction. Up. 

Going Down? part 4

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I got about a quarter of the way finished the initial tear down by means of lowering heavy pieces of metal tied with rope down an extension ladder I had leaned against the scaffolding for this purpose. A particularly large and unwieldy section got stuck half way down the ladder. In order to unhook it from its place I was forced to step over the top rung of my wobbly cage and find the safest available rung on the ladder.

This, apparently, was not the best idea. In so doing I made a most unwelcome discovery. Sometime in the brief 48 hours that the scaffold had been erected, someone had, for some reason, felt the need to release the braking system I had so assiduously established, obsessively re-checking countless times. I was about to discover the egregious nature of this oversight.

Once both feet found their place on the first available rung, the scaffold, and the ladder with it, began their slow, almost imperceptible movement forward. It took a few seconds of this slowly moving metal monster before it started to become a conscious recognition on my part that I was indeed moving. I was, in fact, falling.

Ask anyone who has suffered the misfortune of having gravity as their dance partner and they will attest to a strange, slow motion quality to the whole affair. Worse still is the fact that this grisly dance that only ever has one winner must suffer the further insult of kinetic energy as its cruel chaperone!

Time slowed to a crawl as my eyes darted this way and that searching for the best available place to land. My mind, busily calculating all the possible geometry for this coming event, filled with thoughts as banal as, “shit, I’m falling!”

One always grasps for the most positive outcomes when faced with tragedy. “It’s not so bad, I’ve fallen before and come out alright” passes lazily through my brain as the ground looms ever closer. Mustering whatever courage I had left over from the shock of initial descent I push away from the scaffold so as to avoid all things metal and bolt-like. The grim illustration provided by my angry redneck cousin’s promise of “ripping me a new one” was, at that moment, most alive. I am coming to the end of lucid memory of that day. The last few recollections are these: I think I hit the ground first with my left foot. Another of those fleeting thoughts crosses my mind, “man, I really put my back out this time!” Only later was I to discover just how “out” my back truly was.

Going Down? pt. 3-ish

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Through days of grey made achingly longer just trying to survive there came an increasing intuition about something. In fact, an audible voice (or, if not, something that makes for a better story) stated quite simply, “you’re on the wrong med.” I know, I also thought it a rather banal thing for God to say after all that much more grandiose fare we read in the Bible. Anyway, the growing sense that something was chemically askew had been a recurring thought for months, even years before, but was quickly squelched in favor of my ongoing survival. A truly shitty present had to be better than some unknown, possibly shittier future.

This time was different. The absolute clarity of the idea penetrated my consciousness with a keenness and confidence that demanded my attention. I quite simply, quit. Even the emotional anguish that followed quickly on the heels of this decision I was never once tempted to think that I had made a mistake.

Instead, my tumultuous and tortured mind drifted to cries of desperation. And, in some cases, well, most actually, they were aimed at God. If I had been tormented with “I don’t give a damn” attitude before, it now chimed in with “I don’t give a flying f**k. I don’t care that I don’t give a flying f**k. I don’t care that I don’t care that I don’t give a flying f**k. I don’t care that my readers are subjected to three f**ks, OK, four f**ks…five in a row.” I wondered, perhaps for the first time ever, whether I would ever feel “normal” again. I began to despair even of life. If this was the best it could offer, I wasn’t particularly interested.

It was in such a sorry state of mind that, on Thursday morning, April 29th, 2010 I determined that the best I would be able to manage for work that day would be to climb a 20-foot scaffold and fix the church speakers. For me, it was a day in infamy.

As luck would have it we blew out the horns in not one but both of our church speakers a few weeks earlier at our annual Celtic Praise service. Thank you. Thank you very much. I, too, am proud of this accomplishment. About three weeks later, replacement parts in hand, I climbed our hastily thrown together scaffolding. It was already Thursday, I was very tired and yearned for an uneventful Friday, my Sabbath. When it comes to the unsexy jobs of music ministry, this tops the list, unless you consider cleaning mouse excrement out of organ pipes. As a result, the line up of volunteers eager to assist was…non-existent.

