Tough Choices

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Normally, in remodeling an old house, I like to keep the wood trim more focused on being wood than trim. I prefer mellow stain tones that “pull the grain” and a subtle rubbed effect finish. I rarely like a high gloss finish and I fairly despise dark stains that hide the grain. In a couple of house renovations, I went to the lengths of stripping off the layers of old paint and varnish in order to refinish the trim completely. In the case of oak, it’s well worth the effort. With pine or fir, not so much.

In this house, the old fir trim and doors are almost black. I’m actually not sure whether the nearly hundred years of aging is the cause or if it’s that some enterprising soul thought it tasteful to cover the wide baseboard and window trim with a very dark varnish. In the few cases where some previous owner stripped off the old finish, the results do not justify the work. The grain is plain and the effect quite uninteresting.

So, we presently have the halls and rooms upstairs lined with light absorbing trim that renders the mood of being trapped in a Victorian era sanatorium or in a Stephen King novel. A month of full-time work could refinish all the doors and trim, tons of work stripping and sanding and staining and varnishing with very little change on the effect. In light of that, I’m thinking painting is the preferred solution.

I know that some people would be aghast to think of covering up natural wood with paint but there’s nothing natural looking about this wood. I have tried for two years to make myself believe that it could be made lovely with a relatively mild bit of expense and a decidedly intense bit of effort. I’ve surrendered that fantasy to the reality I see before me.

Of course, de-glossing, prepping and painting with two coats of primer and one coat of enamel won’t be a quick route, either. Going from black to white isn’t done with one smooth coat, regardless of what the paint manufacturers may claim. Sometimes life doesn’t give us the choice of easy improvement. Sometimes we have to choose which option will yield a better result with less effort. And sometimes we have to make a choice we’d rather not make, having found ourselves in circumstances not entirely of our choosing.

Perhaps it is in those cases most especially that we ought to choose wisdom over wishing.

H. Arnett
2/25

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Come, O Come, Thou Storm of Blessing

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Drought can do funny things to people. They find themselves worrying about stuff they can’t control, wondering why it is that other folks get blessings they don’t get. Of course, floods can have a similar effect. I guess what it is, is that people just have sort of a natural tendency to wish things were better, if not perfect. I’ve even heard it said that depression is the exaggerated distance between how you perceive things to be and how you wish they were. Well, anyway, back to the drought.

One of the funny things it’s done around here is get us actually hoping for this huge winter storm that is upon us. We’re so eager for moisture that we’re getting to be pretty un-picky about how it gets here. Not that we wouldn’t prefer three or four days of slow drizzle, or a day or two of slow showers. If we had our druthers, we’d take that. And we definitely don’t want a foot of rain in a day.

But given what’s in the forecast and what isn’t, we’re praying that travelers will be safe, commuters will be cautious and that teachers and their students will enjoy this unscheduled break. And that the seven-to-eleven inches of white stuff will melt soon and slowly, and that every single bit of moisture will be absorbed into the dust that used to be dirt and give birth to a good, glowing spring.

When we become as eager for the Lord’s instruction as we are for his blessings, we just might get ourselves to a point of greater benefit from both.

H. Arnett
2/21/13

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Broken Voices

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Doc Arnett

I found her abandoned on a gravel road about three miles away from here. She was around four or five weeks old, her eyes still blue. After I brought her home, she walked around in a circle in the yard, grass up to her neck, mewing as loudly as she could. It was a plaintive calling, a distressed voicing. She continued it for hours, interrupted only for feeding on the concoction that Randa formulated. Randa held her for hours, too, letting her snuggle up against her neck where she tried her best to nurse on the surrogate mother. Randa was less tolerant of that.

By the next day, Ginger’s loud mewing had morphed into a squeaking, a raspy, hoarse calling that could barely be heard. She still walked about her circle in the yard if put down, still searching for her mother.

Two years later, she is quite adjusted to her life here on our little place but still carries the evidence of that orphaning. She cannot meow as a normal cat. After spending the night outdoors or in the barn, when she is grateful and glad to see us opening the back door, she charges in, making happy little noises that sound much like a chirping bird. In other moods, she can growl convincingly.

