The Blame Game

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Doc Arnett

Over these years, I’ve seen a few changes, even prompted one or two of them. Blame is kind of like manure on a dairy farm: there’s never any shortage of it but it’s hard to find anyone who seems excited about the inherent opportunities.

I’ve found that I can spend an awful lot of time griping about the cows and wishing someone else would do something about them but at the end of the day there’s just a certain amount of by-product that results from turning alfalfa into cream. It’s pretty much inevitable.

There’s a similar inevitability in our own workings. We will make mistakes. We will forget details, including some large enough to smack us in the face. We will misunderstand. We will misinterpret. We will accuse and be wrong. We will be accused and someone else will be right. So will all of the people we know.

In most of those cases, blame is a relatively useless exercise in meanness or insecurity. Responsibility, on the other hand, is a different story. Now there’s a shovel that will fit every hand!

H. Arnett
11/6/09

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Judgment Day

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Doc Arnett

In these last three weeks of gray and rain,
we have passed the peak of autumn.
Leaves that we knew could not stay
were knocked away in a downpour of rain and wind,
the pressing season spending colors
that could not hold for long.

We look now for different things,
seize view of these more subtle signs,
less stunning than the flame of maple and ash:

Throngs of blackbirds twirl in sky dance
above the fields,
a fringe of foxtail bends in the wind,
almost white in the light of cool sun,
bowing beside the field of soybeans
stark in their leafless stand for harvest.

A combine follows the bend
of the tree-lined creek,
swallowing its swath of husk and bean,
spewing stalks and stems,
a sweeping swirl of dust spinning into the breeze,
drifting across these terraced folds of dirt
and crop and promise.

When all of green and color is gone,
when all stands bare against the claiming day,
it is the harvest that matters,
the yield that lasts.

H. Arnett
11/5/09

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Better than Predicted

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Doc Arnett

The forecast was not for overcast but that didn’t seem to stop the clouds from coming in late yesterday afternoon. If this was “partly cloudy,” they must have meant only the part you could see. A great, gray dome stretched out in every direction with only a thin section of light just above the western horizon. Not quite what I expected to see when I walked out of Irvin Hall and across the parking lot.

Still, I’ve seen worse ways to end a day. Toward the east, the least bit of pink glazed the reflecting edges as deflected sunlight passed through the break of southwestern rim. The slightest tinge of rose caught the curds of the sky. Just before we reached Troy on our way home from Highland, I caught a full flush of color in the mirror.

The sun had just then slipped below the inverted bowl of the clouds. An orange glow burned sure and solid, firing the sky and flaming the tree-lined ridge into sudden silhouette. Cornfields caught the quick hue, turning pale tans into burnished tones. In less than two minutes, the glow was gone.

We come to the end of each day, remembering either the gray or the way a distant pine stood starkly against the fire of a dying sky. Neither is the total truth but one is clearly the better memory. While all that is passed is fixed and fastened, a selectively deliberate amnesia can be a very healing thing. And whenever we have a choice about a day, a friend or the ending of some shared journey, we ought to choose to rehearse the memory that makes for better instead of worse.

H. Arnett
11/04/09

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Shadowland

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Doc Arnett

We spend our lives in shadows,
embracing a warmth of sun
that is done too soon:

A bending of prairie wind
sends a sudden chill of stillness,
a sensing of clouds passing over us.

Believing that we can see,
we grope for larger vision,
a knowing of things
the way they seem to be.

Noses pressed against the glass darkly,
we catch some sense of changing hues,
renew suspicion that we have missed something,

Some new sense
shattering the illusion of comprehension,
shards of knowledge crackling around us.

In the stark slanting light
of a winter’s sun,
we see the shadows sharp and real,
feel them defined on skin and stone.

The bone-cold truth stretches into our being,
a seeing of light and dark,
a sensing in the heart

of a greater truth,
a knowing that shade is proof of substance,
that revelation is given in increments of understanding.

Even though the brightness
is proof of darkness,
even though we must endure the night,
we do not have to claim its nature.

Beyond the skewing shadow,
beyond the yes and no of contrast,
beyond all that is seen, felt, touched and tasted

There is uninterrupted Light.

H. Arnett
11/3/09

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Hurricanes & Funerals

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Doc Arnett

I remember watching the news of New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and seeing how varied the reactions were. Some used the occasion to loot, steal, rob, rape and murder. Others willingly sacrificed so that others could have. Some devoted hours, days, weeks and months to rescue, rehabilitation and relocation. I was reminded that crises don’t develop character nearly so much as they reveal it. It is a rare thing that evil inclinations turn to good in the face of adversity.

