A Bit of Heaven

Posted on May 17, 2017 by Doc Arnett

I often think
whenever I meet
some old friend for dinner
or have time to spend with family
that I haven’t seen in a while
or just get the chance
to be with people I love
“this must be like heaven”
except for the leaving.

H. Arnett
5/17/17

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Ch-Chh-Chuhh-Changes

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Doc Arnett

It is no easy thing to bring certain change types of change to a culture, whether you’re introducing automobiles in a land of horses or replacing waterwheels with steam power. In most every case, those who feel displaced will face and resist the change with everything from words to pitchforks to fire bombs. And sometimes with good reason: it’s hard to celebrate progress when it’s put your family out on the street and without food to eat.

I remember a class I took at Murray State University (KY) when I was working on my master’s degree in 1981. We watched a film one day that celebrated the advent of robotics into the world of manufacturing. The producers showed how one machine could take the place of three to a dozen human workers. “They don’t get tired, they don’t make mistakes, they don’t need health insurance and they never go out on strike.”

Increased production with drastically lowered costs offered clear benefits to the owners, not so much to displaced workers. “Don’t worry,” our instructor said, “they’ll be trained to take care of the robots.”

It was baloney and we knew it. Without a whit of training in advanced economic theory, we knew that thousands of people were going to lose high-paying jobs that would not be replaced. This was not some temporary blip in employment patterns; it was a fundamental change in the nature of manufacturing. It was a change in how the world would do business.

You probably know a bit about the rest of the story. Countries without an established manufacturing industry leaped from the 18th Century toward the 21st. They built factories based on the emerging technologies of robotics, computer controlled machining and modern logistics. Absent the history of unions and ignoring the factors that made them necessary, they had thousands of citizens eager to work a whole day for the hourly wages of American factory earners.

American companies with millions invested in suddenly obsolete equipment and operating systems struggled to adjust and compete. Some succeeded, some did not. Some capitalized on the changes, switching to outsourcing and building or investing in new factories in other places. Our society is still dealing with the impact and implications of a greatly diminished role in manufacturing the world’s goods. The economic ripple is still sending aftershocks, and not just through the Rust Belt.

In most cases, societal change, whether in manufacturing methods or in entertainment and communication, outpaces the anticipation and preparation for its implications. We argue, we blame, we debate, cuss and discuss while things continue to change around us. Sometimes we feel ourselves abandoned by our own culture. Whether we are “old hippies who don’t know what to do” as the Bellamy Brothers used to sing, or are masters of a new domestic reality, we all need something deep, solid and rooted that can not only sustain us but help us live triumphant lives, no matter what unbidden changes come into them.

We need faith, hope and love. And wisdom.

H. Arnett
5/16/17

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A Careful Walk

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Doc Arnett

Somewhere in this morning’s dawning
there should be a warning of some sort,
a caution of how important it is
to walk in peace and wisdom,
to consider others above oneself,
to believe that even yet
there is goodness and decency in the world
but not so much that a bit more
would not be needed even if unnoticed.

Somewhere in this day’s moving toward noon
there should be a reminder of some sort,
that speaking too soon
may not be much worse
than speaking too late
but neither is nearly as good
as saying the right thing
at the right time
and how good it is to find that fine moment.

Somewhere in this day’s fading sun,
it would be good to look back
at what one has done
and see some additional bit of good
that has come
from the seeking of wisdom and peace,
from doing good to the least of these
who are also family of the Lord
and precious in his sight.

Somewhere in this day’s turning to night,
there should be a grateful counting
of both challenge and blessing,
a grateful confession
that all that is good is given by grace,
that nothing that was faced was faced alone,
and that even though this world is not our home
we will have to own how we have walked through it
and that it, too, is one of the things

that we ought to leave better than we found them.

H. Arnett
5/15/17

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A Healing Walk

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Doc Arnett

We used to come to these woods when she was young and small. In the spring during the breaks that schools used to take for planting and farm work and during the summers off that I had in an earlier life, we’d come here. We’d walk along the path that curved through the meadow beside the big black barn and curled alongside the small creek to where it joined another larger creek.

