Reflections by Doc Arnett

I don’t know if "virtual Bible study" would be the phrase or not. We didn’t use Skype or Conference Now or even webcams but we did have a long distance Bible study last night with Randa’s son, Jaylon. While the wind chill factor in Brookings, South Dakota, was approaching the point where geese get their feet frozen in the water and fly away with the pond, that didn’t seem to interfere with cell phone and satellite signals. With speaker function activated and our Bibles and concordance on the table, we studied some select passages together.

We began by looking at a few scriptures Randa had selected for our focus. Okay, once we realized that she’d intended to write "Romans 15" instead of "Romans 5," we focused. As we talked about our lives and concerns and shared thoughts and ideas, we addressed the things that pressed upon us. Rather than relying solely upon individual insight and worldly wisdom, we responded to the leading of the Spirit and found exactly the things that we needed to read and hear and ponder. After the hour was done, it was clear that we had all come to a place of greater peace.

I began reading the Scriptures when I was five or six years old. I am now approaching the sixth decade of my life. Not yet have I ever failed to gain new understanding each time I opened my Bible with an open mind and open heart. The teachings of the Testaments have not lost their pertinence nor have the words of the prophets lost their power.

Nor has God’s Spirit lost his love of leading those who seek the Lord.

H. Arnett

2/2/11

The gray trunk of the tree just outside the window

crooks and sways its way toward the heavens.

Its branches rise and dip, twist and droop.

Its stand seems to show

a constant battle of light and gravity,

wind and whatever else there is

in northeastern Kansas

that doesn’t like straight.

Loops and knurls catch

bits of the whirling snow,

wild growth sprawling and spurling

toward sky and earth and all sorts of in betweens.

Our lives catch the wind, turn,

slowly spin in between moments of clarity.

We tumble, stubborn and focused,

knowing that we are caught

for now

in this struggle of flesh and spirit:

carnal and yet a little lower than the angels.

We carry the weight,

yield to the work of a greater hand,

and show the tensioned shape

between what we are

and what we were intended to be.

And yet, in that constant struggle

between dirt and glory,

still bear our way upward,

enduring the bone-bruising cold,

waiting for the release of fire and spirit.

H. Arnett

2/1/11

It’s not news to anyone who hears any news that ours is the age of media hype. Stories flash to the forefront, explode across the globe, then wither and vanish. The huge catastrophe, the scintillating scandal, the glorious gossip: all run the rage and disappear, leaving nothing but tears and quickly fading memories. Except, of course, for the lives ruined, families devastated and communities demolished. Sporting events and cataclysmic tragedies seem to garner similar space and time in network cyber worlds.

In our little corner of the more than virtual world, the latest hype is this winter storm. It’s being touted pretty much as the storm of the century. Admittedly, the current century is just now a decade old so it may seem a bit premature. The ice segment of the storm has already started with a freezing drizzle that is supposed to last all day but NOT produce the kind of ice accumulation we had three years ago. What is supposed to accumulate by storm’s end Wednesday is a foot or more of snow. That, by itself wouldn’t be such a big deal.

What is the bigger end of the whupping stick in this case is the forty-mile-an-hour wind and the low temperatures that will come with the snow. Or maybe it’s actually the other way around. Either way, we’re looking at wind chills in the neighborhood of minus thirty Wednesday. No, Dorothy, I’m not sure that we’re in Kansas anymore.

What I am sure of is that I am grateful for strong walls and electricity. If the latter fails, I’ll be even more grateful for natural gas and the heater in the basement that doesn’t rely on electricity. If the walls fail, then I will be grateful for the love and compassion of God’s good people.

It’s good to have a backup plan.

H. Arnett
1/31/11

I do have a Facebook page but I’m not very good “at Facebook.” I long ago grew weary of the insignificant posts. Knowing that someone is at the gym or looking for Waldo or whatever isn’t my idea of keeping up with folks. That’s the double-edge of technology in action: the very thing that makes a capacity so convenient makes it also prone to trivialization. And so it was that by avoiding the page after page of feeds about minutia, I missed a post that was far more significant.

Nearly thirty years ago, I’d officiated a wedding for a couple of teenagers in our congregation in South Fulton, Tennessee. It was a small affair, a private ceremony in the bride’s parents’ house. Just recently, I’d gotten back in touch with Berry and Kim via Facebook. But, due to my aforementioned negligence, I’d missed her posting of the tragedy they’d experienced when their eighteen-year-old son was killed in a car wreck not quite two weeks ago.

