Felling the Old Elm

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Doc Arnett

With a touch of luck and a bit of prayer
two years ago on a mild summer day,
and with way more than a bit of care,
I was able to put this big dead elm on the ground
without getting hurt or ruining my saw chain.

With it being nearly three feet thick at the base
and over fifty feet tall,
I cut out a twenty pound wedge
that helped me place it right near the target spot.

Aside from the fear of it falling
into a smaller oak or walnut and ruining them,
I knew there was an old woven-wire fence buried in its heart.

I’d found part of an old steel t-post
in another old elm planted along the same line
and was afraid I might find another in this one.
Doesn’t take much of a touch against old steel like that
to flatten the edges of curved teeth and put in deep nicks
that a file can’t fix.

Although I did clip a strand or two of old wire,
the chain still spit out chips instead of powder,
and I was able to cut through on parallel paths
from front and back and took a fair amount of satisfaction
in seeing how the weight of the tree as it leaned
split and splintered the little bit left
right along the line of the fence that I had barely missed.

I set the Stihl on the ground,
stepped up and stood for a moment or two
on the old stump,
taking good measure of the view
of a winter’s worth of firewood
that would be ready to burn
almost as soon as it was split.

Throughout the season as I emptied the ash tray
stored beneath the heavy grate of the wood stove,
I found bits and pieces of old fence wire.
And gave thanks for heat and safety,
for comfort and wellbeing,
and the care that often comes
from a touch of luck and a bit of prayer.

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Jesus Puts a Smart-Mouthed Woman in Her Proper Place

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Doc Arnett

So, this foreign woman sneaks into the crowd following Jesus. Doesn’t know her proper place just yet and pushes her way right up to The Carpenter. Might be she needs a tad more humility and respect for the Real Jews of her day. Seems like her “people” lost their way years ago and strayed away from the ultra-straight and ultra-narrow way of the True Children of Abraham. Psshaww! I’ll guaran-dad-gum-tee you she didn’t have a photo ID or even a copy of her true genealogy. And yet… here she is right in the middle of this big healing parade just like somebody invited her.

So, anyway, for no other reason than just being all full of herself, I guess, she comes sashaying right up to the Lord. Not only is she full of sass and cheek pushing her way ahead of all them Real Jews, she has the audacity to just flat out ask Jesus for a favor!

Now, if it was some kind of long-term terminal illness or some personal malady like the heartbreak of psoriasis or something like that, I could maybe understand a little bit. But, no, she ain’t even sick! She claims—but of course, we know it ain’t even possible—that her little daughter is back at home completely bowled over by—get this, folks—a demon! Everyone knows demons—if there is such a thing—don’t bother decent people; it’s just them half-breeds and heathen and pagans and such. Serves ‘em all right, I reckon.

And here she is, acting just like she’s as Jewish as anybody, and asks the Lord to heal her daughter, who she didn’t even have the gumption to bring with her. Like, you’re really all this concerned, and you just left her at home with the demon? Oh, fer crying out loud!


And Jesus, bless his heart, he knows the score here. Takes a look at the woman, knows she ain’t a True Jew, and lays some heavy truth on her right off the bat. (I love it when someone has the moxie to tell it like it is and not layer it all up in syrup and chocolate.)

“Nope,” he says, “Ain’t gonna happen. Tain’t right to take the food meant for the real children of Abraham and throw it to the dogs.”

Wowie zowie, shake a great big hickory tree, and shoot every squirrel that falls out!! He really showed her the way to the door in a hurry. Sure cracked up all them souped up Children of Abraham gathered around. They wuz all laughing like they’d just seen their least favorite neighbor fall off the back porch into a whole patch of briars while they’s wearing nothing but their undies.

What they didn’t see coming was her response.

“That is true, Lord,” she admitted, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”

Lord Almighty, that sure silenced the yucks and the yammers. Got quieter than a stingy church during special offering.

I reckon the Lord Himself was as impressed as anyone.

He smiled, nodded his head a time or two, and then told her, “That was a right good answer right there, yes, ma’am. Right good.” Then he paused for just a jiff, and said, “Tell you what. That answer was so good, I’m gonna give you exactly what you asked for. You go on home now. Your daughter is just fine.”

And sure nuff, she was!

I reckon when you’ve got as much power and love and grace as Jesus, there’s more than enough to go around. Why, far as I can tell, there’s enough for all the good folk and for the rest of the world, too. I guess we can trust him to figure out who gets it and who don’t. No reason for us to bother with that…

As for me, well, load me up with sodium pentothal and a tall glass of sweet iced tea and I’d probably admit that down deep I guess I’m kind of grateful that deserve ain’t got nothing to do with it.

