Category: worship

God is there – a litany

On By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, faith, life together, liturgy, sacramental living, worship2 Comments

As a contemporary liturgist for some years now it has been my job to help congregations experience their God and express their spiritual journey in corporate worship. Sometimes that has meant developing new ways of saying old things. The following is a short litany I’ve used on many occasions, sometimes as an aid to prayer, sometimes as a call to worship, other times simply for common reflection on the nearness of God. I pray that it is inspiring, or, at least…useful in some way.


When day moves into night and the seasons each stake their four quarter claim,

God is there.

When sadness, death and pain becoming the defining characteristics of our path,

God is there.

When God puts a new song in our mouth, a song of praise to our God,

God is there.

When words no longer come and shutters are drawn on lonely minds,

God is there.

When youthfulness reigns in life and limb and lingers in our days,

God is there.

When communities succumb to individualism and self-talk,

God is there.

When the common grace given us all finds voice among us and I  becomes we,

God is there.

Through all our days, our joys, our pain, our defeats, our triumphs, our lives,

God is there. 

 

God is here.

Commissioning prayer

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, liturgy, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts, worshipLeave a comment

I moved with my family from Kelowna, British Columbia to McMinnville, Oregon a month before the infamous events of 9/11. I’m not generally known for great timing! The move was for the purpose of assuming my role as Minister of Worship and Music at First Baptist Church. My short, 3 year tenure there was challenging and exciting and growing for me. A congregant, Densley Palmer, was a wonderful hymn text writer and poet. The following is a commissioning prayer he composed for the occasion of my coming to FBC.

Commissioning

Densley and Joyce Palmer ©October, 2001

For the commissioning of Robert Rife as Minister of Worship and Music

First Baptist Church, McMinnville, Oregon, October 14, 2001

 

Let all earth dance and sing in the presence of the eternal God.

Let us blend distinct voice and individual song in praise and thanksgiving

to God who makes all things one.

Let us worship God with our voices,

on the organ, and on the pipe and drum.

Be still, and await God’s voice in the pregnant moments of silence.

Calm the erratic cadence of daily life and move to the rhythm of the eternal.

Through worship, glimpse God’s infinite breadth, eternal length,

and encounter the intimate presence of the holy.

Wherever we worship God, let it be with a sense of awe and expectation,

a spirit of joy, and an awareness that,

through worship, we encounter the sacred

and stand barefoot on holy ground.

 

Let all earth dance and sing in the presence of the living God.

 

Evening prayer

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worshipLeave a comment

I am terrible at evening prayer, although I’ve always loved Compline, especially when I travel and can participate among some monastic brotherhood somewhere. I do love to write prayers however, morning or evening; whatever. Here is one from a few years ago. Who knows? perhaps posting this will help me realize a deeper faithfulness to the riches of evening prayer. I hope so.

I hope it speaks to you. Better, I hope you speak it to God.

Evening Prayer

Loving Lord, our God and friend, we are gathered together here to sing a new song to the Lord, to live as one in the community, which is promised whenever we come by faith into your holy presence.  We come not in haughty or vain spirits but in humility for we acknowledge that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. You chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of all you’ve created.

And so, dear Lord, we bring nothing to you other than our smallness into the enveloping presence of your powerful grace which changes our lives, making us new; refreshing us with light and love, forgiveness and wholeness.  We are children, safe in the arms of the God who is to us both Father and Mother, friend, confidante, grace-giver, sustainer and Saviour.

Walk with us this evening, oh God, as we seek to find you here among us.  Help us to hear your voice speaking, reminding us that, in you, there is a place to call home.

Through Christ Jesus, lover of our soul. Amen

Robert Rife, 2002

The Lord’s Prayer – a rendering

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, spiritual formation, worship7 Comments

A few years ago, while serving an American Baptist Church in Oregon, I was inspired to take a stab at a fresh rendering of the Lord’s Prayer. I am no expert in biblical languages. It is not a translation. I simply love the prayer and wanted to try my hand at paraphrasing it. I hope it is still meaningful to you even if it’s not the original.