Knowing that I would have responded at least a week earlier if I had known, Kim sent me an email. Within an hour, I was on the phone with her, expressing my sorrow for their loss and pain.

Needless to say, I was very grateful for Kim’s follow-up. It was clear that she and Berry wanted me to know and knew that I would care.

I have to acknowledge that there must be some level of self-interest and convenience operating in seeking to justify my lack of vigilance in monitoring the postings on Facebook. But when we put trivia and tragedy at the same level in our communication, we demean ourselves and our relationships.

Do you think the same sort of thing could happen in our prayer patterns?

H. Arnett

1/27/11

Greg stepped over to my office during his lunch break yesterday. We spent some time sharing events from our past, particular things that we had done in the way of creative expression. There wasn’t a gushing torrent, just a quiet back and forth primarily focused on two specific episodes. Even though the one I’d chosen was more serious, there were some common elements, I think.

For both of us, the events had a transcendent quality to them, times when we’d both stepped beyond our usual personas. He’d spent a few weeks getting ready for his and I’d spent over a year. Both were done in their time, single performances so to speak, without encore. The only repetition is in their recollection, his, mine or someone else’s.

We seldom know, and that is often a blessing, how something we have said or done affects someone else. Most often, the impact is admittedly momentary: a chuckle, a brief reflection, a pause of examination or an insight. It’s pretty seldom that lives are changed, personalities altered, triumphs empowered.

But in all of them, there is a sharing. Someone becomes a bit better known, a new dimension is shown, a heart more fully revealed. And in those things, relationships become stronger. More often than not, at least for me, it is those conversations during lunch break or a lull in the afternoon. Away from others, absent the need to perform or the caution that increases with number of listeners, we share the things that matter to us.

And in that sharing, become more us and less a couple of me’s.

H. Arnett

1/21/11

There is a legend that the Esquimeaux have a hundred words for snow. A report I read a few years ago said they only have a dozen or so. I don’t know any of them but I’d love to know whatever word it is they have for the one that came yesterday and last night. I bet a general interpretation means "makes you fall on your butt" or something like that.

It is so light and fine and dry that each flake is like a tiny, ultra-efficient, lubricant. Put a few billion of them together and you have something that is slicker than a Chicago politician in a dimly lit room. This stuff is amazing. I know less about snow skiing than your average retarded cricket but if “good powder” means dry, fluffy and highly zoom-able, this must be it.

Even with the extra-wide, slightly knobby tires, my little Kyoti four-wheel drive tractor was slipping and sliding all over the place this morning as I bladed the drive and the pullover spot for our letter carrier. Several times, I had to back out of spots because I couldn’t go forward and maintain steering. When you’re looking at a half-acre of flat field, that doesn’t matter so much. When you’re inches away from the cut edge of a four-foot ditch, that’s another matter.

I did manage to stay out of the ditches and angle most of the snow out of the drive. I don’t think anyone watching me would have been impressed with the skill and dexterity I demonstrated in the process. But sometimes, it’s more about getting a thing done than it is about impressing someone.

Remember that the next time you’re considering some good thing that you know someone else might do better than you. But… be careful of the ditches.

H. Arnett

1/20/11

The first thing we did at the new place here was build a shed for the horse. Before we had running water restored in the house. Before we repaired the toilets, before we had a shower. Two months before we moved in, there was a new extension onto a small tool shed that provided a place for the horse. A place where he could get out of the scorching sun in the summer and out of the lancing wind in the winter. A place of safety and shelter, a place of relative comfort and provision. He seems to really like it.

I often see him standing out in the pasture, looking at the shed in quiet admiration. I see him casting looks of appreciation and deep respect when he takes a break from pacing around the round pen. That, by the way, is directly connected and open to the shed. He can go in at any time. Even on the coldest days, when the harsh edge of the wind sends ripples through the bare branches and blows his tail into his eyes, he stands outside, almost reverent in his regard for the shed.

What he doesn’t do is take advantage of its shelter. He’ll stand outside and endure the elements.

I’ll go down for the morning feeding and to move him over to the large pasture across the drive and he’ll be pacing around the pen, ice in his mane and frost on his whiskers. There he’ll be, walking back and forth in his own muck, ignoring the fresh hay in the corner and the fresh water by the gate, enduring the affliction of his existence as if he had no choice.

Sometimes that horse can seem so human I just want to slap him.

