Examen on a Saturday evening

On September 28, 2013September 28, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation2 Comments

So it is to be, latent but translucent

that weavings and partings both,

secured in their places best suited

to their emergence or demise,

are laid out on God’s table of cards.

The goodbyes of days that turn to nights

that turn to days that turn to timeless

wonders, the crevices where only God’s

fingers fit. They’re too small for me

because I’m too big in me to see

my own smallness in him.

Wreck all chances for shoddy self-repair

and lay the table for a banquet instead,

where bread on my tongue and

the clinking glasses serve to remind me

of a better meal yet to come.

Image: www.annapolitanbride.com

A Thursday Prayer of Examen

On September 26, 2013September 25, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, spiritual formation, worship4 Comments

Lord, tie up my expectations like a pretzel

and replace them with a welcome mat

upon which are written only 4 words:

“Thy will be done.”

Lord, press into the soft, unmarrowed places

of make believe love and headstrong hypocrisy

your thumbprint still dirty from

pinching me alive.

Lord, impale me upon the stake of truth,

not the truth of deception in perfect answers

but the Truth that leaves open wounds

on a heart that only looks for niceties.

Lord, sit me down at the base of this wood

pounded together with the same nails

that tore through flesh softer than love,

tougher than hate.

Lord, with meddling tongue tied behind my back

let my hands, now free

show my mouth that it’s silence

has gifted those I now serve.

Lord, interrupt the long stream of my proclamations

of ideas diminished by my words;

words lesser still than those who listen

for something better than words.

Lord, fill my life with the awesome silence

of a boisterous heaven, singing in praise;

for only then will what I say and do

remind others of who you say I am.

Painting by James Seward

Life from a restaurant window

On September 23, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formationLeave a comment

Perfectly groomed bushes line the windows looking out onto a courtyard greener, damper and more alive than I’ve seen since moving to Yakima seven years ago. A giant kiln-shaped fireplace centered in the garden sits quiet and still awaiting the passing of the rain and the arrival of others to warm themselves in its heat. I chuckle at the closed table umbrellas standing tall and upright like stoic ladies in green, puffy skirts. Their task here is to keep one dry from the reliable Portland rain. The Yakima umbrella, although rare, acts as a glorified sunhat and is seldom used anyway. There they curse rain. Here, they wait for sun (if indeed they know what that is).

How I have missed the instant plunge into the deeper regions of my psyche, specifically the creative mystic part such an environment always brings. Like these condensation droplets adorning the windows through which I am looking, words almost instantly form in my mind. I need only mop them up and squeeze them onto the thirsty page.

There are many gifts that come to us from favorite places – both geographic location and the more unnameable geography of soul – suitable to our most natural selves. What has been lacking for me in the dusty, brown, overly hot setting of Yakima has been met in a stable plateau upon which to take a good, long and slow look in every direction. With my feet sunk in a little more deeply into the dusty soil of the Yakima Valley, I’ve known a certain freedom from which to venture into other, hitherto unexplored regions in my own soul. Places in the humility of obscurity, the predictability of nothingness, the garden of faithfulness and the simple, daily routines of life.

From these places, previously visited only briefly with my face pressed up against the glass, I have seen many things. God has pulled me up from the luscious, subterranean waters of my deepest yearnings to the street where the people are. They are those who populate my days and need the nourishment I myself have been given. I am reintroducing myself to the world, seeing familiar and beloved faces again as if for the first time. Ironically, in them, I am finding myself and, even more significantly, I am seeing Jesus. God is equally present above the bald, treeless ground as below it in the dark, thin places where nutrients abound but is largely unpopulated.

Here and now converge more readily as I release the tightly held things I believed indispensable to my wholeness. Slowly, God is revealing to my spirit just how present God is in such places – places formerly reprehensible and ugly. God is nesting more intricately in me. I see God more now and that is setting me free from expectations and demands and leading me to the joys of union, home, and peace…anywhere.

It is the greatest gift I could receive on this, the day of my fiftieth birthday.