Loving God, above the heavens but ever present to us, we lift our eyes and bless you.  May your life and way become ours in all things.  Feed, this day, our souls even as you nourish our bodies.  Forgive us when we choose to do wrong and help us to forgive others when they do wrong against us.  Guide us into high and holy places and away from the dark road of hate.  Let your mighty strength, your loving reign and the fullness of your being be forever ours. Amen.

August 4, 2003

Different Voices, Many Songs, One God

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, liturgy, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts, worshipLeave a comment

The great medieval feminist and Christian mystic, Hildegard von Bingen, composed a famous choral work, entitled “Ordo Virtutum.” It is really more of a musical narrative in which she weaves sublime choral and instrumental music punctiliously around ominous interjections of a sinister speaking voice, that of the devil, who utters hateful words towards the Almighty. As such she makes the metaphoric statement that all of God’s creatures were created to sing God’s praise.  However, only the enemy of God is denied the gift of song.  As God’s beloved creation, we are all a part of God’s redemption song in Jesus Christ.  Melody bespeaks our common humanity.  It defines our existence.  It narrates our story.  It proclaims God’s story.  It enshrines community and it is the food of glory.

Certainly, for many years choral music has played a central role in the worship life of the church.  It has been so in my own spiritual journey.  I credit Bach’s “Wedding Cantata”, his Brandenburg Concerto #2 and Anton Bruckner’s “Ave Maria” for creating the emotional backdrop for my own conversion.  As a young boy I enjoyed singing with the Children’s Choir of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (the place I also learned to play the bagpipes – forgive them, they knew not what they were doing!).  I submit that a majority of folks on the faith journey would share similar sentiments regarding their own connection with music especially as it relates to worship.

I’m delighted to serve a rather odd Presbyterian church as music director; odd because we have determined not to divide ourselves up along preferential music lines based on consumerist ideology. Instead, for good or ill, we have journeyed together down the long and winding road of a single “convergence” worship service (I first heard this term used by Dr. Tom Long in his book, Beyond the Worship Wars). I actually prefer “eclectic” worship since “convergence” can feel a bit like someone hit the puree button on the music blender that spills out some indefinable ooze of congregational sludge.

We’ve sung everything from Bach to contemporary praise song arrangements to “Down to the River to Pray” from the movie, “Brother, Where Art Thou?”  We have sought to re-envision ourselves.  We have had many tough conversations together.  We have laughed and cried and prayed together in our quest to dwell under one roof, at one time, on one day, for one purpose: to bring honor to God by our common voice –  different voices, many songs, one God.

What this means is that we will never really be able to commit to the full on praise band since, to do so would immediately alienate those for whom such worship language would be far too big a challenge. It also means that our organist will always be under-utilized and over-anxious because she never gets to play as often as she would like and in ways that are most conducive to her own musical proclivities. Everyone sacrifices something to be together as a single family, albeit with a slightly higher baseline of discontent!

The joy and camaraderie of voices raised in harmonious praise is something that must be experienced for oneself. The shared sacrifice required to offer one another room for divergent but unique voices to be heard and appreciated is the true stuff of heaven. It is singularly Kingdom driven and really difficult to pull off. But it’s the best struggle I’ve been a part of thus far.

So, dear Hildegard, I’m inspired by your musical picture of God’s Kingdom. It is a Kingdom where everyone can sing together but where the enemies of God and God’s community are forced to bellow, grunt, wheeze and whine instead of joining that single, great choir called from every corner of the globe to worship this God. I leave you with these words from Hildegard: “Your Creator loves you exceedingly, for you are His creature, and He gives you the best of treasures.”

Music is just one of those.

St. Patrick’s Day – Why the world needs the Celts

On By robertalanrifeIn celtic music, celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, liturgy, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts, worship17 Comments

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day. A guy has to be a press-ready, crowd-pleasing commodity to get his own day. But, perhaps I’m just jealous. Besides maybe Saint Columba, he’s our best known Celt. And, in honour of his Celtic lineage, I share the following.

When one thinks of the term Celt or Celtic what images spring to mind? Is it the Pictish war-paint donned by William Wallace in Braveheart as he prepares to take Scottish troops into yet another conflagration with England? Is it the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle where hundreds of overly plumed peacock pipers and drummers march to and fro in a celebration of Scotland’s warring past?

