Ah, Troubles

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Doc Arnett

There are times when we come to God and to one another, hearts and lives open, spilling out the cares and fears and owning each ill. Like children, we share our carings and cravings. We talk about family and lives turned upside down, the things that rip our hearts apart and the things that have brought us joy beyond imagining. Apologetically, we pore over the things that seem mundane and the things so small that even if they changed, there would be no change, really.

There are times like that, times of sharing and talking with God and one another. And then, there are the times and things that we discuss only with God. Things too deep, too aching, too private, too personal.

These things we carry deep inside us, hold them like secret jewels or contagious disease, afraid of giving away some hint, feeling that we should cry out, “Unclean! Unclean!” We tighten the tourniquet around our heart, afraid some forbidden bleeding may betray us.

But in the dark aloneness, when our deepest hurts are most our own, we bare ourselves before our Maker, wounded, weakened, ashamed and angry of our suffering. Yelling, whimpering, crying out in sobs too violent for expression and with groanings too deep for words. We grieve, we ache, we empty ourselves, strip bare to the bone of the soul.

And in those moments, are heard at the very throne of God.

H. Arnett
9/8/10

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Meditation on Darkness

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Doc Arnett

I guess sugar is the closest I’ve ever come to being addicted to something. I got pretty darn grouchy the third day of my induction into the Adkins Diet several years ago. That has been, thus far, the limit of my withdrawal experience.

I’ve never tried any of the “recreational” drugs and never had a sufficient need for painkillers to run the risk of getting hooked on one of them. But I have had enough experience with the darkness to see its draw and understand that pain can reach a point where almost any risk seems worth taking.

I’ve seen that long-fanged snake wrap itself around others, seen that deep, deafening darkness draw them down deeper and deeper. I’ve been around when they found that everything that was precious to them had been damaged, destroyed or defiled. I’ve had sin carry me to the edge of that precipice and I’ve lost enough to know sorrow and agony. And I have often seen pain greater than my own. I give thanks from time to time for the times when I’ve been delivered from sin and allowed to taste life again.

Every escape that temptation offers is nothing more than a deeper hole than the one you’re trying to climb out of, a greater darkness than the shark-toothed edge you feel eating into your soul. It seems like the first thing it destroys is you caring about the other things you care about, including the people who care about you.

The tortures of Satan begin long before Hell.

H. Arnett
9/3/10

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Horse Sense

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Doc Arnett

The woman who owned the Arabian that Randa bought had raised him from a foal. When she told us, “If he feels a drop of rain he heads straight for the shed,” we pretty much took her at her word. So, when we drove through a severe thunderstorm two weeks ago on our way over from work, we fully expected to see him standing in the shed. Instead, he was standing out in his pen, completely soaked even though he was under the deflection of the cottonwood tree. There were several long strokes in the muddy mess showing where his feet had slipped as he’d moved around the pen but nothing to indicate that he’d been inside the shed where the ground and his hay were completely dry.

There was, however, a clue in the mud just outside the shed, a possible explanation for his sudden change of habit in regard to coming in out of the rain. Straight down from the lower edge of the roof, I could see where the water had pounded into the ground. Even though the gelding might not like the feel of rain on his back, he apparently hated the feel of the collected torrent hitting his face and ears. So, he stood outside, tail toward the wind and blowing rain, head lowered and ears tilted forward.

Tuesday night, just before the latest storm began, I fastened a makeshift gutter up over the shed entrance. That night, as rain drove down in sheets, I knew we’d find out whether or not the gutter made any difference. When we drove over the next morning, after the rain, there the horse was, standing outside in his pen. “Well,” I thought, “that was a flop. Didn’t make a bit of difference.”

But after I got out of the car and walked over to the pen, I noticed just a single wet spot on his hide, on his back right in front of his flanks and dropping down several inches on each side. Otherwise, he was dry all over. Clearly, he’d spent the night in the shed instead of standing out in the rain.

There’s always a reason for anything that other people do. Most of the time, that reason makes sense from a certain perspective. You just have to look at things from the horse’s perspective. Regardless of which end of the horse seems to be in charge.

H. Arnett
8/2/10

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Storm Change

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Doc Arnett

As I was carrying over a load of boxes and other miscellaneous stuff out of the garage, I saw very clearly the line of the coming storm. The late evening sun shone through the torn places in a slate blue cloud, forming fiery platinum rings at each hole. North and west of that, a dark bank rose up, smooth and ominous.

