Empathy and the Golden Rule

Posted on June 25, 2020 by Doc Arnett

I remember being aggravated with my father over his loss of hearing. His constant “Huh’s,” “What was that?” and asking people to repeat things got on my nerves. By the time he was seventy, it had become annoying. By the time he was eighty, it was no longer funny to hear him say, “I used to tell people I was getting hard of hearing. Now, I’m just plain deaf.” By the time he was ninety, conversation with him was sometimes not worth the trouble.

During one conversation on the phone, I repeated the same thing, in successively louder tones three times. There was a long pause, and then he said quietly. “I just can’t figure out what you’re saying; I’m going to give the phone to your mother.” In spite of my frustration, I could hear a heavy sadness in his voice.

Until I experienced my own significant degree of hearing loss well before I was sixty years old, I never thought about what he had gone through. Until I myself experienced the isolation, social separation, and some degree of the loss of communication ability, I simply didn’t think about what he had experienced. I didn’t think about it from his perspective because I just didn’t choose to do that. Now that it’s at least eleven years too late to do him any good, I have a much better notion of what Dad’s older years were like.

Empathy is not coincidental. It is true that we sometimes have epiphanies that give us wonderful insight into the experiences and situations of others. But ultimately, seeing things from someone else’s perspective is a matter of choice. And I believe that the more frequently we make that choice, the more likely we are to treat others as we would be treated.

H. Arnett
6/25/20

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Morning Meditation in a Season Seeking Justice

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Doc Arnett

Five days before
the longest day of the year,
I step out into the still, clear air of morning.

I long for the forming of dew,
for the calm refreshing
of these few moments

spent on the steps
of this small, plain porch
under the overhanging rafters.

Elm and oak line the silent street.
A slight breeze from the east
bends the spray of the sprinkler.

I sit and watch the constant back and forth
of thin streams drifting their white and gray
into the earliest parts of this day,

darkening the earth, at first in clear lines
but soon losing their defining edge
and merging into a mat of moisture.

Soaking into the soil,
spilling their sustaining fill into the dirt,
moving beneath the sod,

blending into earth and element on this good day.
Loosening N and P and K,
a readying for the roots

of tenacious grass
and the long shoots sent below
for the growing of the things that show

yet are so dependent
for their thriving green
upon the things that are not seen

and yet are fiercely known.

H. Arnett
6/16/20

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Another Sad Sod Story

Posted on June 15, 2020 by Doc Arnett

For an undetermined number of years, our yard was a visual manifestation of indiscriminate vegetation and an object lesson in natural regression. In early spring, a domination of henbit or chickweed and a few other very un-lawnlike natural protrusions produced a mottled conglomeration of blooms and foilage. In mid spring, crabgrass began to emerge, intermingled with fescue and whatever else was in the “sun or shade” mix I bought from Wal-Mart, Lowes, Menards or Uncle Sid’s Seasonal Market & Sundries.

Then, as the temperature rose each year and transitioned from spring to summer, Bermuda grass sprouted in the midst of dying chickweed or henbit and began to earnestly work its way into the flower beds and garden plots. Depending on rainfall, water grass would take over in other spots, presumably determined by the interactions of natural drainage and a random plot generator.

It took me three years of persistent efforts to secure a twenty-by-forty strip of greenish, sod-like surface under two of the big Chinese elm trees. That involved at least four separate seedings, each followed by weeks of daily watering. The rest of the yard continued its seasonal fluctuations and irritations.

My latest efforts in this fool’s errand of actually having a lawn involved renting a de-thatcher and then raking up about five thousand square feet of plant detritus and dislodged debris. By hand, quite literally, I spread several pounds of fescue, bluegrass and perennial ryegrass seed, mixed with fertilizer and “soil conditioner” and guaranteed to give me a thicker, richer, greener lawn. Provided, of course, that I dedicate the next six months of my life to twice daily marinations from a garden hose.

About three days after I sowed that fifty-by-one-hundred-foot strip, summer slammed into south central Kansas. Admitting the limitations of middle-aged memory and an overly human tendency to exaggerate, I think our daily highs here have been over ninety degrees for at least twelve of the last fifteen days. It hasn’t rained in about three weeks. My water bill will probably be in the neighborhood of a hundred-and-fifty dollars next month.

Less than half of the seed I sowed has sprouted. Let’s say the conditions haven’t been ideal for lawn starting. Sometimes it’s just not the best time for attempting what it is we want to accomplish. Sometimes, no amount of effort can overcome the reality of the situation. We can bash our heads or dash our heels against the hard crust of drought and heat. We can either wait for better conditions or pay the water bill and keep hoping for the best.

On the up side, the Bermuda grass is looking much better… sometimes the thing that wasn’t really our goal turns out to be a better alternative.