Edinburgh Military Tattoo.jpg
Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Edinburgh Castle

Is it the drunken party at the local pub as it becomes abundantly apparent that you’ve walked into some secret society, all of whom are experts on their instruments, can drink more than any human should be capable of but with whom you feel completely welcome? Is it the great standing crosses of Ireland? Is it Larry Bird?

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Picture found here

Whatever one may think of the Celts, one thing is sure: they were a people absolutely unique in history and centuries ahead of their time. They were an aural culture, a bardic people of story, song, poetry and mythology. As such there exists a great deal of misunderstanding regarding their exact history. In fact, they seem quite simply to have passed out of existence like a fisherman’s boat sailing into the morning mist.

One example of this relates to something many bagpipers, including myself, play on the bagpipes: Piobaireachd. Let us review that spelling, shall we?

P I O B A I R E A C H D.

It was never their intention to leave any letters for anyone else. Piobaireachd is the co-mingling of 2 Scots Gaelic words: piobaire, or piping with eachd, music. Hence, piped or piping music. Piobaireachd is the classical music of the highland bagpipe and is loosely based on the musical idea of a theme and variations. It was most likely developed by a highland clan dynasty of the MacCrimmons, ancestral pipers to the MacLeod clan on the Isle of Skye. But since there remains so little written evidence of the clan and their history, many believe them, and their development of piobaireachd, to be the fanciful fabrications of folklore.

There is plenty that we do know that can benefit us, however. The Christianity that emerged in Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, Gaul, Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales possessed some valuable gifts. I list here but a few.

The Celtic Christianity that thrived, undivided, from roughly the fifth through the twelfth centuries, is as deeply influenced by the culture in which it was birthed as the culture that was transformed by it. It is the child of the pagan culture that preceded it. We rationalists squirm a little at this idea.

We need the Celts because of their love for the poetic imagination and artistic creativity, building on a rich tradition of bards who sang the shared stories and exploits of her kin.

We need the Celts because of their similar love for kinship, relations and the warmth of a hearth. Their love of hearth and kinship translated in spiritual terms to what they called “anam cara” or “soul friends”, those with whom they shared their deepest joys, fears, sins, hopes, dreams.

The Celts were forever at odds with Mother Rome. To my mind, this equates to a paradox or at least to a willing suspension of seeming opposites. On one hand they were as profoundly Catholic as any other sect of Medieval Christendom. They yearned to be part of the larger Christian family. That is the Celtic way. On the other, they ever marched to the beat of their own drum – a Catholicism swimming in the quasi-pagan, swarthier style of the brooding Celts. They were both in and out.

How quintessentially Celtic.

We need the Celts because they insisted on the equality of all people in the eyes of God. They celebrated an egalitarianism in everything even allowing women to perform the Mass, a heresy of the first order even in contemporary, post Vatican II Catholicism! While worshippers throughout Europe frequented any number of great cathedrals, the Celts preferred smaller, homemade altars around which they would celebrate a deeply intimate Eucharist. Especially irksome to Rome was their liturgical calendar taken more from Druidic astrology than the accepted Church calendar. Rogues to the core, what’s not to love?

We need the Celts because of the monastic communities that flowered in Britain and elsewhere that became centers of classical education and learning, even possessive of literature outlawed by the Holy Roman Empire. As such, it can be said without exaggeration that the Celts kept knowledge alive and growing throughout the Middle Ages.

We need the Celts for their great love for the natural world and for preaching a God who loved it, too. They attached particular significance to particular animals, numbers, places and natural objects. Their spirituality was mystical in character, bathed in silence and solitude but rooted squarely in the everyday. It was a rich blend of the immanence and transcendence of God.

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Quiraing Ridge, Skye. With this as inspiration, who wouldn’t see the sacred everywhere?

We need the Celts because of their unquenchably adventurous spirits, well known as explorers and/or missionaries to many places. Some have suggested that they may have been some of the earliest explorers to South America where Peruvian artwork mimics Celtic knot work.

We need the Celts to broaden our sense of time. They had an understanding of time that was less chronological than kairotic. In other words, they were not especially linear in their approach to life, love, faith and relationships. They valued the cyclical dimension of time, believing that by immersing themselves in the seasons of the year and uniting their lives with the liturgical seasons of the church, they could more effectively celebrate their journey through the sacredness of time.

