The Long Path

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Doc Arnett

I grew up on a dairy and row crop farm in southern Kentucky. Among the privileges of that raising was the meandering joy of the cattle paths. I used to wonder what our pastures would look like from the sky with those rambling dirt paths made by the Jerseys veining across the green of fescue. In the summer, I would run along the path, arms held out in the imagination of flying or of riding a motorcycle, feet pounding against the dust raising little puffs with each step. Back then, I could run fast and far. Probably at least half the distance as I remember it now, colored by the years and caressed by the rehearsals. Even in the selectively enhanced memory of middle age, there was at least thing about the main path that remains unfazed; you could not tell from either end or the middle where the path would lead you.

Standing under the shade of the hickory trees at the old spring down behind the tobacco barn, it was impossible to see where the path would end up. At first, it seemed only to lead away from the creek. Then, as you walked it, it seemed that the destination was the pasture. Only when you followed it long enough to clear the trees fringing the old cemetery at the north side of the field could you see that the path led to the barn, a half-mile away from the creek.

When we learn the ways of God and walk in his paths, we do not have to see the destination to know that the path is worth taking.

H. Arnett
10/6/09

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Short Ride, Long Walk

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Doc Arnett

A friend of mine was headed home from work the other day and saw a young man walking by the road. He stopped and asked the guy if he needed a ride. “Oh, man, I’d appreciate that,” was the reply. Tall and lanky, hands hard and jeans dirty, his eyes and face held the look of someone who had worked a long day and wouldn’t make it the rest of the way without a little help.

“How much farther did he have to go?” I asked. My friend grinned, “By the time we went up the road, turned into the trailer park and got back over to where he was going… maybe a quarter mile.”

At first, I thought it was a waste to time to give someone a ride that was no farther than that. But then, I remembered some of the times when I’d come to the end of my energy but not the end of my day. Five hundred fewer steps sure seems like a lot bigger deal when the long shadows stretch across the road in front of us in the work-worn ending of a hard day.

So, maybe the short ride given by my friend wasn’t a great big deal. But it was certainly worth doing.

H. Arnett
10/05/09

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Compare & Contrast

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Doc Arnett

I got one of those phone calls from Randa yesterday. You know, the kind that makes you start thinking dollar signs right after the third syllable. I’d driven the car to work so when she needed to run an errand, she took the truck. Well, she tried to take the truck.

It started up fine, went into gear fine and the clutch engaged just fine. Just about the time she wrenched her shoulder trying to steer the thing away from the telephone pole on the opposite side of the alley, she knew something was not fine. Fortunately, the brakes still worked quite well but the power steering was shot. After she backed the truck back the fifteen feet into its parking spot, she found the large, suspicious blotch of fluid. The color was quite similar to the color of used power steering fluid.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she concluded.

Well, now, folks, I rarely respond positively to those unanticipated little battles of the budget. I tend toward the worst possible interpretation and projected costs. It might just be a busted hose that I can replace for twenty or thirty bucks. Could be something that will boost several sectors of the local economy.

What I do know is that just a few minutes before Randa called, I had been talking to a young man that I like quite a bit. He had just come in to let me know that his stepsister was in the hospital in Topeka. She’d been diagnosed with intestinal cancer and over the weekend, her appendix ruptured. Somehow, that had resulted in the necessity of amputating her right leg. I have no idea what the connection might be and maybe there’s not a direct link. Maybe it was the cancer and maybe yet another thing altogether. Regardless, on top of all that, his family had just reported to him that the nineteen-year-old girl’s hands were turning black.

I studied his face carefully as he stood, hands gripping the back of the office chair as if its slightest movement would turn the whole world upside down. His jaw muscles bulged rigidly but his lips contorted and his eyes shone under the film he could not keep from betraying a very deliberate stoicism.

“Are you two close?” I asked. “Yeah,” he replied, “I actually like her more than my own sister.”

He welcomed the prayer I offered, though I cannot say which of us it helped more.