On a happier note, her purring apparatus works quite well, a very soothing and reassuring voicing of security and contentment. She still tries from time to time to “nurse” on Randa’s neck, usually in the wee hours of the morning when Randa is trying to sleep. The cat gets a quick whack on the head and quickly concludes that she should seek closeness elsewhere.

In spite of the strained larynx and the sprained psyche, Ginger is still able to convey appreciation and warning, closeness and threat. To our knowledge, she has never played with another animal and seems reluctant to cultivate that skill with the dog we acquired last fall. But, at least they can occupy the same territory now without the hissing and spitting that marked the first few months. Perhaps in a year or so, they might become buddies. Perhaps…

With gentleness and patience, and a discerning firmness, we can help the scared and scarred of this world learn of trust and closeness. And no matter how racked and wrecked our own voices, we can still praise our Maker, still offer consolation to other of his children. It is not the beauty of the song that pleases him but the sincerity of our expressions.

H. Arnett
2/20/13

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Dodging the Wind

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Doc Arnett

When I came back into the house after feeding the horses just now, Randa asked me what the temperature was outside. I told her I didn’t know for sure but my guess was that the temperature was below twenty and the wind speed was not.

That’s not a combination I particularly like. I rather prefer a temperature of around seventy-eight or so, with a light breeze if I’m working outside and no breeze if I’m doing something important, like sitting in a lawn chair sipping a glass of sweet tea. In Hawaii, there’d be a pretty fair chance of getting that weather prescription a hundred days or more each year. Here, in northeast Kansas, maybe twice a year.

So, most of the time here on the edge of the Great Prairie, we have the option of grumbling and griping about the weather or of adjusting our expectations, dressing appropriately and proceeding with the lives we have chosen.

I guess we could do both but that sort of takes the fun out of adjusting. It really isn’t the circumstances that make life so unpleasant from time to time as much as it is our choice to do spend so little time in positive effort to change those circumstances. And, our attitude about them.

H. Arnett
2/19/13

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Evening Feeding

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Doc Arnett

Walking down to the hay barn
in the late light of ending day,

I see soft streaks of color,
strokes of lavender and pink
left above the sinking sun,
burnished on the edges of fading clouds.

A few degrees above the horizon,
a single narrow slice of bright
glows in the open seam
between the bands of day and night.

I break open a bale of timothy and brome,
stash chunks behind the slats of the feeder
while the mare sniffs the ground
for some stray snatch of sweeter hay.

This baled grass will last a whole day
but the same weight of alfalfa
would be gone
in half that time.

I fasten the chains to the gates,
fill the water trough
and walk past the darkening sky
back toward the house.

It is a blessing, pure and simple,
when the doing of duty
leads us into
such scenes of beauty.

H. Arnett
2/18/13

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A Passing in the Night

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Doc Arnett

A dusting of snow
glows on the grass
beneath the light
mounted on the pole
in the neighbor’s yard.

This did not come
with the hard, killing chill
of prairie storm
but from a quiet passing
in the night,

easing through
in view of darkness,
sifting into blades of grass,
holding still in the calm cold
of a winter’s night.

There was no hint
of its coming,
no telling moaning of wind
or stirring bending
of branch and limb.

Just this quiet white paleness
holding still in the calm cold
of an old man’s body
and family calls
made before dawn.

Prayers answered.
Tears.
Relief and grief
in this strange mingling
that comforts and afflicts.

H. Arnett
2/15/13

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Matters of the Heart

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Doc Arnett

I remember Valentine’s Days as a kid at Trenton Elementary School back in the middle years of a previous century. I remember buying cheap cards and cheap candies, staying up the night before and signing each card and addressing each envelope to every one of my classmates. No one liked those cheap hard candies with the little messages imprinted but we always ate them, at least the ones from our favorite friends.

Every year past the third grade, and maybe before then, there was always at least one girl that I wanted to give something special to, something that would make her want me to be her special sweetheart on Valentine’s Day, and maybe for a week or two longer. It was several years before I figured out that it would take something other than cheap cards and yucky candy to accomplish that.

By high school, I wasn’t buying cards for my classmates. Just wouldn’t seem right handing a Valentine’s card to Van Sims or David Hardison or any of the other guys. And, in regard to the girls, none of the ones I’d care to give a card to would care to get one from me. So, I skipped the trips to K-Mart’s card and candy sections.