Wildflowers grew and bloomed in their summer stages. Young trees and those of ages past rose up, bending out over the path, over the stone bed creek, leaning into each other from opposite banks. Just before the joining of the streams, a series of limestone ledges stacked up, their edges smoothed by centuries of running water. Water rippled over those edges, tumbling into the small pools below, their sound a primal soothing, music of ancient notes.

Even on the hottest days, the air was fresher here, sheltered by shade and cooled by stone and the flowing water. A small bluff rose up from the edge of the creek right in the curving at the joining of the streams. The freshening green of water moss glimmered in filtered beams of sunlight along the long edges of stone. Susan and her brothers looked for crawdads and salamanders and whatever else was held in small pools. We didn’t bother to measure time during those long walks together and seeing who could get the most skips from a flat stone thrown sidearm across the long flats between the riffles.

On this day, twenty-five years later, in spite of rain and drizzle and chill, Susan and I have returned to Raven Run.

We take a different path, one she has never been down before, the one that leads to the bluffs along the northern edge of the Kentucky River. The path is slick with matted leaves and thin mud. She wants to learn the shape of leaves that define certain trees and I teach her ash and hickory, yellow poplar and elm, maple and oak. She already knows the telltale blooms of honeysuckle bush and I show her the additional tell of the texture and pattern of bark and branches.

At the bluff she asks for stories of my childhood, stories she’s never heard before. With four children of her own, she longs for the links broken by choices and chance, time and distance, to be healed and mended. I ache for the pains and pangs that cannot be changed but am grateful for this moment, this day, this fresh sharing along an uneven path of stone and mud beneath trees bent with rain.

We stand together on the rain-slickened stone edge of the bluff, looking out at miles of muted forest along the long bend of the river. The sky is low and gray. “Look,” I say softly, pointing out toward the south, out past the hanging shroud of clouds and mist and rain, “there’s blue sky.” A break of brilliant blue frames the edge of the front, just above the horizon.

Beyond every cloud, beyond every storm and every gloom, there is hope for healing and strength for the journey. For those willing to walk whatever path is needed, there is always a way back to that place of grace that waits for those who truly seek peace and are willing to show and receive mercy.

H. Arnett
5/12/17

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Big Roy

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Doc Arnett

I don’t think it was necessarily his idea to get born between me and our next older sister but that’s where he ended up sixty-seven years ago today. I don’t recall much about the event, mostly on account of it being another three-and-a-half years before I was born. That’s a better excuse than I usually have for not remembering something.

Pressed on the point, I’d more likely than not allow that it also wasn’t his idea to be so much bigger and better looking than me, either. That didn’t keep from resenting it, though.

It seemed like he was six feet tall by the time he finished his freshman year of high school. At the time, I was about four-and-a-half feet tall and must have weighed all of seventy-five pounds. That didn’t keep me from wanting to play basketball, though.

In our back yard, there was an old goal mounted on an old plank backboard held up on two old posts set in the ground. Once I’d learned to dribble on that rough court, a smooth hardwood surface seemed pretty easy. Our games of one-on-one were pretty one-sided but every now and then I’d manage to win a game of “H-O-R-S-E.”

Looking back, I have to wonder whether he really liked playing or just figured it was something a big brother ought to do for a little brother. He also taught me how to swim and we’d sneak off to the pond together on early mornings when the water was still so cold our lips turned blue. He took me to my first drive-in movie to see Marty Robbins in a stock car racing film called “Hell on Wheels.” I think we both still miss Marty even though he’s been dead for thirty-five years.

A few years after the Marty Movie, Paul was living in Knoxville, Tennessee. He bought tickets for a Steppenwolf concert at the UT-Knoxville arena and set me up with a blind date for the event. (Of course, Paul saved the better looking girl for himself. Fair enough; he bought the tickets.) A blue haze hung above the crowd while the band maxxed out “Born to Be Wild” and a few other of their classics. They did a parody of “Okie from Muskogee” that was funny even to the non-stoned members of the audience. Then they did one I’d never heard before, a surprisingly tender elegy that started with an acoustic guitar solo. By the time they finished “Snow Blind Friend,” it was my new favorite song.

