Reflections by Doc Arnett

A friend of mine grew up the flat plains of central Indiana. While he was still in high school, he heard a local farmer complaining bitterly about daylight savings time. It had been a very hot, dry summer and by July, the man was at wit’s end. Day after day, his corn wilted below the tassels, long blades twisted in the heat. Finally, in exasperation, he erupted, “This extra hour of sunshine every day is burning my crops up!”

The man was absolutely serious.

For me, it’s usually a few days of adjustment, a bit of exasperation that once again I have to get up while it’s still dark and then enjoy the extra time of daylight after I get home in the evening. I’d just as soon wait another month for that but, once again, the powers that be have decided to act without consulting me.

There’s a lot of that in life and the better I get at getting used to it, the better I’m able to get along. I’m learning to find the good in the blessings I didn’t ask for.

At least our horse has a shed so he can get in out of that extra hour of sunshine every day.

H. Arnett

3/15/11

Randa is standing at the sink, washing dishes. She offers to scramble eggs but I opt for Wheaties this morning. I get the milk and yogurt, set my bowl on the table and take a spoon from the draining rack, sit down and start my breakfast.

I’ve never been to the Olympics and haven’t won first place in any sporting event since shuffleboard at West Kentucky Youth Camp in 1966. So, it would seem that this box of cereal might be the extent of what I share in common with the red-haired snowboarder on the front of the box.

I eat slowly, look out the kitchen window, out beyond the huge trash dumpster for all the remodeling debris, past the trees and the ridge off to the southwest. The lightest tints of rose and pink catch in the western sky. It is a delicate trace, so faint it’s easy to wonder if it’s really there or just a momentary apparition of some kind, something you’ve imagined in the pale, colorless morning.

I tilt my head, focus more intently and know that it’s the least reflection of a sunrise yet to come. That soft touch speaks of clear morning and bright skies, like a gentle hand lightly touching your arm or a slight smile under barely arched eyebrows.

Some days, like this one, it seems I feel God’s caressing touch, beckoning me toward the day he has made.

H. Arnett

3/11/11

I have seen brothers closer than friends and friends closer than brothers. I have seen closeness drift into distance and unconcern transformed into compassion. I have seen lives bump from one crisis to another without purpose and I have seen such focus that made me marvel.

I have heard of people who, at a fairly early age, wrote down the goals of their life and set off on the course they had planned. I’ve known others who never put to thought or paper what they intended to be doing six months or six years or six decades later.

I am reliably told that studies have shown that those with deliberate purpose in their lives make more money, have more stable relationships, accomplish more and enjoy better health. I’ve also known people who raised families, paid off mortgages and lived to a ripe old age with the spouse of their youth without having ever put plan to paper.

The purpose-driven life can be no better than the purposes that drive that life. Focus is only of benefit if the focus is on the things that truly matter. A legacy of wealth and fame and power will last for some time, even after the passing of those who create such a legacy. We still talk of Vanderbilt’s and Getty’s and others nearly a century after their passing. But are the things we say of them the things we really want said of us?

Happier is a pauper who keeps his soul than someone who gains the whole world and loses his.

H. Arnett

3/10/11

Shunning those afflicted with leprosy was apparently common practice in ancient times. Nor, it would appear, has that changed as much as we might think. A person cured of leprosy was not just rescued from a disease; they were delivered from a life of isolation. In some ways more literal than others, they were freed as well as healed.

Children born with cleft palates endure a similar fate in many parts of our world today. They are shunned, isolated, mocked, even beaten savagely because of their disfiguring affliction. Relegated to the confines of their homes, most of them never attend school more than once. The memories of that one time are sufficient punishment. In most cases, the parents have no hope of changing their child’s situation; even if they literally sold themselves or their other children, they could not raise enough money for the medical procedures needed.