H. Arnett
9/29/09

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Un-evolved

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Doc Arnett

in the midst of all that we bring
all that we find and take of life
and all that we have made

in the midst of our finest fears
our brightest tears
and all that we hold near

in the midst of those greatest things
that we have brought into being
and all that we have shaped

there is still

in our deepest core
our most genuine center
the truest part of that which we hold

to be the part
that is more us
than anything else:

an ancient aching
a longing from long ago
an incessant incalculable yearning

unbreaking
unfathomed
unaltered

unfulfilled
except
by the touch of God

H. Arnett
9/28/09

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An Evening’s Lesson

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Doc Arnett

We are finally close enough to done that I begin to carry some of the clutter down from the upstairs rooms. The work of remodeling the bathroom had taken over the sunroom, the hallway and the landings of the stairs. Leftover materials, old fixtures and fittings and tools I might have needed had gathered during those perpetual one-way trips from the workshop. I pick up the heavy air nailer and a caulking gun, head downstairs.

I open the back door and look toward the garage.

Locust trees and maples fringe the bank in dark border on this dark night. Pink roses hang heavy blooms over the stone retaining wall along the drive. There is no light from the sky. I walk slowly, savoring the coolness of humid air. There is no traffic on the street, at least for this moment. I can feel the hint of rain all around me, that verging notion of drops not yet formed. It is in the quiet, the closeness, a delicate tenderness in the air, the grass, the leaves. Even the shapes of trees soften.

I should live so gently.

H. Arnett
9/25/09

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Parting Words

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Doc Arnett

There are moments that take on an appreciable clarity as time passes. In the sharper lens of retrospection, we often see things in greater realization, gain greater awareness of their importance and how much weight they carry. Such was not the case of my last visit with my father before he passed away.

When I stood beside his hospital bed in the pre-dawn hours of that March morning, I fully expected that to be my last time with him. He was ninety-five and recovering from pneumonia but still very weak. In the dim light of the intensive care unit, I held his hand a while, then stroked the thin white hair above his forehead.

“You know, Dad, I admire you.”

He looked at me blankly, deafness muffling the sounds of my words, yet still catching some of what I was saying. Aware of other patients in the ward, I didn’t want to yell things meant only for his hearing. I leaned closer to him and said firmly, “I think you’ve done pretty well for an orphan kid from West Kentucky.”

He frowned slightly, shook his head ever so slowly and looked away, “Kentucky’s not important. What’s important is whether or not I’ve been pleasing to God.”

I couldn’t really say for sure whether he was speaking to me or to himself. He stared at the space above the separating curtain and quoted another old warrior, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.”

I knew that he had not caught what I had said but it wasn’t that important. I’d written a few letters over the years to him and Mom, thanking them for the lessons and the teachings and the example of faithfulness. Just a year or so ago, I’d written and thanked them especially for the respect of scripture and truth they had taught. I had not waited until either of them lay at death’s doorstep before rushing to say the things that I wanted to say. At least equally important, I had avoided saying things that I would wish that I had kept to myself.

As I stood there, body aching from the lack of sleep and the five hundred mile drive, I did not speak from desperation or fear of his coming death. There was no such pressure, no such straining to escape the pangs of guilt or regret. I had accepted the distance and differences between us while still appreciating those things that I treasure even now.

I remembered that conversation on the first Lord’s Day in August as I followed my sons and nephews as they carried the casket my wife, Randa, and I had made for him. As our steps pressed into the fescue flesh of that West Kentucky cemetery, I remembered, and smiled.

It did not matter, really, that Dad could not comprehend the words that I had said in that last private moment. It did matter that I had said them.

H. Arnett
9/23/09

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Resolution

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Doc Arnett

In this changing of seasons,
this new crispness of morning air,
there is an invitation of lingering longer
in the warmth of my wife and bed.

In these moments of reluctant rising,
I find my eyes less eager to open.
I’d rather draw the comforter up a bit closer,
turn off the alarm
and find out just how much sleep
this older body thinks it needs.

There are many invitations
to decline duty,
to rest,
to stay sheltered,
to hold close to the comfort
of warmth and ease.

There are those, too,
that woo us away,
calling us to some tempting thrill,
some momentary pleasure
that would take its measure of consequence
for ages to come.

Somewhere in between
those conflicting calls,
I find myself
leaving the reassuring warmth and closeness,
turning toward the readying
of another day’s doings.

I find that in the making of each day,
my life has a way of drawing me
to the things that are good,
the things that endure,
the things that bless.

It is for work that rest is given.

H. Arnett
9/23/09

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Fatal Errors

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Doc Arnett

One of the annual milestones in my work with the college is the completion of an annual report package for the state agency in charge of higher education. The package includes a dozen different reports that cover basic demographics on each student, all of the courses taken during the academic year, categories of students, classes and so on. Several of the reports are inter-linked with cross checks to verify a variety of facts, such as that someone whom we claim is a transfer student in report “D” didn’t turn into a first-time student in report “G” and other little quirks like that.