H. Arnett
6/15/20

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Walking Through the Night

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Doc Arnett

Walking east along Radio Lane,
a hundred yards past the last house on the left,
we pass by a bunch of honeysuckle in the fence row.

Massed against the woven wire strung between the posts,
a host of yellow blooms droop the ends
of tangling vines.

That sacred scent moves my mind back into the past,
nights of driving slow along gravel roads
after the end of summer days in West Kentucky.

Heading home from a long day of hauling hay,
or going home from church on a Wednesday night,
I’d turn right beside Kelton Rogers’ house and head toward Browns Grove.

Other times, just out driving my baby blue ’67 Opel with the hand-painted rally stripes,
tires crunching along the backroads with Three Dog Night
or Steppenwolf howling on the eight-track.

Trying to fill the gaps
between who I wanted to be and who I wanted to be with,
I drove alone through the closing darkness.

In places where vines grew so thick you couldn’t even see the fence,
mounds of blooms lifted that heady perfume
into humid dreams of June.

I knew nothing, really, of Old Testament incense,
but it seemed to me—and still does—
that a fragrance this soft and sweet

though not quite the same
as the praise or prayers of the saints,
must lay its offering at the very feet of Jesus.

H. Arnett
6/2/20

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Last Week of May, 2020

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Doc Arnett

A week of splintered thoughts and fractured feelings,
the country reeling from disease and disorder—
over a hundred thousand dead from COVID-19,
and incredible scenes of reactionary riots
spreading across the country
after the killing of an unarmed man
at the hands of the police in Minneapolis.

Buildings burned, stores looted, a president’s threat of shooting.
Stones and bricks thrown at police, patrol cars set ablaze.
News crews fired at with rubber bullets and pepper balls,
reporters and photographers bruised, bleeding, some arrested.
Instigators and agitators behind masks of a different purpose,
demonstrators linking arms to protect law enforcement,
others with no intent other than theft and destruction,
vigilantes in camo and Kevlar patrolling streets and rooftops.

Still others filled with the frustration of years, decades,
and centuries of injustice,
their voices ignored but their hearts determined
to make the change they want to be,
marching in the streets but refusing to destroy.

In one or two places, police kneeled before the crowds,
confessed aloud, asked for forgiveness.
They prayed with those who had come in hostility,
all deeply touched by this unexpected humility.
Men and women weeping together,
soft streams of tears without color.

In Wichita on the last Sunday in May,
on the First Day of a new week,
another demonstration of a better sort—
by negotiated agreement
police and activists met in a park that afternoon,
grilled burgers, ate together and talked.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called ‘the sons of God.'”

H. Arnett
6/1/20

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Never Alone

Posted on May 20, 2020 by Doc Arnett

Never Alone

The prophet Elijah was kind of bummed out. It had been a rough stretch. Sermons not going over well, people out to get him, powerful folks trying to do him in. A royally ticked off queen named Jezebel determined to kill him. (Not a really unusual reaction from a pagan ruler when you’ve totally embarrassed her in a public showdown and then celebrated by executing a few hundred of her pagan prophets.)

So, Elijah skedaddles to the wilderness. It was just him against the whole world. Woe is thee, woe is thee…

In First Kings Chapter Nineteen, he laments to God: “I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”

Sometimes doing God’s work can feel pretty lonely. It’s easy for us, in the tunnel vision of self-centered discouragement, to feel like we’re on our own. We’re not and neither was Elijah.

Basically God tells him to suck it up and get back to work. Other tasks left to do, you know. And, God lets him in on a little secret, “Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal…”

There are always more faithful followers of The Divine than we are aware. People who love truth, who seek justice, and show compassion. People who share the same ideals, the same vision, the same pursuit of righteousness and peace. They’re out there; God knows where.

And, at the right time, God will send one of them to us. Or send us to one of them. At just the exact moment when we truly need and maybe least expect it. One or twenty or a hundred of them will show up and get us through whatever we need to get through.

Who knows—other than Jehovah? Today might be the day that you meet up with your Elisha!

And besides, as long as we are seeking and serving the Almighty, we are never alone.

H. Arnett
5/20/20

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A Good Visit in the Middle of May, 2020

Posted on May 18, 2020 by Doc Arnett

At the end of a four-day visit from our daughter,
we sit on the deck on a Lord’s Day morning,
feeling the forming of this good Sunday.

Following a week of mostly rain and clouds,
we enjoy the lifting of the shroud of heaven:
sunlight filters through the high branches
of an eighty-year-old oak tree
while an intermittent northeast breeze
shimmers chills along the lines of my face.

It has been nearly thirty years
since we have had this much time with Christy—
days with no schedule,
no particular demands of any particular thing
that had to be done at any particular time.

She and Randa have gone for walks,
we have talked for hours,
watched movies,
and spent a little time together
out at the Cowley Lake Waterfall
and at Camp Horizon’s Inspiration Point,
skirting the edges of limestone ledges
along the fringe of the Flint Hills.