We need the Celts for a further distinctive, related to their concept of time; their appreciation of ordinary life. Theirs was a spirituality characterized by gratitude, and in their stories we find them worshipping God in their daily work and very ordinary chores. We, as they, can see our daily lives as a revelation of God’s love.

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Irish farm

 

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Rural Celtic life. Picture found here.

We need the Celts since their spirituality has great ecumenical value, transcending the differences, which have divided Christians in the East and the West since before the Reformation.

We need the Celts because, unlike we who are often more interested in what to believe than Who to follow, their Christianity was a way of life, a spirituality lived gratefully each day, one day at a time.

Finally, we need the Celts because they give us reason and opportunity to party in the presence of the God who loves us.

I’m in!

Glimpses – awakening to the indescribable

On By robertalanrifeIn bagpipes, celtic music, celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts, worship2 Comments

Early in a new year, and a leap year at that, I want to take a stab at describing what cannot adequately be described. As a contemplative and a musician, I have met, from time to time, with mystical experiences that beggar explanation, categorization or temporal understanding. In order to do so, a short preface.

At the foundation of Christian spirituality is the very basic principle of awakening or awareness. It comes in many different packages, under numerous ideologies, representative of a host of approaches each with practices that lend themselves to one’s emerging spiritual life.

To become aware is to wake from some form of slumber, sleep or sloth. One of the mysteries of spiritual awareness is that one does not awaken naturally. We are prodded awake by the loving work of God upon the sleeping soul. It requires this nudge of God upon our shoulder before any meaningful process of receptivity and relationship can occur. In order for us to ‘awake to our awakening’ we must receive the whisper of God speaking grace into the spiritual ear of our understanding.

I do not speak so much of the prophetic proclamation to “arise, shine; for your light has come.” No, before we can be so attuned to the prophet’s voice calling us to faithfulness and righteousness, we must first hear the voice of the Lover calling us to succumb to this wooing upon which our only response can be, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”

As comforting and romantic as that sounds, however, upon awakening to the first primal strains of the song of God, there comes a dissonance amidst the lilting notes. We awake to beauty and begin to see that which we have always yearned after but of which we were unaware, blind. This, however, can often be a fearful and groggy experience. Cobwebs yet invade our minds unaccustomed to such sharpness of color. Ears that have been plugged up suddenly pop as our inner altitude changes. It is as disorienting as it is invigorating…

I remember places, glimpses into…something; an awareness that hints at a proximity to the indescribable, numinous presence of God. These are never easy things to describe, but there is a delight in the attempt for, in so doing, I am taken back to some of those places. Not always, but for me it is often some dusty, old church or monastery; most often at night, alone. Yet, not alone. As I have since come to believe, they were, as the Celts called them, thin places where a barely perceptible sheath surrounds the holy otherness of God and where comes a mystical awareness of God so immanent that one feels he can literally smell God’s breath, touch God’s skin. These experiences have often made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Ironically, they used to happen often when I was a boy, long before I had any faith lexicon or tidy systematic theology with which to scrub them up and describe them away. I recall one particular time as I lay on our living room floor. I was probably eight or nine years old and, as I did every year, was watching the first snowfall of winter as flakes danced past the streetlight that stood outside our house. In that moment, I became curiously aware of a haunting peace that arrested my sensibilities and held me spellbound in what I can only describe as ‘rightness.’ In that moment, the cosmos and I were one. God, as I now understand God, was laying beside me on the living room floor that night, whispering wordless words to me, convincing me of my place in it all, be it ever so miniscule.

Another such thin place for me was an Anglican Church sanctuary in Nelson, British Columbia where for a number of years I taught at a Highland Bagpiping School (a place where other strange souls like myself learn to tame a five-legged creature destined to arouse suspicions and rouse neighbors). Connections in the community opened the door, figuratively and, in this case, literally, to spend as much time as I wanted in the church sanctuary after everyone else had gone home. I was given a key and carte blanche run of the place.