I fastened a halter onto the horse and turned him into the grazing pasture for a bit. While he crunched fescue and brome, I unloaded the tools, materials and boxes of things I am not yet ready to throw away. We both finished about the same time. I was finished because the truck was unloaded; he was finished because that’s all the time I gave him.

I set planks as temporary guards over the long slot left open just above the concrete blocks I’ve set in to raise the foundation on the little hay shed. In the quick darkness of the coming storm, I could barely see what I was doing by the time I finished. Wind stirred the branches of the sixty-foot tall cottonwood tree and the flare of distant lightning glazed the branches as I got into the truck and headed home.

Twenty minutes away from the storm, there was still plenty of light. I turned on the hose and started watering a wilted rhododendron, sat down on the end of the stone retaining wall. A sudden stir of northern air told me that the storm was there. The temperature dropped from just below ninety into the low seventies.

Even a storm can bring with it some good change and even a pounding rain brings a cleansing. Along with the other.

H. Arnett
9/1/10

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Rest That Works

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Doc Arnett

I believe there was nary a cloud in the sky yesterday while we were working on the horse fence. Even though the sun was bright, a marked decline in humidity and temperature made it a very nice August evening. While Randa stapled the high-tension wire to the outside of the corner post, I put new stakes in the twisted cable for maintaining the brace pressure. The first ones I’d put in were too thin and had broken under the strain.

After finishing that, we moved up to the end post next to the round pen. While Randa grazed her horse, I installed the ratcheting sprockets that are necessary for tightening the heavy, vinyl-coated wire that we are using. Even though I worked in direct sunshine, I never broke a sweat. Quite a change from the previous several weeks when merely walking across the pasture was sufficient exertion to make me sweat. Actual work resulted in a drenching.

When the Arabian’s timed treat was over, Randa returned him to the pen and then helped me finish tightening up the wires. That done, we gathered up the tools and leftover wire. For the first time in a month, we left before the sun went down.

Even while we may continue in the midst of work, God often brings some sort of change that eases our burden. Might be a change in the weather, a comforting word from a good friend or just the sight of a clear sky reflected in the face of the river while the sun still holds above the ridge a few miles away. For things such as this, we ought to be grateful, even while we pray for greater relief and release.

H. Arnett
8/27/10

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Getting There

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Doc Arnett

I suppose I could not easily count the number of conversations I’ve had over the years dealing with scripture, life and the perceptions of each. I’ve known people who believe that God decrees each and every minute detail of our lives and others who believe there is no god. While in my late twenties, I briefly tried to convince myself that the latter group might be right. It was not some noble search for truth but rather a desperate desire that would free me from moral restraints. “If there is no god, then there is no Day of Judgment, and if there is no judgment, then I can do whatever I want without fear of eternal consequences.” Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict put an end to that before I’d finished the second chapter. Instead of launching myself into an epic journey of sensual adventure, I started teaching Christian evidences to college kids.

I’ve tried to help a number of people make sense of their lives, tried to help them deal with beliefs twisted by tragic events. I don’t know that I’ve ever succeeded in any remarkable way but I have had a few of them tell me later that what I’d said had really helped them through a tough time. One of the most poignant things I’ve said in some of those conversations is, “I don’t know.”

I cannot explain God. I cannot understand God. I cannot explain nor understand God for a reason vaguely similar to why I cannot adequately explain quantum physics; I cannot quite comprehend it myself. Theology at times seems to me like trying to explain the universe to a tree frog. I have found faith much more satisfying than theology.

The human preoccupation with explanation inevitably collides with events and situations beyond our capacity for comprehension. I believe that God is often blamed for things with which he had nothing to do and often gets credit for things in which he had no involvement. At the same time, I believe that he is intimately involved with my life and intimately aware of my circumstances. No matter how angry I’ve been with him, he has never abandoned me. Even when I have turned my back on him and stubbornly pursued my own choices, he has never forsaken me. Even when he has allowed me to experience the consequences of those choices, he has never punished me. Even though I follow with a sometimes-faltering step and often mutter to myself about the current path, I still follow.

It is not faith that trips us up; it is the frustration of trying to reconcile our theology with our experience of the world.

H. Arnett
8/26/10

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Setting the Braces

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Doc Arnett

I stand, looking out from the hill
toward the south
lean against one of the corner posts.