Passaging well

On September 20, 2013September 23, 2015 By robertalanrifeIn faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation8 Comments

Our lives are a series of passages. One tributary leads to another, which in turn yields to something else on its way to waterfall or harbor, estuary or eddy. At times we are stuck, unmoving. Or so it seems. To be stuck can actually be a decision not to decide something. Perhaps it’s a slow, deep spot before being sucked back out into the rapids where we easily lose our sense of direction and the not unreasonable expectation that we’ll fly ass over tea kettle into the frothy spray. There are even times when our boat slows almost to a crawl and we find ourselves in the enchantments of a Pirates of the Caribbean style rendezvous with delight.

Whatever the case may be it should be our goal to passage well. That is, when faced with life’s bone-chilling decisions, we learn to listen for the most gracious, compassionate means by which to navigate such. Bad transitions lead to less than adequate skills needed for the yet more difficult passages to come. They also create a sinkhole of insecurity since we’ll just have to face similar rapids again later but with one more failure to our credit.

I turn 50 on Monday. Sorry, just let me write that again to be sure I’m not asleep. I turn 50 on Monday. Numbers. We get so stuck on them. Especially the “decade” numbers that are supposed to magically move us on to newer, higher, greater things than we were meant to achieve in our last, apparently insufficient, decade. So, at 50, what should my “achievements” be? To whom do I speak to discover my rating for my forties? Who hands out the balloons and coffee to the five-decade newbies? It comes either with joie de vivre or woe is me that numbers are wielded with respect to age. Along with the number comes a freight train long derivative connotations, expectations, projections, assumptions, and tongue-in-cheek pathos. Pish posh says I.

I think so little about age related stuff these days. Make no mistake, I’m still vain, overly self-concerned and a bit slower maybe. But the idea that, by this age, I should or shouldn’t be something is anathema to me. I am exactly what, who and where I am. It just…is. Yes, I have goals. Yes, I have patterns and certain expectations both of others and myself. Yes, I have jetsam floating in my wake I wish weren’t so obvious. But, at almost 50, I’m happy with what life has or has not become.

I’m much more interested in being the most surrendered and loving person I can be at any given moment during these passages of my life which only seem to come more quickly all the time. I want to say hello well with a definitive eye to eye recognition of another human being equally as needy as I. I want to say forgive me well, and often, to those who have had the misfortune of discovering just how much of an asshole I can be. I want to hold people’s pain and joy well, that they invite me to do so again and offer similar friendship to me. I want to say goodbye well, with class, grace and compassion. A goodbye that puts a Gospel period at the end of a glorious sentence.

Learning to passage well has many rewards. Fewer regrets I suppose might be one. But, more than that, in the ever-expanding journal of our meandering lives, a clarity of chapter markings brings a satisfaction to the sojourner of adequate closure before moving on to another part of their story. It expresses a sense of poise and, ultimately, denouement to our lives that those whose eyes watch us for signs of the Divine are longing to see. More than anything else, how we transition through the passages of our lives reveals the level of our trust in the unseen God making Godself seen – through us. Through me.

Lord, I pray that I’ve passaged well from my forties to my fifties. Let love and kindness be the obvious characteristics of this next passage, Lord. Let the walls of this tunnel be painted with the handprints of those I’ve loved. May the wake of my boat be littered with the flower petals of other’s lives I’ve been blessed to know. May this aging pilgrim always see the best in others and give them the chances afforded me. It’s how I most want to passage.

I turn 50 on Monday. I can hardly wait.

How about you? What does your current passage ask of you?

How might God be inviting you to passage well in these days?

Counting life in eggshells

On September 10, 2013September 10, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation2 Comments

It was September 15th, 1985. I leaned over to kiss the forehead of my father in his final hours about to succumb to cancer. Then, I walked away, never to speak to him again. He died that evening and we never said what needed to be said between us. Our lives remain a mystery to each other. I’ve lived with that since that day.

It was a Sunday afternoon, 1986. My fiancee, Vanessa, and I were in crisis. We were about to mail out wedding invitations the following day. Not only did we not mail them out but we ended the relationship rather unceremoniously. She was living with a coworker by the end of that very week. She died of cancer in 1992. I never discovered answers for any of it…to this very day.