*Mark 7:24-30

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Burning the Brush Pile

Posted on August 1, 2024 by Doc Arnett

I suppose it must seem like there’s a madman on Haven Hill today. Ten o’clock on the last morning in July, temperature already in the 90’s, and he’s burning brush. Yessir, that’s right, burning brush on a hot summer morning.

Like I said, a madman, fer shure.

Except… you see, the reason he’s burning brush is not because he’s a pyromaniac. Now, I’m not denying that he is a pyromaniac, but that’s not the reason for this fire. It’s a touch more rational and a bit more complicated.

The brush pile has a bunch of branches with dead leaves and for reasons possibly not even known to them, the pair of geldings that reside on Haven Hill have suddenly decided to eat the dead leaves.

An acre of lush green grass in this tiny pasture and today, Jazz and Earl decided to start eating the dead leaves off the branches on the brush pile. Probably not an issue but potentially it is. The leaves of some trees are toxic to horses when the leaves are wilted, including some of the trees that donated branches and leaves to this particular pile. Most of these leaves are not wilted; they’re dead, brown, dry, crispy. But who wants to take a chance, right? Some of them might just be wilted.

In fact, there are some branches near the pile that are still attached to the big elm that fell over three months ago. The big elm that fell over three months ago is still attached to the ground, sort of. There’s a section right at the base still connected to the roots. Even though it fell, it continued to nourish its branches. It was still green. Until the madman began cutting off the branches two weeks ago. But some of the branches still have green leaves. And some branches have wilted leaves.

And so, after chasing the horses aways from the brush pile three times already, the madman is burning brush. Cutting off more branches and throwing them onto the burning pile.

Not because he’s a pyromaniac, not because he’s bored, not because he can’t think of anything else to do. Nope, strange as it may seem on a hot summer day when the heat index is already well on its way to triple digits before noon, he’s burning the brush pile to keep the horses safe.

You might see another madman today, or a madwoman, doing something that seems to defy logic, something that doesn’t immediately make total sense, something that seems downright strange to you. And, of course, it could be that his or her canoe has tipped a bit too far to one side. Then again, it could be that they’re just trying to protect someone they love.

Trying to keep them away from some danger that you don’t see.

Sometimes you move the fence or build a new one. Sometimes you have to move the horses to a different pasture. Sometimes… you burn the brush pile. Even when it means risking a heat stroke. Because there are times when protecting someone else matters more than protecting yourself.

It ain’t always easy to tell the best way to do that. That’s why even madmen—and women—pray for wisdom. Every darn day.

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Old Smoke and Cold Coffee

Posted on July 25, 2024 by Doc Arnett 
Lifting up a heavy mug of cold leftover coffee,
I draw in a slow, deep breath and catch the smell 
of dark grounds from the morning’s brewing.

The taste is full and strong and I hold it on my tongue,
close my eyes and remember Pap Bazzell,
sitting in his chair smoking his pipe and drinking from a heavy mug.

He kept a tin of Prince Albert in the drawer 
of a dark mahogany tobacco stand
topped with a thick glass holder for his pipe,
molded slots around the edge to keep it in place.

Sometimes, he’d draw in a long pull,
tilt his head back and close his eyes,
exhale a long slow stream that curled up toward the low ceiling.

Somewhere near the end of his days,
feeling the fading and the keen aches,
he seemed to disappear in the haze that hung overhead,
swallowed up in memories from long years of life and labor.

In the lean years, he’d managed to fight off fear 
and feed his family from the garden and small crops
and an awful lot of long days of milling sorghum
and cooking down gallons of old time molasses.

He sold it by the jug and by the barrel,
bartered for pork or beef or whatever else
someone else held that could help them get by.

During the Depression and War Rationing,
folks around Coldwater used it for sugar,
though it had a mighty strong flavor.

Something like but much sweeter than the sharpness
of cold coffee and an old pipe clenched between worn teeth,
offering up its incense in a small white frame farmhouse
at the end of a long shaded driveway hidden by the woods.

There is much that is good that lives unseen by the world:
meanings and memories held in the hands and hearts
of those who’ve shown and taught kids and friends and neighbors

a love of labor and of doing what is right,
of holding to the Light through all darkness,
a yielding to and trusting the mystery of the Lord’s own working
and a simple savoring of strong flavors in hours of fading light.