I could add white-hot self-pity and anger to my already fragile emotional palette. I’d love to call it righteous indignation, but apparently God is standing right behind me. I unhappily engaged in the awkward and dangerous process of dismantling our scaffolding just to set it up from scratch a mere 4 steps higher from the sanctuary floor to the chancel; a process I was doing unsupervised over lunch hour…

Going Down? continued

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Concurrent with these disturbing developments making sport of me was a total inability to quit smoking. This has been, on and off, a monkey on my back for many years. Cigarettes had always provided a nice smoke screen (did you see what I did there? Pun intended) for anything actually changing in my life. As anyone knows who has ever been caught in addiction, once attempts to quit become conscious, the noose of said addiction tightens around our metaphorical necks in direct proportion to our efforts toward freedom. It chokes us with annoying reminders of our perceived need for it and then partners with guilt, which in turn collude together with self-loathing; a disturbingly lethal combination of intimidating foes. They all but guarantee an unsuccessful struggle ending in defeat, garnishing one’s cataclysmic sense of self-loathing with the constant reminder of failure.

Smokers are a strange animal indeed. We are a restless lot always on the lookout for any possibility to feed the beast within screaming for the next drag. It affects concentration, goal setting, patience, self-love, self-confidence, relationships – everything. Eventually, everything is built around it. Planning when to “grab a smoke” becomes an all-engrossing pursuit. The most humiliating part of this scenario for me was that my family was completely unaware of my struggle. And I was not about to add insult to injury in revealing yet another issue I couldn’t seem to find victory over.

Prayer becomes especially strange in such circumstances. Praying in the light of an ongoing, persistent issue such as an addiction is a bit like sitting naked on the subway happily reading the paper oblivious to the fact that you have completely lost touch with the obvious. Do I forge ahead with this prayer despite the fact that the whole time I can’t get out of my head the simple fact that I am, simultaneously, considering when and where to have my next cigarette? The elephant in the living room sits cross-legged looking over his spectacles at the ridiculous charade unfolding before him and chuckling to himself, amused at my unwillingness to look up and acknowledge his presence.

It should come as no surprise that the name most often given to the enemy of the good, the true and the beautiful is Satan, which translated means, the accuser. When someone is already in personal combat mode, engaged in guerilla warfare with some overpowering issue, the icing on the cake for such an enemy is to convince such a one that their circumstances will never change, thus paralyzing them into false belief. The result is hopelessness. The torturer knows all too well that the deepest wounds are inflicted not on the body but in the mind. Once the spirit is broken, collapse, control and collusion follow quickly after…

Going down?…Reflections of the fall

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April 29, 2010. For me, a day in infamy. Before I begin a more thorough reveal of my travail, here is the short version. I fell off a 20 ft. scaffold and bounced off a cement floor breaking my pelvis and shattering my left arm in so doing. Perhaps in my earlier years when I was lithe and daring, I would have been more willing to do such things for the inevitable showering of praise from my peers. This was anything but willing, lithe or daring. It was jarring and rather horrifying at first; later, embarrassing; still later, a blessing. Stay with me as I begin to share the tale of woe and the surprising blessings of pain.

In rather dizzying drama, 2010 will be forever my “year of the fall.” However, neither the event itself, nor the injuries sustained, the post-event healing or even the post-recovery return to work are the central, defining landmarks of last year. The deeper discoveries have been far more significant.

I begin.

I feel normal. How I got there is rather less than normal. For the better part of my adult life I have exhibited some particularly vexing emotional demons. Far too easily have I slipped from a relatively safe emotional perch into some quagmire of baffling darkness. This is usually accompanied by generous helpings of self-loathing and profound lack of self-confidence. Where many people might look at new challenges as potential opportunities for advancement or growth, I’ve wilted before them in abject fear and unexplainable trepidation.

Yes, I know, what a catch.