For some time, Randa and I have been meager supporters of Smile Train, a charity that provides corrective surgery. Their results are nothing short of miraculous. Appalling deformities are corrected. Children who could not stand to see their own reflection are given proud and joyful smiles. Their faces, and their lives, are transformed. They move from the darkest shadows of their streets and villages into the light of playful association with peers. Their parents are freed from the torture of watching their children endure the mocking and rejection. Truly, their sorrow is turned into dancing.

Ever time I watch the stories, I am moved to tears. I remember the years of occasional ridicule and mocking because of my buckteeth and know that my experience was nothing compared to what these children and their families endure. I sit, sobbing with both grief and relief when I see these little ones rejoicing after their surgeries. In the midst of that, I see the hundreds and thousands of other families who are turned away because of a lack of funding.

Briefly, I think of what could be done if our nation diverted just one percent of its military budget to such works as this. Then, I begin to reflect on what it is that I could give up that could also make a difference. I begin to look around me to see what possessions I could sell and change a life. Turn mourning into rejoicing.

So many miracles begin within us when we begin to see how a slight inconvenience here could transform lives elsewhere.

H. Arnett

3/9/11

In at least a couple of the stage versions of The Phantom of the Opera, Christina (the love interest and heroine) convinces Erik (the disfigured "Phantom") to unmask himself. She believes that her love for him is so great that no marring of his countenance could possibly unsettle her. Persuaded by her urgent pleading and deeply aching for the acceptance that he has not known since his mother died when he was a child, he removes the mask. Christina gets one look and runs away, shrieking in horror.

At that point, we believe that we can understand Erik’s pain. It is no small thing to believe that we are ugly beyond redemption, beyond acceptance, even beyond tolerance.

Nor is it a small thing to realize that God saw us as we were before we fashioned the masks that we wear in front of others. He saw the lust, the guile, the sin, the corruption, the betrayals, the deceit, the arrogance, the pride. He saw every evil thing that was inside us and would ever be a part of us. He saw the filth of our sin-drenched souls and yet, he loved us. Loved us not for our potential, for our capacity for change, for the spark of immortality within us. He loved us as we were.

And came to us in love, offering salvation, cleansing, redemption. As the scripture says, "While we were yet in sin, Christ died for us." And, as the scripture also says, how much more love does he yet show for us now that we are no longer enemies but children.

Christina’s love for Erik brings her back to him, finally able to see past the disfigured flesh. Christ never had to turn away, never flinched, never gasped. He looked our sin full in the face and embraced us.

H. Arnett

3/8/11

On those nights

when sleep comes slow,

I know that morning

will come too soon,

That rolling from one side

to the other,

trying to find a proper forming

of quiet and warmth

is a warning:

a mind not yet able

to let go of the day

or trying to bring

some sense

to the one yet to come.

I wake slowly,

stages of rousled rumbling,

stumble toward my housecoat

and shuffle down the hall.

I’d like to stay

in that warm cove of covers,

let others go ahead with this day

and maybe catch up with them

around noon or so,

or maybe a few hours after.

But on these days

when the beauty of rest

is not sufficient blessing

to move me quickly

into the dawning

of another day,

duty will do.

I find, too,

that doing what we are meant to do

has its own beauty.

H. Arnett

3/4/11

Well, if it’s "in like a lamb and out like a lion" for this March, we’re going to have a heck of a storm here in about thirty days. Yesterday was gorgeous! Clear skies, temperature up to the fifty-degree mark. The pleasing sounds of the snow melt running into the storm sewers.

Now, of course, there were the not-so-pleasing parts that go along with melting and water running in the streets and the mess that ends up getting tracked along the halls and corridors. But, since I’m not charged with custodial duties in any of our classroom or administrative buildings, it wasn’t too hard for me to block out that other and focus on sunshine, lollipops and rainbows and that sort of thing.

It’s a useful talent and often cultivated to an accomplished degree, this human capacity to block out awareness of negative aspects that don’t directly and immediately affect us. That’s what makes it so easy for us to tra-la-la our way through the world, tossing our recyclables into the trash can, dumping our toxic waste in someone else’s back yard and believing that supporting dictators instead of democracy isn’t such a bad thing as long as gas stays under three dollars a gallon and we can buy a nice, Perma-Prest sport shirt for under twenty bucks.