Winter, 2007. I had only begun a few months earlier a brand new ministry in a new town in a new State. I was feeling a little lost and needing guidance. My spiritual director, Jeff (pseudonym), had been a lifeline for me as he walked with me through the choppy waters of change and emotional dislocation. One day, I called him. No answer. I emailed. No response. I texted. Still, nothing. I dropped by his office. There was no sign of him. I even resorted to a handwritten letter I mailed to his church office. Nada. This went on for over three months. There is nothing quite like the feeling of being ditched by someone’s spiritual director…with no explanation…ever. Now, six years later, I still have heard nothing and remain uncertain for the reasons why…to this very day.

Many of us watch from the comfort of our armchair, remote firmly in hand, the horror and tragedy unfolding in Syria. We wag our heads and harumph in quiet disapproval. We discuss it with assumed knowledge of the whole picture from our limited television encounters or at the local coffee shop. We ‘like’ our favorite page of outrage on Facebook with a sense that, in some small way, we’ve done our part toward a better society. And still the dead, dismembered and bloated bodies of somebody’s son, mother or friend float down the river like useless flotsam and jetsam, blanched and featureless like the conflagration which steals them from the world.

The shameful charade of Syrian aggression has left me reeling in many ways. Who knows what interpersonal blockages had been left unhealed? What foul words flippantly spoken, now never to unsay? How many raised voices in anger never to be undone? And the pain of losing someone is exacerbated by the knowledge that such matters were left unresolved. I think of my own family, my friends, my colleagues. What assurances do we have that such sudden losses will leave the needs-to-be-said as unsaid? Are we blindly tripping along in flagrant over-confidence that we’ll simply last forever while not addressing what painfully lingers?

In times such as these, more than anything else take hold of those around you. Love them. Tell them so. Be close to them. Hold your children to your breast and feel their breath. Smell their hair. Feel their skin.

The following prayer was originally posted on my other blog: www.robslitbits.com.

Help me to forgive you, God

Lord, they did not ask for dusty feet

sandaled and sore

to walk over the flesh and bones

of neighbors and friends,

of brothers, sisters and parents.

They didn’t ask to be brought before

someone else’s tribunal on imagined

charges of being what they should not be,

what you created them to be.

They did not seek out this desperation

that found them huddled, fearful and crying.

To see the bloated bodies of fellow pilgrims

floating down the river, under bridges,

stuck and floating on rocks jutting out

and shaking bony fists at you for justice,

is to see a God too small to save.

Or am I missing something, Lord?

I am not smart enough to know

the fancy talk at long, important tables

where cigar-smoking men carve up

the world with a glance and a handshake.

I am not wise enough to understand

how to discern what most is needed.

I am not strong enough not to hate,

nor still enough not to stir up

my anger, my outrage.

Lord, if I am forced to sit and watch

what looks like the refuse of hate-filled politics

paraded before a God with weak arms,

and no stomach to move into the fray;

then, help me to forgive you, God,

if only long enough to dive in myself.

Who knows?

Perhaps we’ll meet each other there.

Friends, whatever it takes, reach out to one another. Close gaps. Say good words. Unsay bad words. Leave offerings at the altar and confront the distances between. Life is far too precious, fragile and short to allow anything to separate what God brings together. If it is in your power, do it. Let us count our lives in the eggshells they are and…love.

Help me to forgive you, God

On September 9, 2013September 26, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy3 Comments

I recognize this is not the first of its kind. Others have also shared just such things in the wake of the recent, horrific atrocities in Syria. I feel impotent to change much of this. But I can write. And I can pray. Here, I do both. Join me…please.

Lord, they did not ask for dusty feet

sandaled and sore

to walk over the flesh and bones

of neighbors and friends,

of brothers, sisters and parents.

They didn’t ask to be brought before

someone else’s tribunal on imagined

charges of being what they should not be,

what you created them to be.