The same principle played out on corporate levels as well, I suppose. Whether by local management or top executive, I don’t know, but numerous hotels and gas stations skyrocketed their prices immediately, happily exploiting those who were able to get out of the city.

Civilizations, cities, neighborhoods and families all seem to reflect a similar pattern; where bonds are strong, calamity serves to strengthen them. In the other cases, tension turns to trauma and fractures turn into chasms. Rebuilding the cities might be easier than bringing a family back together. Particularly if it is one that has never truly been a family.

Regardless of the history, though, those who seek the path of God’s blessing, who come confessing that they, too, are sinners, who seek him in humility, who are willing to show mercy and eager for the flow of grace in all directions, they shall yet see the work of his hands and understand that truly, he is at work in all things for their good.

H. Arnett
11/02/09

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Balance

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Doc Arnett

For a week or more, it seemed that we had gone from September to mid-November: sullen skies, chill and wet, a sort of demoralizing drizzle that seems to filter right into the very center of your soul, leaving everything around it cold and drawn. Gone the days of warm, clear blue and the view of sunshine on sharpening colors. Ash and sumac passed their prime in a time-slogged fog of temperatures twenty degrees below normal.

But then came yesterday. All that was gray and dismal disappeared in the nearness of bright sun and the kind of warm that makes you remember Indian summer. Colors fired in the light and the temperature seemed just right for long hikes and slow rides. Leaves played in a symphony of varied tones and all seemed good and right.

Except for the swarming elder bugs, dull and speckled, tumbling around in the breeze, gathered thick as fleas on a forsaken hound. Crawling on your clothes as you walked the sidewalk, covering the glass and latch and panels of the doors, drawn to the sudden warmth of stone and brick.

There is nothing of this world without some perceptible imperfection, some opportunity to lose focus of what is good and right. On the grayest day, some beauty lays its offered gift before us and on the brightest, some chance of irritation. Long after the last fog has faded and all of imperfection is ended, there will still be the glory of Light.

H. Arnett
10/20/09

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Traffic Jam

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Doc Arnett

I learned about sickle cell anemia when I was working on a speech during my first year of college. The name derives from the shape of red blood cells in the affected person, in our country, most always someone of African descent. The normal rounded shape is more conducive to blood flow, helping cells to move around and with one another. In an acute onset, the sickle shape becomes elongated and bent at the middle, much like a boomerang with pointed ends. Not conducive to blood flow.

In such an episode, the cells jam up in a narrow bend or other restricted circulatory passage, blocking blood flow and causing excruciating pain. I know this not by experience but by the accounts of others. What I do know, experientially, is that emotional episodes can follow a similar pattern.

Even significant events are often little more than irritating, just a briefly challenging blip on life’s little radar screen, until they begin to jam up. Family controversy, car trouble, traffic aggravations, chronic illness, holiday disappointments, budget challenges, arguments, etc. are just parts of life when spread out with some intervening respite between. But when they tumble in against one another, in close timing or even simultaneously, the accumulating jumble can knot us up, sometimes painfully.

That’s when I know it’s not just time to pray; it’s time for a heart to heart with Jesus. Even if I do most of the talking.

H. Arnett
10/16/09

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Multiple Symptoms of a Major Meltdown

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Doc Arnett

They have been building for some time now, these indications that something is wrong. It began with a left-turn signal that suddenly began blinking as if it were on its third cup of coffee before six a.m. Then, the transmission selection indicator in the console quit working. The dome light then began working as sporadically as a painter’s helper on a three-week binge. Headlight bulbs, which normally last a decade or more, had to be replaced every few months. As long as the car kept running, though, I just adapted. Finally, Saturday, even I hit my limit.

As I was driving around I-435 in Kansas City around eight o’clock Saturday morning, tooling right along at seventy or so, I noticed my headlights weren’t on. I twisted the control to move from parking lights to headlights.

As soon as I did, the entire electrical system shut down: cruise control quit, tape player quit, dashboard lights quit. Not the least of my immediate concerns was that the engine also quit. I still had power steering and brakes due to the forced rotation of the motor and so I quickly checked my mirrors and headed toward the shoulder. On the way there, I twisted the light switch back to the “Off” position.