Coping mechanisms for this travail have too often included a host of self-destructive behaviors, which have provided a welcome respite in euphoric escapism but did little in advancing me anywhere close to something one might call “normal.” Besides, as a favorite singer-songwriter, Bruce Cockburn quips, “the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.” Good, I’ll avoid it altogether. It is as though I relish living life at the periphery of sanity, swimming in a sea of anguish and self-pity. Actual contentment seemed to be the proverbial carrot dangling from a string before my nose, just out of reach, but plainly visible. It has often been the emotional equivalent of the Chinese water torture.

Albeit fewer than I’d like, in more lucid moments, I’ve at least had sufficient clarity to see my lack of clarity. My combination of DNA, personality wrinkles, emotional disparities and psychological proclivities have too often conspired against me, leaving me a heap of human plasticine. In my groping after the perceived safety of quick fixes this plasticine mess has found all the wrong sculptors. I end up shaped more like a phallic symbol than anything more usable to anybody. Well, actually…oh, never mind. That is, of course, unless I consider further screwing myself to be “usable” in any redemptive sense.

More recently, of the numerous challenges, any one of which could be blamed for exacerbating this dizzying array of dysfunctions, I began to hear God’s voice. To hear God’s voice through a haze of old mental tapes playing, the poorest self-memory ever and the latest chemical concoction for emotional tranquility is truly miraculous. Let’s admit, God’s ridiculous insistence on pestering us with grace is rather impressive.

I noticed (a word I don’t generally associate well with) a deeper than normal malaise; something mostly dealt with by a daily dose of ADD meds. Around the time of the second of two online courses I was taking in Spiritual Direction, I drooped into a level of complacency, which drooped still further in mind-numbing apathy that bordered on despair. It was the spiritual equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders before punting the cat through the screen door…

To sing or not to sing

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Walking the boardwalk on a sunny, summer evening in a seaside tourist town – alone – feels a little like bicycling with one petal or being the only kid at the school dance who never has a dance partner. Places like this – Seaside, Oregon ironically, are meant to be shared. It’s not that one cannot enjoyably breath in the heady, highly sensory ocean ethos of such places on one’s own. I’ve done it many times before. An introvert by nature, I rather bask in the relative repose easily gleanable from such experiences. No, it’s quite simply the much deeper joy of cackling like friendly chickens over a reciprocated love.

There’s just something unnamable, almost intangible, in shared experiences like these. To be with others you know and who know you sprinkles a delight and sweetness on the top that magnifies the joy exponentially. C.S Lewis knew this well and alludes to it in the Four Loves. One’s love for someone or thing amplifies in the sharing thereof. The mutuality of “yeah, I get it” is one of life’s greatest gifts. It is, I suppose, a function of our naturally communal human nature. To share is natural when we love something and find it difficult to articulate to ourselves alone.

Either because I am indecisive when it comes to choosing hobbies or because I am not in possession of anything close to a reasonable ability to say ‘no’ to anything remotely interesting, I have a host of varied spheres in which I have lived, moved and shared. One such world is the reason for my brief sojourn to this little Pacific paradise. I am attending a weeklong workshop for choral conductors.

I have had a profound appreciation for the choral tradition and its sublime repertoire my whole life. I recall with some reverie singing in the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church youth choir as a young elementary school kid. Although a right pain in the ass to the conductor I am forever grateful for her patience in opening the door to music I could never fully describe.

Similar to the annoying guy forever showing pictures of his kids on the subway, I am left with another thing I love to share (foist really) at every opportunity. Even then at around eleven years old I was equally intrigued with Henry Purcell, Johannes Brahms and Palestrina as I was with Simon and Garfunkel, Elvis Presley or Rush. My piano teacher at the time thought it commendable. My parents thought it quaint. To the older kids at school it forever sealed my fate as the tall, geeky brown-noser who perhaps fancied himself a cut above the rest.

Turned up noses meant nothing however as the first notes of some a cappella chamber choir began to nip at the edges of my soul, expanding it to be singed by the burning beauty of voices shared in common cause. For those who have yet to be entranced by such beauty, caught in the choral clutches of grace to which you are a contributor, I pray one day you find it even as I have. We’ll have one more thing whose beauty grows more in the sharing.