Most evenings after a long day of bagpipe students, some whiny, some lazy, all of them noisy, I would retire to this sanctuary with my pipes. For an hour or so I would simply play, enjoying the epic reverberance of the sound bouncing off the hard stone walls and floor. It was, for me, the closest I had yet been to what I might have then described as heaven. At times it was 2:00 am before finally getting back to my room.

A third such place was the hospital chapel in the same city. I was falling apart after a recent break-up with a girl to whom I had been engaged. My shattered interior was gradually reintegrated in that little chapel where I would weep and pray for hours, listening to John Michael Talbot, or the Monks of the Weston Priory sing beautifully doleful refrains. It was for me, through gallons of heart-crushing tears, the perfect requiem to my dying peace of mind. It would become the Introit to a new place of healing and restoration, albeit gradually. This is a story best left unfinished…

Advent – An Active Waiting

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worship2 Comments

As a Canadian citizen living in the US, I celebrate Thanksgiving twice. The Canadian version looks and tastes much like its American counterpart with one huge exception-it’s about six weeks earlier. Canadian winters are generally much more nervously insistent upon making their presence known. They never waited for anything! American Thanksgiving, rooted so much in the very history of this country, is a much bigger deal (not unlike all things American). Unfortunately…or perhaps fortunately…depending on one’s view, it often falls on the same weekend as the first week of Advent. I could spend time finding fun ways of linking those two things together. Instead, I give you my thoughts on Advent and its call for us to wait…

How many of us as kids were so uncontrollably “antsy” around Christmas time that our parents could hardly live with us? Do you recall the unbearable pangs of waiting for Christmas morning when that certain delightful item we’ve been harping about might just be waiting to greet us?  We go through the motions of “being good boys and girls” so as to maximize our chances for a successful “haul” under the tree. Babies, our littlest ones – their needs are immediate, pressing and loudly trumpeted if unmet. The family has finally saved enough to indulge in that once in a lifetime vacation to somewhere even Disney couldn’t have imagined, and we’re stoked. We pace, we mark off days on our calendars, we fritter away all the endless days and hours in epic restlessness, barely hanging on to sanity in our unfettered excitement.  We’re in college and the girl or boy of our dreams trips unwittingly into our orbit, and we’re smitten. We spend hours of time we don’t have simply listening to the sound of the other’s voice. For the indescribable joy of being in their presence we would gladly sacrifice grades, sleep, money, health and energy. These same young lovers graduate and get jobs at different ends of the country forcing them into that dreaded “long distance relationship.” Days feel like decades waiting for the next letter. Has he changed? Will she still find me breathtaking? Is he still faithful to me alone? Should I read into the extra day the last letter took to get here?

There really is no better time than Advent to talk about the mystery of waiting. Under the best of circumstances, the delayed gratification of waiting is not something we embrace easily. The culture we have built bullies us into thinking that unless we have the next trinket, the next job, the next vacation, the next relationship-right away-our lives are somehow incomplete.  What compounds the situation is the fact that we have effectively done away with waiting through “no monthly payments, no interest for a year” or “buy now, pay later” or “sleep with me now and I’ll still love you” or “let’s order pizza since there’s no time to make dinner.” And on and on it goes.

It is said that waiting is a virtue. We’re just too anxiety ridden to be very good at it! The Bible is chock full of stories of those who waited. Noah and his family spent weeks inside a cramped handmade dumpster with some rather smelly roommates for months on end until it was safe to come out.

They waited.

Abraham and Sarah, elderly by any standards (and not without a number of impatient glitches along the way), waited almost a century to receive God’s promise of progeny.

They waited.

Joseph, a little arrogant to begin with, lands himself in a boat load of vengeance at the hands of jealous brothers and, later, had 14 years in a Pharaoh’s prison to do business with God.

He waited.

Moses, impetuous and entitled, took matters in his own hands, killing an Egyptian, and then spent 40 years shoveling sheep shit on the backside of Mt. Sinai.

He waited.

David, God’s man for Israel, was anointed King but spent years running from Saul and his upstarts before ever enjoying hat head from a crown.

He waited.