And that concert is still one of my favorite memories. I won’t explain the title of this piece or take time to reminisce about building forts and tunnels in the hayloft or skinny-dipping in a cold creek on a hot summer day with the Willis brothers. I’ll just say that Paul was a better brother than I deserved. He is a natural born mechanic with a gift for making sense out of stuff I still don’t understand and a much higher IQ than his high school geometry grades might suggest.

In the realm of things that aren’t measured by letters on card stock, things like courtesy, generosity and sensitivity, he’s on my honor roll.

Lil Roy
5/11/17

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A Sure and Certain Pain

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Doc Arnett

There is a sure and certain pain
in this leaving once again
of those we love
and miss so much
that we’d swear we can touch the spot
right where it hurts
and suspect the heart does more
than just pump blood.

There is an empty ache
in that constant waking awareness
that no matter
how much we care
it isn’t enough
to make up the lack
of whatever wounds it is
that takes us back
to a childhood that was somehow
wonderful and awful at the same time.

There is a gnawing numbness
that grows inside us
when we have learned
that what we have tried to hide
might be a bit larger than we thought
and being caught in between
the knowing and the healing
is stealing more than what we knew
but even so we also know
that we aren’t quite ready
to give up or move on ahead.

And yet there is an indisputable joy
in those moments of visiting,
a realization that the same grace
that forgives us
also invites us to forgive ourselves,
and a hope of healing
that the same power
that cleansed lepers
and gave sight to the blind
will also find the truth
that will soothe away whatever it is
that keeps us from truly loving
the one that we were and are
and have become.

H. Arnett
5/10/17

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Absolutely No Regrets

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Doc Arnett

I’ve made my share of mistakes—
and enough left over
to ruin a few other lives as well.

I’ve accomplished a good many things,
not as many as some,
perhaps a bit more than others.

I’ve created my own heaps
of un-composted manure,
stepped, slipped and fallen right in the middle
and come out smelling
like something rather unlike a rose.

I’ve stood up for myself and others,
been wrongly convinced of my own rightness
and sometimes damn smug about it as well.

I’ve done things that disappointed
just about every single person that loved me
and a few others as well.

There’ve been times
when I’ve been ruled by pride and prejudice,
been stubborn as a jackass on plowed ground
and as deliberately dense as a stone fence post.

Sometimes I did what I thought
was the absolutely best,
right and righteous thing to do
and learned later I couldn’t have been more wrong
if I’d made that my absolute sole intent.

Sometimes I’ve stored up right and goodness
in the hollow of a thimble
and selfish indecency by the truckload.

But in all of my life,
in every decision,
in every action,
in every occasion:

I have never,
ever,
ever,

regretted compassion.

H. Arnett
5/5/17

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Arrows of Emotion

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Doc Arnett

Truth.
Justice.
Faithfulness.
Righteousness.

Indignation.
Vengeance.
Anger.
Hurt.

Empathy.
Patience.
Tolerance.
Understanding.

Resentment.
Hostility.
Jealousy.
Pride.

Mercy.
Kindness.
Compassion.
Forgiveness.

Indifference.
Harshness.
Neglect.
Hate.

In
Every
Choice:

Consequence.
Choose
Wisely.

H. Arnett
5/4/17

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The Other Warriors’ Dash

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Doc Arnett

My almost-forty-years-old son Sam and I had planned on doing a mud run together this spring, before he has to move from Leavenworth, Kansas up to Lansing, Michigan. So, we bought tickets for Warrior Dash last month. Figured Lexington, Missouri would be our closest chance. I drove for four hours and picked Sam up and then drove another forty-five minutes to a hotel at Liberty so we wouldn’t have to leave quite as early the next morning.

When I went out to the car a bit before seven a.m., the weather prediction seemed spot on: 46 degrees and raining. As we traveled a suspiciously twisting route of back streets and county roads prescribed by Google, we speculated about the condition of the course and the effect of running 5 K’s in this weather. “Slick and miserable” was our quick consensus.

Just as we pulled up to the parking area an hour later, a bus full of other participants pulled away. Turned out to be the last bus to leave. Ten minutes later, some young woman in a big red 4×4 pulled alongside the lengthening line of other folks like us, queued up in the chilly drizzle for the next bus. “They’ve closed the course because of lightning.”

It was hardly the development we’d been hoping for.