H. Arnett

1/19/11

“Bushel of wheat, bushel of rye; if you’re not ready, holler out ‘I.’” That was the final warning when we played Hide-n-Seek as I was growing up. It was the preliminary notice that the Seeker was about to come looking for the Hiders.

Sometimes Paul and I would play that game with just the two of us up in the hayloft and around the barn. Sometimes, there would be twenty of us playing, following a 4-H hayride over to the Jeff Davis Memorial at Fairview or after a church potluck or chili supper at our house. Every now and then, if the grownups stood around a while visiting after church on a summer evening, we’d play while the locusts and crickets were practicing their cacophonies.

It was fun and exciting. First, there was the challenge of finding a hiding spot and being able to stay quiet and still until whoever was It had passed by. Sometimes, I could make it home safe without being seen. There was the little bit of adrenalin rush when I was spotted and the sharp crunch of gravel underfoot as I raced the Seeker to the designated “Home Free” spot. I didn’t always win but it was always fun.

Of course, with the game, you always knew that your vulnerability began with that final chant of “Ready or not, here I come.”

I’ve learned that life doesn’t always play by those rules. Sometimes, the “Gotchas!” can be an absolute surprise and there’s no second chance to give you more time. Sooner or later, we have to step out of the shadows. And I have learned to hold hands with him who is greater than the Darkness.

H. Arnett

1/18/11

I grew up in southwestern Kentucky in the Fifties and Sixties. Although integration was not completed in Columbus, Ohio, until 1984, it was done eighteen years earlier where I lived. Toward the end of the school year in 1966, the principal of our tiny elementary school in Trenton made an announcement: “Todd County Schools will be integrating this fall. That will include us.” Neither Mr. Tribble nor any of the teachers voiced any complaints, threats, or warnings to us students. I’ve never investigated what private conversations may have taken place.

In spite of living in the land of Jim Crow, I’d missed out on most of the harsh realities of minority life in that place. I will not claim that my parents were not prejudiced but they were certainly not typical of other landowners of their era. We were taught to use the term “colored folks” instead of the contemptuous term in common use in that place and time. When Dad hired black men to help with harvesting hay and tobacco, they came inside and sat at the table with us at meal times. In addition to those examples and trainings, and perhaps even more importantly, Mom and Dad stressed to us that God had not only created all people, he had made us all one in Jesus Christ. “There is never any excuse for you to mistreat anyone; it doesn’t matter what color they are. God made them the same as he made you and being white doesn’t make you any better than them.”

I’m guessing it was that particular background that led me to my brief and admittedly quite small contribution to the Civil Rights movement in Todd County, Kentucky. At recess the day of the announcement, I called all of the boys in the seventh grade together. Knowing that we would be the big dogs next year I somehow sensed that there was something that I could do at that point that would make a difference. “Fellas,” I said soberly, “We’re not going to have any trouble here. We’re not going to be calling these kids names. We’re going to treat them the way we want to be treated.”

Maybe it was the wisdom of the words I spoke, the superior moral plane of acceptance and respect. It might have been nothing more than the fact that they all remembered I had bloodied Lewis Peterson’s nose twice in the past four years. Whatever it was, the integration of Trenton Elementary School took place that fall without a single fight, argument or racial incident of any kind. At least among the children, it did.

Sometimes it’s harder for adults to act grown-up.

H. Arnett

1/17/11

I just now checked our local weather history for the past couple of days, specifically looking at low temperatures. The readings are taken at Rosecrans Airport, just a few miles east of our house. In that low flat bordering the banks of the Missouri River, the thermometer dipped down to minus eleven Wednesday night. I didn’t know that when I bundled up for work yesterday morning. All I knew was that I was very glad that I bundled up for work.

This morning, I checked the reading and saw that we were already up to eight degrees above zero and that we’re predicted to get up to thirty-one today. If that happens, we’ll have kids strolling across campus in tee shirts and shorts. I think I’ll probably keep my coat on and just take advantage of that wonderful little emotional lift that comes from looking at someone else and wondering, “Have you lost all of the nerve endings in your skin or just the strand that connects them to your cerebellum?”

I just figure it’s fair turnabout for all the times my actions have spurred similar responses. I’m pretty sure that folks watching me stumbling around in something like the brain numbness that must think that is the most logical explanation for some of my stupid decisions.

Thank God for warm boots and his wonderful mercy!

H. Arnett

1/14/11