An embattled, beleaguered, divided and dispersed nation of Israel had waited for centuries to hear a prophetic voice of hope; someone to assure them that God hadn’t forsaken them. And then…a devout priest, Zechariah and his barren wife, Elizabeth, get a most unexpected message, not by UPS camel, but by an angel that they were to become parents.

They had waited.

With the birth of their son, John, who came to be called “the Baptizer”, all of the previous waiting and watching and expectations were slowly finding resolution.

We as a thirsty people wait, too. The point, however, is not that we wait, but how we wait. It should be a coveted spiritual discipline to wait well. To live with ambiguity and still be faithful; to ponder paradoxes of our lives together and still lead each other to Christ; to sojourn in those desert places where we can’t always determine the way forward and still be grateful; to be stretched by unknown outcomes to baffling problems and still be present to each other; to fight the spiritual battles we didn’t ask for and rise again, bruised but better – this is the Way of Jesus.

I pray that in all my waiting, I do so actively. An active waiting helps us not just to “bide the time” but to engage one another at our places of deepest need. We must not wait like the newly released prisoners of Pharaoh whose impatience for Moses’ return from Mt. Sinai drew them into idolatry and destructive behaviors. Let us wait, instead, as John the Baptizer bids us wait – actively – bearing fruits of repentance.  Like John before us, who enjoined his listeners to “prepare the way, making straight paths” for the Messiah who would soon follow, we must not give up hope in waiting. Even more importantly, let us remember that we do not merely wait for Jesus. We wait for one another; human and fallible people with imperfections, mixed motives, families to care for and a need for community. Let us all wait actively, without pretense or rivalries or bitter hearts, until God comes to us. Then will we see that waiting makes the most sense.

Tale of a Wanderer

On By robertalanrifeIn celtic spirituality, Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, liturgy, music, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts, worship1 Comment

What follows is the manuscript of a talk I delivered at Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon at their Thanksgiving service in 2003.

Brendan set out with fourteen companions, travelling westward. The wind carried them to the port of Arran. Brendan said farewell to Enda and the other saints of Arran and left a blessing with them. Then they sailed due west across the ocean. It was summer, and they had a favourable brisk wind behind them, so they did not have to row. After they had spent ten days in this way, the wind lowered its loud voice and whistling. With its force spent, they were compelled to take up the oars. Brendan spoke to them, saying: “Do not be afraid, for we have our God as our guide and helper. Put up your oars, and do not toil anymore; God will guide this boat and company as God pleases.”

One day when Brendan and his company were traversing the sea, they finally happened upon the little country they had been seeking for seven years; that is, the Land of Promise. As it says in the proverb, “He who seeks, finds.” When they approached the land and were entering its harbour, they heard the voice of a certain elder speaking to them: “O holy pilgrims, tired men who have searched for this country for so long, remain where you are a little while and rest from your labours.” When they had done so, the elder said, “Dear brothers in Christ, do you not see that this is glorious and lovely land on which human blood has never been shed? Leave everything that you have in your boat, except the few clothes you are wearing, and come on shore.” When they had landed, each of them kissed the others, and the elder wept tears of great joy. “Search and see the borders and regions of Paradise where you will find health without sickness, pleasure without contention, union without quarrel, feasting without diminution, meadows filled with the sweet scent of fair flowers, and the attendance of angels all around. Happy indeed is he whom Brendan, son of Findlug, shall summon here to join him, to inhabit forever and ever the island on which we are now.”

When they saw Paradise in the midst of the ocean waves, they marvelled at the wonders of God and his power.

After this, Brendan and his monks proceeded to their boat and departed from Paradise…It was thus seven years in all that it took them on the two voyages to reach the Land of Promise….At the end of that time they…proceeded to Ireland, where they dropped anchor in the sea near Limerick.

So goes the tale of St. Brendan the Navigator, one of Irish Celtic Christianity’s best known saints. As a post-everything guy (modern, evangelical, liberal, etc.), the spiritual life for me is best captured in story and in the metaphor of journey and it’s more intentional counterpart, pilgrimage.

The “tale of this wanderer” began one snowy October afternoon in 1981. Hung over, exhausted and broke, I embraced Christ (or he embraced me, you figure it out!) driving home from a 2-week stint singing in a pub in Edmonton, Alberta. I was not a reluctant convert to Christianity like C.S. Lewis, who, upon his own conversion to Christianity, “admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”. No, instead my lifelong fascination with Christ succumbed to the “peace that passes all understanding.” Says C.S. Lewis, “there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms uncharted by my very simple theology.”