We followed a group of people who’d walked across the road after hearing the rumor “It’s only a mile to the course.” We ran into a couple of my former colleagues from Highland Community College. After a brief visit with Scott and Jason, Sam and I walked around the school to a line of a dozen or so busses filled with other competitors.

I figured if anybody would know how far it was to the mud run, it would be the guys driving the busses out there. I asked the driver of the first bus, “How far is it out to the course?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I dunno” in a way that suggested he didn’t care much either. I told the driver of the second bus we were thinking about walking and asked him how far it was. “Well,” he grinned, “it’s a ten minute bus ride.”

That sounded like at least a four-to-five mile hike to us. While we mulled this over, we saw a group of people trotting across the parking lot to where a couple more busses were just pulling up. “Well, Bud, looks like there’s at least six hundred people in front of us when they do start moving the busses out again… if they start moving the busses out again.”

We had a short conference on the way back to the drenched mush of the first parking lot and decided to head back over toward Leavenworth. “We could go run that trail I’ve been training on at Weston Bend,” Sam suggested. “It’s got some great lookouts over the river.” I thought of that line from Braveheart: “Well, at least we didn’t get all dressed up for nothing.”

So, we did exactly that. We ran to the halfway point of three-point-eight miles of river bluffs. On our way back, just as we neared the top of the biggest hill, there was a loud rumble of thunder. As we crested the next two hills, there was more thunder but not that crisp sudden crackling that signals the lightning is close by. We paused at the overlooks again, briefly, looking out across miles of forest in the river bottom, hazed by an overcast sky and rain.

Maybe we were a little addled, perhaps poco loco, admiring the view of a muddy river bend in that sort of weather. Probably a bit demented to think that running nearly four miles of mud trails on a chilly day would be a good time.

Or maybe we were just a couple of guys, bonded by something stronger than genetics, who figured that doing something we love to do and doing it together seemed like a lot better choice than grumbling about the weather.

H. Arnett
5/3/17

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Mountain Moments

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Doc Arnett

It was ninety degrees in Los Angeles as I participated in the stop-n-go urban crawl that seems to define driving out there. I have yet to understand it; there was no construction, no accident, no stalled car, no anything that would explain why traffic suddenly slows down or stops across six lanes. But… it does—again and again—and no amount of explanation or consternation would change it, I suppose. And out there, I guess, it’s best to be grateful for working air conditioning and not get too bothered when it takes over three-and-a-half hours to drive eighty-four miles. Instead, be grateful that it didn’t take twice that long and enjoy the occasional view of mountains and ocean.

Especially when you’re on your way to meet your new grandson.

Little Kinnon is three months old and about a dozen pounds of perpetual motion. Ben and Sara say that he does sometimes get still… for a little while… when he’s sleeping. My guess is they’re too exhausted to be considered reliable witnesses. One thing we are agreed upon, though, is that the little fellow is adorable, especially when you’re not trying to get some sleep.

We sat out on the small patio in their front yard, jacketed against the chill breeze on the side of a hill in San Luis Obispo. I held Kinnon on my lap for a while. He’d look one way and then another, holding his head up, arms and legs swinging and kicking. Every now and then, he’d grip my finger in his tiny hand, and grin at Ben or Sara.

Ben is my fourth-born, the most recently married and the last of my six to have a child. In California, he works for Mobil and is two thousand miles away from his closest sibling. Even though he lives this close to the rugged beauty of the California coastline and the nearness of its fine mountains, he still misses the closeness of family. So does Sara, I imagine.

As couples turn into families and life offers its shapings of who and how we are, we each find our way through. We may grow closer or grow apart but those whose commitment is strong will find a way to turn each of these testings into becoming our better selves. We find that having children is easier than raising them and that loving and living together is both wonderful and fearsome. We are amazed by life’s complexities and cannot explain how we can possibly fathom its many wonders, including how we can love a baby this much in such a short time.

Whether it’s our first, our fourth, our ninth or nineteenth.

We sit together beneath low branches, watch the wind sifting through the intensely green grass and pass another hour in this rare closeness. Such moments as this are always worth the effort, no matter how trying the trip or how long it takes us to get here.

H. Arnett
5/1/17

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