Dust rises on Randolph Road
behind a car too far away to hear
as it crosses the bridge.

Somewhere between
the dark of the trees
and the dull edge of the field

there is a seam
where the creek runs against
the base of the bluff

and the line of the earth
changes from vertical
to horizontal.

In this fading haze of dusk,
that change is lost
in the husk of the hills

darkening,
softening
letting go.

Light fog forms
along the creek,
low on the pasture.

The edges blur
in this tired light
and I am ready for rest.

H. Arnett
8/19/10

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Fencing the Horse Pasture

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Doc Arnett

Clipped stems and blades lie in brown mats
against the green of fescue and brome.
Beneath, smothered blades yellow, die.
In the absence of sun and chlorophyll,
they wilt and shrivel like souls
neither giving nor receiving love and grace.

The man who works with me
is not here because of pay or promise
but because of friendship,
the kind of friendship that helps dig postholes
even when August Kansas sends the heat index
into numbers beyond the age of men.

We lift the gas-powered auger,
clear the mounded dirt cone.
He releases the throttle and I hit the kill switch.
“Time for water,” I say.
He nods.

Even under the deeper shade
of the mulberry tree,
clumped and thickly branched,
the heat sends its reach;
breeze tinged by the ninety-five degrees.
A few leaves flinch now and then.

We sit on the scuffed tailgate of the truck,
drink ice water in long, slow sips.

We are soaked with sweat,
but not thirsty. Instead,
we drink from knowing our needs,
from believing that it is this that gives us
what the body desires but is not saying.

Not unlike him who sends his Spirit
to be one who walks alongside us,
refreshing those who labor
in a world of thorns and thistles
under a sun that both heals and kills.

H. Arnett
8/18/10

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A Good Change

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Doc Arnett

I opened the door to get the newspaper yesterday morning and noticed immediately that something was right. Something that hadn’t been right in a while. Something welcome and wonderful: the air was cool.

Yes, right here on the cusp of the Great Plains, right here where the heat index has been in triple digits pretty much ever since the Dark Ages, that’s right; the morning air was cool. So cool that I opened the door to the screened in porch and left it open. Opened the kitchen windows and the window in the mudroom. Stood there and felt the cool caress me for a moment. A fine splendid moment.

I closed my eyes and thought of season’s change for a moment, remembering leaves turning and tumbling. Air crisp like fresh apples and clean as a mountain spring. Air that defines the boundaries and invites you beyond them. Air that seems to bring a brighter look to things. Cool, refreshing autumn air.

Now, of course, by eight-thirty, it was time to close the windows and door. It is still August, after all. And until seasons are finished and the cycles of turning from one time to another are finished, the changing of air will always be a fickle thing. But the fellowship of the Spirit in the bonds of love, now that is another matter altogether. That is a refreshing whose time will never end.

H. Arnett
8/16/10

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Amish Hay

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Doc Arnett

After work, we drive to Maryville,
turn west across the roller coaster of State Route 46.
Farmland spreads out for miles,
remarkably green in the heavy heat of August.

A neatly painted sign on Yoder’s mailbox
warns us, “The wages of sin is death,”
and omits that the free gift of God
is eternal life.

North and east on a mile-and-a-half of gravel,
we find Ervin’s place.
A six-year-old boy, suspendered in two shades of blue,
kneels in the shade, playing.

“You can go on in the house,” he smiles.
I hesitate, knock on the door.
After waiting, I go ahead and open the door,
find a second door and knock on it.

A girl of around ten,
wearing a white scarf and holding a baby,
appears and I ask for Ervin.
A woman comes and says he will be out soon.

He comes out,
shakes hands with me but not Randa.
He helps me load the Craigslisted hay,
mostly brome but with a few bales of alfalfa.

After the stacking and the strapping,
he invites me to use his hydrant
and I rinse off the dust and pieces
stuck to the sweat of my arms.

Some of the dirt of this day
washes away, spills into the gravel.
We travel the returning sixty miles at a slower pace,
pack and stack the hay in the dark of the barn.

On our way then back over to Saint Joe,
lightning cleanses the clouds
of a thunderhead forty miles away.
A baptism of fire instead of water

reminding me of Ervin Mast’s mailbox sign:
“The Lord shall give thee light.”

Even in the storm.

H. Arnett
8/13/10

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