H. Arnett
7/25/24
Posted in Aging, Christian Devotions, Christian Living, Family, Farming, Gardening, Poetic Contemplations, Poetry, Profiles, Relationships, Spiritual Contemplation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Old Smoke and Cold Coffee

The Humility of Christ

Posted on July 23, 2024 by Doc Arnett

Have you ever considered the humility of Jesus’s baptism?

Remember, John the Baptist preached a message of repentance for forgiveness of sins. Multitudes came out to John in the wilderness beyond Jerusalem, confessing their sins and being baptized in obedience to John’s message. Each person there knew that everyone who was being baptized was doing so in acknowledgment of their sin and need for forgiveness.

But what about Jesus? What sins did he need to confess? What wrong had he harbored in his heart? What secret acts lurk in the darkness of his history?

Of course, the answer is, none.

And yet he still submitted to baptism. Knowing that almost everyone around him would presume that he, like them, was guilty of sin, the Christ ignored their presumptions, allowing them to think whatever they wanted to think, and proceeded to do as God had instructed.

It is a wonderful example of humility! The Sinless One being baptized along with the prostitutes, thieves, greedy, covetous, gossipers, cheaters, muggers, and otherwise immoral!

Even when others may assign false motives to our actions, even when others may presume that we are doing something for nefarious reasons, it is not their judgment or suspicions that matter. What matters is the truth of what is in our hearts.

In true humility, we are set free from the expectations and interpretations that others might assign as long as we are focused on pleasing God and following Christ.


H. Arnett
7/23/24

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Kayaking at Wildcat

Posted on July 22, 2024 by Doc Arnett 
It is the first day of July in Western Kentucky 
but it feels more like October:
Beautiful blue skies with a few high white clouds,
late afternoon temperature in the 70's,
and humidity remarkably low for this time of year. 

Two of my sons and I unload kayaks 
at Wildcat Landing on Kentucky Lake. 
We ease into the water and make our way out
toward the channel a quarter-mile away.
Broken rocks the size of fists
and the colors of the heart of the earth 
line the bank between the water 
and miles of hardwood hills. 

Beyond the break, 
the water is slightly choppy.
After brief discussion, 
we decide to head back into the small bay 
and paddle our way toward the far end 
a half-mile away, where we know
the creek disappears into the woods. 

Great herons perch in the tops of dead trees, 
while a white egret probes for food in the shallows,
spearing a small bass as we glide past. 

We pull under a cluster of cypress trees 
surrounded by emerging knees 
bunched around their bases
like chicks around a mother hen
and take our break. 

A while later, we head back even further,
noting defining lines of cypress trees 
that seem to mark the banks of the hidden creek. 
Thick vines with clusters of white-spiked blooms 
tangle the shallows and block our way 
into the tiny channel that disappears into the woods.

We see where a smaller creek comes in, 
but it's too narrow and too shallow even for kayaks. 
We drift for a while, 
Ben and Jeremiah talking in low voices.
I scan the banks and the sky as the lowering sun 
filters through branches of oak and hickory.

The clouds catch fire as the sun 
slides low in the sky
and we marvel at the way
dusk begins to settle into the bays and inlets.

We paddle a bit and drift, 
sifting through the shadows,
not yet ready to leave this small cove,
these trees, these hills, 
the way that life spills slowly into its forming basin.

On the way back to the ramp
as the last of light begins to fade from the sky, 
Ben and Jeremiah follow the line of the shore
but I take a more direct approach, 
saving several strokes for these sore shoulders 
and getting there enough ahead
that I can turn and wait, 
admiring their muscular silhouettes 
and the easy way they glide through the water.

I don't know how often a father
would have to do such as this 
with children he loves
for it to become old and tiring, 

but I am quite sure I will never find out.


H. Arnett
7/23/24
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The Silence of an Entry Home

Posted on June 27, 2024 by Doc Arnett

Jeremiah has left for a while
late in a Lord’s Day morning,
taking Amos and Isla with him.
Misty has taken Miah and tiny Ellis
to go over to another daughter-in-law’s house
for some professional baby pictures.

I am left here alone for just a bit,
sitting at a scratched and worn wooden table,
eating a small plate of sausage and eggs
saved from this morning’s breakfast,
sipping hot coffee and finishing up
the leftover pastries from another son’s generosity.

I savor the flavor of pecan coffee
and lick the leftover glaze from my fingers.
Clouds from an early morning downpour
linger over western Kentucky,
darkening skies with the threat
–or promise–
of more rain.

