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.

Surrender – a prayer

On September 15, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic1 Comment

Here, in this place awash in daylight grace,

I live my entire life on the head of a pin

on which is inscribed a single word:

surrender.

When todays are saturated in

a low, crawling, redeeming sadness:

surrender.

When the all-pervasive pall of a greening grey

removes dead soul-skin and tastes

like eating raw sewage:

surrender.

When the bitter pill of leafless desire

gets stuck in my throat and

stops up anything nutritional:

surrender.

When the wafer thin moments

of happy times bought at another’s expense

rob me of me:

surrender.

When my lover who shares

my bed, my skin, my guts, my hopes,

becomes nothing more than a side dish:

surrender.

When, in convenience, I sidestep

responsibility to another

and choose the busy road of non-involvement:

surrender.

When I’ve surrendered all I am and have,

all I’ve been and will become,

all that was, all that is and all that is not:

surrender.

When I’ve surrendered all,

I gain the one thing,

the Pearl of Great Price,

the Lily of the Valley,

the One who is in all,

who is all

and who needs no introduction because…

my soul knows him.

Relaxing in my humanity

On September 15, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life together, poetry, sacramental living, spiritual formation, the arts4 Comments

Lately, I’ve been reading the journals of the late Trappist monk, author, priest and activist, Thomas Merton. He has long fascinated me both as a spiritual mentor and as poet and literary figure. In so many ways he is among those I most seek to emulate. He’s artsy – a poet at heart, which means he’s also moody and can take forever to determine new directions because he “lives in his head” too much. He longs for silence and the contemplative life of solitude but cannot escape the draw of the monastic community and the world at large to whom he is constantly being called. “My first duty is to start, for the first time, to live as a member of a human race, which is no more (and no less) ridiculous than I am myself. And my first human act is the recognition of how much I owe everybody else.”

Merton belonged because he didn’t belong. His life away from the world was how he best loved and served it. He was not cloistered to escape his humanity but to better love and live it. “I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am…We must first become like ourselves and stop living “beside ourselves.”” I, like Merton, have learned best from what I haven’t done well than what I have. By how I’ve failed, not passed. By how truly unremarkable and troublesome I am, not my efficiency and accomplishments. I am failing my way to the deeper realities of my own soul.

Thank you, brother Merton, you are helping me to relax in my humanity.

Oddly, I’m finding Jesus there.

Living for tomorrow’s yesterday

On August 26, 2013August 26, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, faith, life together, sacramental living, spiritual formation2 Comments

I’ve managed to turn brooding and melancholy into a cottage industry. It’s what I love and hate most about myself. I write much about embracing the moment, living into the time as it is given us right now. For example, here. There is an inexorable draw like a lover’s fragrance to mystique in the artist’s emotional vocabulary. It’s hip and sexy to be a little sad which, ironically, is the only thing that keeps us happy…well, keeps me happy. I must drive God up the wall, if that’s what God does when frustrated. There are times my heart seems to hate me. What causes some to shrug their shoulders can paralyze me like well-stuck spider’s prey. Where others build healthy todays on the good gifts of yesterday and the hopes of tomorrow I remain stuck in a yesterday that for me was better than good; it was holy, Otherworldly.

I’m working hard on this (because the meds are only partially helpful). It is hard spiritual work for me, but I’m making baby steps in claiming the brightness and immediacy of now rather than pursuing a pinkish yesterday or projected tomorrow. It’s the best way to show love to those given to us. Presence. Eyes open. Ears tuned and ready. Mouth closed. I love the times in the gospels where Jesus looks directly at those he is about to heal or to whom he is about to speak. To look at someone iris to iris and see past the decor of image and the fear in posture and see him, see her, see me or you as they/we truly are right now is a gift beyond all telling.

People, places, events, experiences; all of these root themselves deep in us, in me. They become a part of the turning pages of the Spirit writ large on the lives of those of us who believe, who boldly affix our little story to the Great Story. An early morning (late night?) reminiscence that pushed itself upon me is evidence of this kind of existential intrusion that hurts, but that I really love. I write of it here.

Jesus is convincing me as I continue to read of his deeply personal exploits among us that that, too, is my task. Live in such a way that whoever I am at this moment is the gift I give to another even if that ‘me’ isn’t the stellar individual my inner press kit says I am. The task at hand, together with the I AM God, equally present in every moment, is to better define my past and let it go. Such authentic encounter with people, with places, with…life, is the best, well the only, way to really live for tomorrow’s yesterday.

So be it.

Sometimes the evening speaks loudly

On August 26, 2013August 26, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic, Words...always words1 Comment

“…The stars need darkness or you would not know them.” –Dorothy Trogdon, poet

The day presents itself to him at an unacceptable hour. The time of night when end of one day hasn’t completely surrendered to another. But the early thin place wasn’t an enemy by any means. The typhoon-like week that led to this moment hadn’t finished depositing its day-timer detritus. He is tired, but a certain contentment holds sway and hunkers down in the deep parts that make themselves known at such times.

Faces like so many stars in a sequined heaven begin to seep into his memory. As though bobbing up from underwater, one face after another implores to be remembered, mentally photographed and then, in the quiet of gifted moments, developed into softly gilded perfection. Was this mere whimsy, the unfettered gloating of overly romanticized ideas? Life was good. Why then the unasked for intrusion of yesterday’s communion? Couldn’t the wealth of immediacy be enough, just this once? Is then always so much better than now?

He wondered to himself whether he should banish such ghosts or to allow them free passage through heart hallways a little dusty that often smudge such images. He chooses the latter and, for a few moments, coffee now cold in his cup, joins them in meandering parade through the ballroom of his conscious. Through closed eyes he draws deep breaths of the night air and touches each face. But in doing so, they vanish, leaving only his finger pointing heavenward – the place where each of them are called. The place to which they call others.

Then there is clarity. Without the backdrop of the deep black night, stars are not stars. Without stones, the river doesn’t dance. Without falling leaves, the wind makes no sound and the world is just a little sadder. He smiles, dares a sip of cold coffee, and steals another breath from the evening, not so quiet after all.

Image: www.pptbackgrounds.net