My first year of college, I gave the girl I was dating a lovely bouquet for Valentine’s Day. I very cleverly had slipped my class ring up around the stems of a few of the flowers, a token at the time that I wanted to “go steady.” She kept the flowers, returned the ring.

These days, it’s a bit easier. No problems with a lack of reciprocity. No wondering for whom I should buy cards or to whom I should give candy. It’s actually pretty easy nowadays. No shifting affections, no struggling with wonderings. For over twenty-three years now, I have lived with the only woman I have ever adored. It doesn’t make it any more likely that I’ll pick out the right jewelry, but it sure shortens the shopping list. She has always loved the flowers I’ve bought, shared the candy and has never returned my ring.

Once we have settled our hearts, our affections seem to come pretty natural. In matters both physical and spiritual.

H. Arnett
2/14/13

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Invocation of Blessing

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Doc Arnett

To rise with a willing heart
and a ready hand,
to understand that choice
always gives birth to consequence,

to bend together prayer and caring,
to know that knowing
is often wasted without doing,
and that compassion
depends upon seeing through
the mist of circumstance,

to sing with meaning
and speak with love
that rises above pettiness,

to forgive fervently
and adore all that is pure and good,
to walk quietly in the midst of turmoil
and to keep one’s heart
unfettered by bitterness,
to have clearness
of vision, mind and purpose:

this is what I pray
for you
today.

H. Arnett
2/13/13

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Awards Shows

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Doc Arnett

I didn’t watch the Grammy Awards, won’t watch the Academy Awards, chose not to watch the People’s Choice Awards, will not watch the Emmy’s or any of the other events where some mystic panel or fawning public chooses Who’s Best at What. It’s not that my principles are so high or that I am so disdainful of this world’s frivolities; it probably has more to do with a short attention span and an increasingly acute awareness that I am almost totally out of touch with contemporary culture.

Based on the headlines and quick charts, I didn’t recognize a single group or individual whose musical talents are apparently self-evident. I say “self-evident” because the quick clips of their performance failed to persuade me that there was any sublime talent on display. Such is the case with each generation, I suppose.

I’m relatively sure that my parents saw nothing admirable in Steppenwolf or Led Zeppelin, nothing to hoot about with CCR or TDN. By definition, popular culture secedes to the next group of consumers and then to the next. I shudder, and refuse to even try to imagine, what will make the current fans of hip-hop and rap shudder when their grandkids crank up whatever device blasts their preferences into the fractured ears of their elders.

Apart from that bit of poetic justice, there is one thing I like about all the fuss about all the stuff of this sort: it bears out very clearly our culture’s obsession with and exaggeration of the importance of its entertainments.

Not the entire collection of all those shiny little golden globes will be even slightly as precious one day as hearing the simple phrase, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

H. Arnett
2/12/13

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Replenishment by Depletion

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Doc Arnett

We live in a world of unlimited opportunities to do good, yet with what seems to be very limited means of meeting those opportunities. I think maybe we too often forget that we will not be judged by our Maker and Redeemer based upon the opportunities but rather upon our means. As The Carpenter said it, “From those who have much, much will be expected.”

It was not that the widow’s mite could relieve so much suffering, hunger or poverty that caused him to commend her, but rather that it represented all that she had to prevent her own suffering, hunger and poverty. Yet, she still gave it away, knowing that there were others who had less than her.

We are trained, and perhaps naturally predisposed, to focus so much of our attention on those who have more than us. Many of us are readily inclined to believe that almost no one else has less than we do; no one else has so much bad luck, so much misfortune, so little good. It is by distorted thinking and selective perception that we create such a miserable, debilitating view of our lives.

God has not limited the amount of good will we each can have. There are no boundaries on our mercy or forgiveness, save those we ourselves impose. We can give freely of kindness, mercy, encouragement and tolerance without any risk of running empty. A gentle touch, a soft word, a nod of understanding: these things come not by measure or meter. Rather, they are among those rare commodities whose increase is proportional to consumption.

I think it would be far better to meet my Maker having bankrupted myself by generosity rather than having accumulated much that blessed no one but myself. The little put to good use will increase; the much held selfishly will disappear. A morsel shared is more filling than the richest feast of indulgence.

H. Arnett
2/8/12

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