In the silence of an empty home,
with imagination free to roam as it pleases,
my thoughts sometimes ease across the room,
or else echo from the walls,
sag onto the floor,
making no mark on the thinly varnished hardwood
softly reflecting the light
coming through the glass storm door.

The silence of an empty home,
can feel like relief,
a brief reprieve from the noise of young children,
an escape for a while from the arguments of adolescence,
or from darker disturbances and deeper angers,
a time for the mind to seek its own findings.

The silence of an empty home, though,
can also be a slow, choking yearning,
vacant for eternity in the absence of a loved one
whose walk ended too suddenly,
or children whose own ways have led them
on journeys with no promise of return.

The silence of an empty home
can be a blessing of peace,
a time of rest and relief,
or a deafening numbness
and the most torturous pain
known to the human heart.

We need times of healing silence,
an absence of aggravation or obligation,
a pause from relentless responsibilities,
a time for knowing the self
and understanding others as well.

We need such times of soothing silence
as speak of Heaven,
rather than a rasping resonance of Hell.


H. Arnett
6/24/24

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Moonrise over Illinois

Posted on June 24, 2024 by Doc Arnett

Driving around St. Louis
I notice the view of a nearly full moon
rising above the city,
the same shade of white as the light clouds
caught in evening sun.

As I turn south and leave the city behind me,
the shadows lengthen then fade away
in the deepening dusk between the hills
and along the cuts of the road.

The clouds pass and the moon gains its own brightness
huge and luminous above the woods and forests.
I keep studying the ridges and valleys,
hoping for a perfect scene to stop
and catch a picture of this evening’s glory.

This goes on for miles,
each curve, each rise, each hill
bringing still another hope for that picture
that will make it worth stopping
on the side of a busy road.

Finally, I look away toward the west,
and catch the last bits of color
from what might have been a stunning sunset
thirty minutes ago.
Now it is just a few wisps of pastel pinks
drifting slowly toward Illinois.

In these last embers of this day’s light,
I see sloping fields of hay or grass pasture,
a muted swipe of textured sheen,
then see in the last bit of light
a barely perceptible burnishing of the bristles
of tasseling corn growing west of the interstate.

It seems easy enough in life
To focus on the brightness of a full moon
or the splendor of a spectacular sunset,
the power of a thundering waterfall,
yet end up missing the quiet splendor
of a hundred other things,
much more subtle yet equally beautiful.

It is a good thing to be deliberate,
to not be overly absorbed in one thing
to the neglect of others,
to admire and appreciate the majesty of mountains
yet still gape and wonder
as light fades in the valley of a small, stone-bed creek
meandering toward night in the dying light of a good day.


H. Arnett
6/24/24

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Making It Better

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Doc Arnett

I read part of Henry David Thoreau’s “Life on Walden Pond” when I was in high school. One of the things that has always stayed with me from that is his reflection about an axe a neighbor loaned him.

He wrote, “I returned it sharper than I borrowed it.”

I think that’s a mighty fine approach to borrowed tools, to owned property, to work situations, to family life, to participation in church and other organizations, and in general, our walk through this world.

If we all purposed ourselves to leaving things better than we found them, I believe we’d see a lot of improvement in just about every aspect of our lives.

How ’bout we start today?

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Working with the Kids

Posted on June 14, 2024 by Doc Arnett

I don’t know what it is about my boys that always seems to have us crawling around under a house. Sometimes we’re trying to put in new drain lines or new wiring or new water supply lines. Other times, we’re putting in electrical. And… yeah, other times, we’re trying to repair rotted timbers or rotten construction techniques. 

When I went to Alaska in the fall of 2021, Dan and I spent 3 or 4 days crawling around under his house, carrying out rotted beams and joists, replacing those, installing rigid foam insulation around the perimeter of the foundation, and running water lines. 

When I went to Ben ‘s house in November of last year, we spent two or three days doing the same things. We had a couple of his brothers helping us a couple of days. 

Now, I’m at a house that Sam bought, working with Jeremiah to replace a bathroom floor, drain lines, and water supply lines. He’s added a new twist this time: we are installing a new main line from the meter at the street over to the house. There are few things that say, “You’re old and out of shape” quite as convincingly as a couple of hours of digging down a couple of feet deep in clay soil.

But it really doesn’t matter how sore and tired I am at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter if that day was spent bellying around in mud, twisting into awkward positions to hold a board in place, or dealing with the noxious fumes of PVC purple primer and glue. Any day spent helping and working with my kids is a good day! 

I think the Spirit we were given also takes great pleasure in his work of perfecting in us the likeness of Christ.

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