That’s why we build our landfills out in the county, ignore human rights violations in reciprocal trade agreements and throw our fast food packaging out the window of a moving vehicle.

Isn’t it funny how that "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" relates to everything from wiping your feet and picking up your socks to foreign policy and macroeconomics? Speaking hypothetically, of course…

H. Arnett

3/2/11

A single cloud trails its soft, thin strokes above and between the pink rim of the east and the darker rose of the west. Last evening’s sunset showed a scattered ridge of gray and blue before the last sinking of the sun turned into an orange cast that spread across the snow and grass, catching everything in that reflected tint.

In the night, the clouds passed through and stars shone in that bone-cleaning chill of winter, a kind of clear we never see in summer.

Today, though, promises warmth, at least in relative terms. It may be that the driveway will thaw and that frozen firm of this morning’s leaving will turn into a softer mush for our returning. There are few changes in life that don’t leave some bit of mess in the wake of passing through worse for better.

But, a bit of grading and a good bed of stone, covered with a few loads of gravel will turn the driveway back into something that keeps us up out of the mud and the muck. We cannot control the rains or the melting, but we can make better places for traveling.

H. Arnett

3/1/11

I started out with nine or ten students in my class this semester. One of them never showed. When I called roll on the first day, a Thursday, he wasn’t there. When I opened the newspaper Saturday morning, I found out why. It appears quite likely that he will have the opportunity to pursue other modes of higher education while a guest of the Kansas legal system. For quite some time.

Another student enrolled late, came to class every session, and then disappeared. I found out that his financial aid arrangements did not come through in time, most likely due to not having been filed in time. He is now attending another community college in Kansas where the ability to run great passing routes is considered infinitely more important than filing financial aid forms in timely fashion.

Yet another student quit showing up about the same time as the route-runner. He was on probation (with the college, not the legal system, so far as I know) and had failed to show the kind of reformed citizen behavior that was required of him. He was invited to leave.

So, down to seven students, it was just downright discouraging yesterday when two of them did not show up. One of the ones who did show up, speaking in regard to one of the ones who didn’t show up, said, "She told me she wasn’t coming back to this class."

That was particularly disturbing since she had written just two weeks earlier "this is the only class I’m taking that I have any interest in." Sometimes, the cultural shock of coming to a town as tiny as Highland after having grown up in an urban environment is just too much.

I could dwell on the setbacks, frustrations and discouragements. Probably give myself a quick ticket to Bluesville. Instead, I remind myself that a community college should get quite a few students who find out they really aren’t ready for college and maybe never will be.

And then, I turn my attention to the ones who are still in my class. The ones who do show up, do turn in their assignments, keep their ears and eyes open and their cell phones closed. I miss the ones who leave but I keep my grieving short.

It is inevitable that some of the seed we sow falls upon the hard places and on the thin, rocky soil. But if whatever lands on good soil doesn’t produce fruit, I am determined that it will not be for lack of watering on my part.

The rest is in other hands than mine.

H. Arnett

2/25/11

A half-moon

hangs high in the sky

above the row of frost-covered pines

that line out from the shed,

running along the low slope toward the road.

Its soft halo

pales in the thin blue veil

of night

leaching its slow retreat

from morning’s cold coming.

My breath steams

in this fragile light,

drifts upward

and disappears in the shadows

of the over-hanging roof.

I lift the cold steel

handle of the hydrant,

watch the first surge of water

splash against the thin brown leaf

frozen to the bottom of the bucket.

Inside the shed,

I scoop up a full measure

of sweet feed

and dump it

into the heavy blue pail.

A bucket in each hand,

I stand and straighten,

turn toward the pasture.

The horse whinnies in expectation,

head carefully held over

and above the highest strand

of electric fence.

Whether or not he knows it,

this is love,

just like rain on the fields

and sun in the heavens.

H. Arnett

2/24/11