My first impressions of organized Christianity were as follows: Gee, this music sounds hoaky! There’s such a thing as Christian music? Ooh, time for a haircut! My how these people love to sing! And finally, look how husbands put their arms around their wives.

Time spent in hotel taverns and smoky lounges did 2 things for my soul: it helped to engender a taste for something deeper than the rum and coke that washed down the “Achy Breaky Heart” songs we were expected to play ad nauseam. I remember saying to my music partner, “if I have to sing “Good-Hearted Woman” or “Margaritaville” one more time I will positively gag!” As well, it helped me to see what I didn’t want in terms of interpersonal relationships. As a result, my early foray into the safe and sanitized walls of the local church was strange but welcome.

My first introduction to the world of discipleship was in the socially cautious environs of the Evangelical Free Church. I learned quickly that everything was a “warm-up” to the sermon. True to evangelical form, 40, 50 and sometimes 60 minute sermons kept things moving so as to ensure that all the quota of words required would be wrung out of whatever the topic of the day was. I lapped it all up like a stray cat to a bowl of milk.

There was a certain warmth and charm to those early days. Sunday evening services were where I was able to encounter something I had never encountered before – a rather enigmatic creature called – the Christian girl. Truly remarkable beings these: beautiful, articulate, compassionate, intelligent, beautiful, strong, focused, beautiful…However, as these things go, anyone who has ever been “in the band” knows that it’s the girl who gets blamed for the break-up.

Vanessa was her name and she was an Anglican (that’s Episcopalianism, Canadian style). How could I not be drawn to St. Laurence Anglican Church to discover together with her all that it had to offer? Since Christianity was so new to me, it was bound to make an impression. And again, as a faith-rookie, I was struck by a few uninformed first impressions: this is also Christianity? Wow, sooooo many books to hold. So, where are we anyway? How perfectly unified this all is.

Everything had purpose, nothing was wasted, all was intentional and in order. It was blissfully wonderful. We were not to remain at St. Laurence for long as we were also introduced to a local Pentecostal pastor at a college group event. This introduction led to an investigation of Neighbourhood Church where I would ultimately be baptised. The journey took a sharp jog as this church, typical of many churches in Calgary, split over issues I didn’t even understand at the time. I took a part-time ministry at one half as Pastor of Music and Youth ministries.

Concurrent to this I had been touring with any number of Christian groups sharing music ministry on weekends at churches as different in scope as Hutterite colonies, charismatic Anglican churches, Baptist, Mennonite, and Catholic churches, to the many small conservative country churches which dot the countryside of the Canadian prairies. Amid their differences, the curious commonalities shared by all of them are, to this day, a wonder to me.

Deep friendships with Anglicans, Presbyterians, Catholics, Pentecostals and others of faith have helped me to appreciate the many “colours” of God. Although the foundational elements of my Christian faith have not changed, their expression is changing. Thomas Merton once remarked that “at night our vision is reversed from…day. During the day the things that are close to us are clear and visible. But at night, while we stumble about over things that are near us, the stars (invisible during the day) shine in the heavens with a clear and delicate clarity. Faith is like this.”

There is a tendency in much contemporary Christianity to remove the element of journey out of our walk with God. Says Brian MacLaren, “It’s as if we have taken what is for Jesus a starting line and turned it into a finish line. Sounds like another case of modern reductionism-going for the greatest efficiency, the most measurable results, the least common denominator…We need a post-modern consideration of what salvation means, something beyond an individualized and consumerist version.”

As a Christian I’ve always been drawn to the beauty and meaning of ancient ritual and liturgy. But, as an artist and creator, I’ve needed fresh expressions of ancient things. My own spiritual “identity crisis” is part of a larger cultural one. The shapelessness of modern life and the absence of authoritative paradigms is the cause of much thirst among many for the recovery of tradition, of cultural and historical location. This is the attraction of the historic traditions of the church, into whose established, time-proven, objective forms of devotion and worship one may enter and find oneself. And yet, in all this, my own roots remind me that, if evangelicals do anything well, it’s to exegete the Word of God to the culture with ever new methodology.