Given that we are a small school, the job is less torturous than it might be at KU but we still manage our share of challenges. Given that we have a couple dozen different people inputting data on several thousand students across the region, we do get some conflicting bits of information. Sometimes I’ll uncover one who was listed as a returning student in the summer, a first-time student in the fall and a high school student in the spring. There are even a few who have been listed as all three in the same semester! Then, add an old whuffer like me who is trying to collect everything and bring it into some semblance of order and it’s small wonder that we started out with nearly ninety thousand “fatal errors” in the initial submission.

But, through perseverance and assistance from a helping soul in the tech department on campus and a couple others in the state agency, we were able to iron all those out and finish up the report before the deadline. Uhmm… terms like “deadline” and “fatal error” are a bit unsettling, aren’t they?

Today, I’m thankful to be done with the report and very thankful that I have a job where a fatal error doesn’t even cause a scratch. There are thousands who this morning would gladly change places with me in that regard. Where they are, fatal errors kill people.

H. Arnett
9/22/09

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It Wasn’t Broke But It Did Need Fixing

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Doc Arnett

The new medicine cabinet for the bathroom is beautiful: dark cherry finish, beaded trim around the oval-topped mirror, a garnish of carving above the door and heavy cornice both top and bottom. Very attractive bit of woodworking that Randa found online and that we picked up in Kansas City about three months ago.

We installed it, finally, last week. At first, we used the built-in mounts on the back but found they didn’t allow the unit to fit completely flat against the wall. After removing it and ripping out the mounts, we tried again, using expanding wall anchors with fasteners inserted through the back of the cabinet. That held it flat enough but with the thick trim, the unit protruded nearly eight inches from the wall, enough to interfere physically with use of the sink. That was on top of the “visual interference.” I.e., it just didn’t look right.

So, being the self-deluded glutton for creating work for myself that I am, I assured Randa that it wouldn’t be too big a job to carefully cut away some of the trim and mount the unit so that it was at least partially inside the wall. It took a mere ten hours to reach our current stage of preparation: removing two switches, cutting out three sections of drywall, cutting through three two-by-fours, removing a wall-mounted light base, re-routing the wiring, replacing the light base and relocating the wall box for the switches, adding mounting strips to which I could fasten the replacement drywall. Follow that up with taping the new drywall joints and three coats of finishing compound. Now, we’re ready for sanding, priming, base coat and the three-color faux technique. In other words, just a few more hours and we’ll be ready to re-install our medicine cabinet.

So, yes, it’s been a bit of an aggravation but improvements often are. The quickest and easiest way is sometimes sufficient, adequate and appropriate. But when we consider how long we might have to live with things a certain way, we should become more willing to do what it takes to make them better. A short-term aggravation can lead to a long-term improvement.

H. Arnett
9-21-09

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Pop-Up

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Doc Arnett

Fairly early in the four-months-and-counting project that we call “remodeling the bathroom,” we installed a small whirlpool tub. That part of the project required significant help from Randa’s brother, Kevin. Among the steps involved was the fitting of a drain kit. Drain kits seem so much preferable to just letting the water run down through the ceiling below, so we opted for that. 

We selected the “pop-up” type: no levers, no plugs, just press down once to close and once more to open. Simple, satisfying and almost idiot proof.  Did I mention that I was involved in this project?

About the second time I used the tub, I pushed down firmly to release the pop-up so the water could drain out of the tub. Nothing happened. I pressed firmly again. Then I pressed firmly and repeatedly. Eventually, the valve released and the water began draining.

After several more sessions of having to make multiple attempts to get the drain to open and just before I became desperate enough to remove the drain and take it back to Lowe’s and indignantly demand a replacement, I made a small discovery. If I just press lightly on one particular spot on the drain, it pops open eagerly! Just that light touch and presto! Drain opens.

There are so many frantic pushes in life that do little to move us toward our goals. Most of them probably accomplish just the opposite. All of our pushing and shoving and grousing and griping and meanness and manipulation seldom gains us anything but greater resistance, greater resentment, greater distance. In many of those cases, a gentle touch in the right spot would be far more effective. 

On the reciprocal side of that issue, I’m trying to be so sensitive and aware that the slightest nudge from the finger of God will move me in the right direction. I’d really like to avoid any more thumps!

H. Arnett

9/17/09

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