Everything started working again, sort of. The engine ran rough, but it still ran. I prayed as if I were praying for deliverance from the face of a cliff. “Please get me to this workshop safely, Lord,” I entreated. In just a few seconds, I added, “And I’d really like to be able to drive this thing back home this afternoon.” The car hiccupped its way for the ten more miles to my destination and I pulled into the parking lot with a mixture of fear and relief. What if the car wouldn’t start again?

Well, I’m happy to say that the Lord answered both parts of that prayer. The car started up fine and ran smoothly. I didn’t dare touch any electrical controls on the way home, except for the turn signal. I declare quite solemnly, also, this ’97 Camry isn’t leaving town until it’s been repaired.

Sooner or later, most of us reach a point where no more warnings are necessary. It would be good if we listened before we started limping.

H. Arnett
10/12/09

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God through the Gray

Posted on October 8, 2009 by Doc Arnett

The rain came in the night, the leading edge of a massive front from the southwest, stretching from St. Louis to somewhere beyond Texas. A sort of nagging drizzle accompanied this morning’s gray, just enough to make you need your wipers, especially when meeting a tractor trailer rig or following the Fed Ex guy toward Troy. The combination of rain and road spray kept a film over the windshield in between the intermittent passes of the wiper blades. Just kind of a miserable morning, really. Cool, damp and gray.

But there was something in that light.

When I chanced a look out the side window, I realized that something in the filtering of cloud and rain provided the perfect spectrum of light to turn the morning landscape into a thing of surreal beauty. I’ve never lived in a place of such varied native grasses. Perhaps accented by an unusual regularity of rain throughout the summer and even through September, there is a splendor in this year’s crop. Shades of beige and brown, green and orange, even lavenders and reds move through the grasses growing on ditch banks and fields, roadsides and fencerows. Seed heads lift clusters of white and beige on slender stalks above the blades.

In this morning’s strangely perfect light, every color seemed to have a soft glow. They all mingled and flowed, blending into a wonderful texture and pattern.  Alongside a creek in the Wolf River bottom, a small patch of sumac accented its distinct crimson, surrounded by the harvest tans of a ripening bean field. Along the ditch lines, scrub oak and towering cottonwood stood in darker contrast. Even the cattails show greens, yellows, tans and browns.

I took in the side views as much as I could while I drove past, wishing we could stop for a while, linger in the slow rain without worrying about what was next on the To Do list or what priorities might re-shuffle the whole morning’s schedule. I took it in as best I could, wondering how this small pleasure could seem like such a spectacle, how nothing more than autumn grass could make the driving pass so finely.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more beautiful miserable morning.

H. Arnett

10/08/09

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River Guide

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Doc Arnett

Several years ago, Randa and I took a rafting trip on the Cumberland River below its falls near Corbin, Kentucky. It’s not the Colorado River but it has a few interesting rapids and miles of rugged beauty. Bluffs rise up around the river and boulders large as houses mark the path of the water. Smaller ones often provide a bit of navigation challenge. At normal water levels, most of the rapids are Level II and III. The Three’s are tricky enough to be fun but over soon enough to keep them from turning into Four’s, a factor that become key on this particular trip.

It was a cloudy day in September and not nearly warm enough to make a plunge into the water sound very inviting. Besides that, Randa wore contacts and was afraid of losing one or both of them if she went overboard. After we were the only two in our group of six rafters who declined our whitewater rafting guide’s invitation to take a swim in one of the calm, deep stretches of the river, he seemed determined to get us into the water. He kept cajoling, suggesting, even mocking us. When the verbal attempts proved unfruitful, he resorted to other measures.

He tried bouncing the front of the raft off of midstream boulders. He tried cutting hard across swift waters. Even though Randa and I sat in the front where it is often the easiest to dislodge paddlers, we had too much river experience for those tricks to work. We kept one foot pushed out in front of us, wedged in the joint between the wall and floor of the raft and shifted our weight to counteract the impact. Finally, he deliberately swung the raft crosswise across a powerful hydraulic and flipped the entire raft. He had finally managed to get Randa and me into the water, along with all of the other paddlers and himself.

In the slower water below the rapids, we helped flip the raft back over and climbed back in without losing anything but a good bit of respect for the guide.

The God who is our Guide will be with us through every eddy, every cut and turn, every rushing rapid and the long miles of slow water. But he will never put us in danger for the sake of his own amusement.

H. Arnett
10/07/09

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