From each “stop” along the way I’ve gained a little deeper understanding of my Christian faith. And, in my mind, what all of this equates to is a montage of pictures of Christ and the church. I believe that there are many others like myself out there, those who often defy definition but are generally categorized as “post moderns.” Their journeys are circuitous like my own.

I have, for over 22 years now, been on a journey – a journey with Jesus. I’ve often said that my life was just great before encountering Christ. Jesus ruined everything! More darkness than light, more sadness than joy, more questions than answers – this has often characterized my Christian experience. Nevertheless, Jesus continues to captivate me regardless of the skin my Christianity might have. And so, like Saint Brendan, I’m a relentless traveller.

In conclusion, then, our journey, like the stylised adventures of this enigmatic Irish saint, setting out into uncharted waters seeking the riches of God will ensure that the prow of our boat will be ever wet with the spray of the open sea. The nation of Israel, whose relentless wandering through a relatively small territory should have taken a matter of weeks. It extended to 40 mind-numbing years and reminds us that either faith or fear will determine our feet. Like the disciples on the Emmaeus road, whose once expectant eyes were now downcast wrestling through dashed hopes placed in a Messiah they believed would kick Rome’s proverbial butt, we realize that our expectations can often be misplaced and our journey never gets appreciably easier. Indeed the spiritual “life on the road” pictured by Brendan, the nation of Israel and the disciples of Jesus, invites rigour, chaos, uncertainties and indecision. But also reward for, as C.S. Lewis says in the Chronicles of Narnia, “all will find what they truly seek.”

Brendan the Navigator typifies for me this curious, adventurous life bent entirely upon finding all that God has for one’s life regardless of risk or sacrifice or consequence. At worst, it reminds me that my walk with God, although curious, has more often than not been characterized by a confusing trek through “flavour of the month” Christianity.

One could ask at this juncture, what on earth does any of this have to do with Thanksgiving? Well, if a Thanksgiving sermon is what you came for, you indeed came to the right place for above all else, thankful is what I am:

I’m thankful that the banks of the meandering river of Christianity wending its way through my soul have never been out of my sight. I’m thankful that the Body of Christ is more beautiful and complex and mysterious than Western, modernist, consumerism would have us believe. I’m thankful that I’m given, along with all of us, the great invitation to journey with God in Christ. I’m thankful that wherever the journey goes, there exists at each crossroad the “everlasting way” sometimes just beyond our peripheral vision but underpinning all that we are. I’m thankful that, like the disciples on the road to Emmaeus, though our journey be fraught with darkness and fear, the oft hidden Christ walks alongside to illumine the path of the lonely. And, I’m thankful that, in this pilgrimage to newness and life there is always a place to call home. And where does this journey end? When our pilgriming souls come to their eternal goal – love and eternity. May it be so.

Jars of clay – a prayer

On By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worshipLeave a comment

Lord, you have exalted your name above the heavens.  Your name means grace and peace and wonder to all who speak it in faith and love.  You have chosen to use weak and broken vessels to be your eyes and hands and feet in this world.  It seems, Lord, that you often pass your glory through the ordinary, the fragile, the imperfect.

In this, Lord, we are honored – but humbled.

You ask us to mirror grace, love and faithfulness to the world – the very grace, love and faithfulness eloquently displayed in Jesus Christ.  Through him, you promise to give us all we need to live rich and holy lives in our communities, our families and in this world.

Mysterious God, what a great salvation.

We sinned, you forgave.

We turned away, you gave chase.

We rebelled, you paid for it.

We forgot, you remembered.

We are often faithless, you are ever faithful.

We complain, you are patient!

Lord, do not allow us to make excuses for ourselves, hiding as we do in the limits of our humanness.  Although we are perfectly aware of how inadequate we are to the task, help us to see ourselves as you do, as reconcilers, as peacemakers, as redeemed kingdom builders.  If we are dull, make us shine.  Lord, take these imperfect jars of clay and make them to be holy cups of pure grace, forged in your desires for us.

Make it so.

Image: Steve Lavey