The view of miles of rolling fields,
the sandy bends of the Arkansas River,
and the murmuring sounds of gravity and water
may have not been all that we or our daughter needed,
but was certainly a call well heeded.

The sun rises higher and in the ebbing of the breeze
quickly warms whatever skin it can find.
We transition to that unwelcome ending of conversation,
leave the chairs sitting out on the deck.

I help Christy load her stuff into the SUV,
and we all hug our goodbyes.
She heads out on her five-hour drive,
a final wave to each other
caught beneath the branches of the Chinese elm,
sunlight and shadow filtering across the asphalt.

H. Arnett
5/18/20

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Tub Time

Posted on May 13, 2020 by Doc Arnett

I’m not sure what’s going on, folks, but it seems the older I get, the more I’m enjoying tub time. I suppose it’s possible that it’s a second childhood kind of a deal but to be honest, I’m not sure the first one ever really ended.

Whatever it is, even without a rubber ducky or a plastic Tuffy the Tugboat, I love soaking in the tub. Seems like the hot water just sort of eases both body and mind and even gives the spirit a little recuperating time.

At the end of this morning’s stint, I sat upright with my legs stretched out, feet against the opposite end of the tub, legs slightly bent, and popped the plug. Concentrating in a rare moment of mindfulness, I was aware of the warm water receding, exposing wet skin to cooler air. I knew the instant when a small spot on the back of my left calf first touched the bottom of the tub. Then the right calf. I felt the weight transfer as the water receded and my flesh began to bear its own weight. Finally, as the last bit of water drained out, all sense of relieving support was gone. Back to the reality of life, so to speak.

We have those times in our lives when we feel the full lifting of the Spirit, a calm but buoyant faith surrounding us. Hope resonates throughout every part of our awareness and being. We walk in complete assurance of God’s purpose and presence in our lives. Perhaps, then, there are the other times.

We feel the full weight of each step, the whole of our bodies driving down through one foot and then the other. We may even feel as though the stone is turned to sand beneath our feet. Maybe even turned to mire like the bottom of an old woods pond that hasn’t been dredged in eighty years. All the silt and half-rotted leaves offer almost no support and we sink in the slime up to our knees.

In those times, we might need to reconsider whether we’re walking where we are supposed to be walking. Perhaps we’re trying to force our way through the swamp when we should be waiting for God to show us a better path. Maybe we temporarily abandoned our walk of faith and substituted our own judgment for his guiding.

And, it’s also entirely possible that we may be at one of those times in our lives when God is up to something else. It could well be that he has placed us in a time of different experience. A time that will remind us that even when we may feel that we have drifted away from his presence and his leading, he is still guiding our steps, still shaping our souls, still preparing us for the eternal abode.

I am quite certain that God never intended that we spend more time soaking in the tub than we spend walking in his will.

H. Arnett
5/13/20

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On the Passing of David Miley

Posted on May 12, 2020 by Doc Arnett

After all the months that seemed like years,
after all the tears that seemed like fire,
after all the dread and the long, long, tired days
of walking through the maze of cancer-ed life,

After driving back from Florida into the Twilight Zone,
the decade that we called “April of 2020,”
the meetings after meetings after meetings,
working in some sort of hazy drifting,
a constant shifting between fear and anger
and the growing sense
of “What the hell are people thinking?”

After all that time of living with knowing
about your father’s disease,
came that awful aching Mother’s Day morning
when the true nature of all that had been forming
inside his body suddenly came to light
in the harsh bright of the ER department.

In only a few hours then,
he was gone.

Gone the strong hands that worked
for as long as you can remember.
Gone the hands that held children and grandchildren.
Gone the smile and the sad ache in the eyes
that sometimes belied the reassuring,
“Oh, I’m okay.”

In the coming hours and days and weeks,
months and years,
there will come those times of tears and weeping,
the sudden pangs of missing him
and wishing he could have seen this,
all the things that he will miss.

But hopefully, too,
will come some sense of knowing
that he is now beyond all aches and pains,
beyond all grinding agony and helpless loss,
held by the hands that once shaped wood
and raised up houses where none had stood,
hands that healed sinners and comforted the broken,
that brought forth Lazarus from the tomb,
and will—on that One Great Day—
bring your father back to you.

H. Arnett
5/11/20

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Last Morning in April

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Doc Arnett

I love the way early morning sun
tilts its low-angled slant across the lawn.

The way the slender shoots of tender grass
just sprouted a week ago—
the way the fragile yellow blooms
of a scraggly rose bush
set near the corner of the house—
the way the billowing pale blue swirls of iris
set along the weathered boards of the neighbor’s fence—
catch the light.

The way coffee steams and curls into the still air,
the quiet calm of unhurried dawning,
the soft, unspoken hope
of this new day.

H. Arnett
4/30/20

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