They did not seek out this desperation

that found them huddled, fearful and crying.

To see the bloated bodies of fellow pilgrims

floating down the river, under bridges,

stuck and floating on rocks jutting out

and shaking bony fists at you for justice,

is to see a God too small to save.

Or am I missing something, Lord?

I am not smart enough to know

the fancy talk at long, important tables

where cigar-smoking men carve up

the world with a wink and a handshake.

I am not wise enough to understand

how to discern what most is needed.

I am not strong enough not to hate,

nor still enough not to stir up

my anger, my outrage.

Lord, if I am forced to sit and watch

what looks like the refuse of hate-filled politics

paraded before a God with weak arms,

and no stomach to move into the fray;

then, help me to forgive you, God,

if only long enough to dive in myself.

Who knows?

Perhaps we’ll meet each other there.

Picture: www.blogs.common.georgetown.edu

A journal entry: Friday, July 19th, 2013

On July 19, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Beauty, Christian spirituality, faith, literature, sacramental living, spiritual formation, worship2 Comments

These words flow from a pen both weak and hungry. They dump onto paper in an effort to unload excess flotsam from my soul. My pen is also hungry for words other than those that seem only to spill out in self-expression, self-deprecation, self-indictment, self-actualization, self, self, self…blah! There’s so much me that there is precious little room left for anyone else. At times like these I’m left to ponder whether I’d even recognize the harmonious, lilting song of God above the shrill, cacophonous din of my own voice trumpeting its need of something or other.

Instead, let me bring the pen of a ready writer, a writer, ready and poised to praise the One whose words I seek. The Logos – the Ultimate Word – forms the inspiration for my little words. Maybe as I write my words in praise of the Word, my story will begin to take on the shape of the Great Narrator. Let your wise and beautiful words, O Logos, letter my life with beauty, honesty and truth.

The Beginning.

“There once was a girl from Nantucket…”: why I write poetry

On July 19, 2013July 21, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

“There once was a girl from Nantucket…”

There are as many ways of self-expression as there are people…self-expressing. One can say something in many and varied ways. There, see? Unlike other, non-poetic forms of writing, poetry evokes rather than explains. Now, good prose also can do this. But, somehow, there is an economy of words and focus of emotion in poetry, a kind of escalator narrative that moves us up and down at will, that prose cannot seem to create in as neat and succinct a way. Prose tells the story of our life on paper. Poetry crunches up the paper and then makes sense of the wrinkles. Prose seeks to pull petals off the flower and, in deconstructing it, find it. Poetry imagines the soul of the flower and, in ways both sensory and direct, introduces us. Prose tells us how beautiful the flower is. Poetry tells the flower how beautiful we are. In a real sense, poetry is a flower, a kind of natural face given to the mystery of our being.

Poetry doesn’t take us from A to B. It asks why we even need B in the first place, or at least takes the longer, scenic route. Prose needs readers to engage with its detail and form. Poetry needs but to exist since it is both beauty and the suggestion thereof. It is an invitation not to read but to be read. “If a tree falls in the forest” is a question we ask ourselves. The poet shows how cool a silent tree really is. It is the art of words rather than the science of language. Moreover, the lucidity and dominance of its spatial, nuanced non-rhetoric leaves a big, front door through which those of us thirsty for something other than exactitude and definition may find our Narnia. A good narrative will give us the tale, the wardrobe, the place. Poetry helps us live the tale. Prose ushers us to turkey dinner at Grandma’s house. Poetry ushers us to Grandma whose heart was the crucible of love out of which came our dinner.

I write poetry because, for me, it is prayer. It allows extreme right-brained thinkers like myself to engage with words in more dancelike fashion, treating them more like lovers than telemarketers. I can simply close my eyes and, through the mystery of my subconscious, knit to God’s own being, walk through the veil of here to there without having to explain why or even how I got there. Poetry is perfect for people who can’t figure things out but for whom the things are just as cool unfigured out. Mystery wins every time.

If you had no idea what the hell I just wrote, you’re not quite ready for poetry…just yet.

Photo: www.blog.ted.com