Author: Henry O. Arnold

My parents gave me my first Bible on my eleventh birthday in 1961 with an inscription in my mother’s hand: “To our son with the hope that this book will serve as your guide all the days of your life. Our love and prayers will always be with you. Mother and Daddy.” It was the standard King James Version. “If the KJV was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it is good enough for us,” was the tongue-in-cheek argument among the faithful as to the only acceptable translation back then. It sits on my desk; dog-eared, held together with a rubber band and brittle masking tape, with the pages inside marked and worn. Now do not be deceived. As sweet as this sentiment might be, I tested the inscribed words. My parents love was tried and their prayers were many when I took a prodigal turn and remained “in the wilderness” for what, I’m sure, seemed like ages. At one point Mother said she stopped praying for me to make good choices and have good friends. Instead, she prayed for the Lord to just keep me alive. I am very grateful to my parents’ faithfulness, and like the prodigal son, when I “came to my senses,” a discovery of an active, loving relationship with God and an intense thirst for Scripture came with it. A devotion to tell or retell stories from the Bible would soon follow. The traditional “Prodigal Son” story casts the younger son as the wayward one. By demanding the father give him his portion of the inheritance, he was saying, in essence, he wished his father dead. He then went out to squander his money and his father’s love. The older son remained home to work in the family business. This son thought himself highly favored. When his repentant younger sibling returned home begging forgiveness, the older brother felt justified in his anger that their father welcomed home a rebellious son and threw him a party to boot. He was indignant believing he had earned his father’s love and deserved it, thus exposing his self-righteousness. What is so astonishing is the father’s reaction to both his sons regardless of how they treated him. The father was quick to initiate his love toward both, to the son who wished him dead and the son embittered by a perceived neglect. I have been both sons in my time. To be truthful, I still can be. But I can attest to the truth that when I came running home, my earthly father and mother, and my heavenly father, initiated their love toward me when I did not deserve it. I am a man most grateful.

Today’s media bombards us with images and stories of human pain and grief, each with a set of circumstances that could be woven into a full-length play or novel with characters that bear the universal truths unique to all humanity. This is nothing new. Throughout history artists have given us great expressions of grief in literature, painting, and sculpture that drills down into the core of our soul. In Niccolò dell ‘Arca’s sculpture the “Lamentation of the Dead Christ,” the viewer beholds seven characters all in full posture of extremes, from the physical contortions of anguish to the rictus of death. These expressive pieces strike hard against my heart, but what connects them brings me to my knees. In Greek and Roman times it was rare for sculptors to create large group pieces from one block of marble. Even in the time of the Renaissance, if an artist was to create a scene with multiple characters, most often it was captured in a painting or bas relief. In dell ‘Arca’s work, six three-dimensional characters are focused on a seventh lying dead before them, connected by a single theme—an invisible-made-visible lamentation before the dead Christ. The material for these images was not marble or bronze, but terracotta, considered an inferior material for an inferior art form. The hammer and chisel was not used to shape these images, but the artist’s fingers, molding and shaping each human form. “When I consider…the work of your fingers,” sang the psalmist as he praised the Creator for the mastery of creation. This staged scene has special significance for believers during this season of the year. Yet anyone who pauses before this dramatic tableau might experience what the psalmist calls “deep calling to deep.” We identify with a universal cry of grief and bewilderment when confronted by the death of someone we love. The grief articulated by these six characters brings them to their knees or bursts from open mouths and wrenched faces. Lamentation must explode like the volcano erupting from the bowels of the earth. Imagine what went on in the heart and mind of the artist as he delicately molded these images in a moment of great agony before the body of their dead Christ. How might we react to great loss? All six observers had varying relationship with Jesus: from his mother, Mary, to John, the beloved disciple, to the other women and Joseph of Arimathea. All had personal connections with Christ making grief so very personal. With theatrical staging this exquisite unity of human sorrow is in its rawest form. This captured moment of profound pain will, in a short time, turn into an equally profound joy and wonder. The waiting is comfortless, but joy will soon reward the faithful.

The word “idiot” may be offensive to some, but I use it here in the vein of “fool” and “knucklehead.” I am particularly fond of how the Irish spell and use the word “eejit.” Bonus points when elongating the “eeee.” Through the art of literary conjuring, the Irish have expanded the use of the word into an art form. One freezing morning while Kay was traveling, I went out to start her car and found a battery dead. I inform her by phone, and added, “Don’t worry. I got this.” Such words would soon be eaten. I confidently pulled my car in front of Kay’s and popped the respective hoods. The “eejit” demon lurked in the shadows. The battery posts on my car were easily marked so I attached the metal clamps of my jumper cables to the right connections on the battery. But Kay’s car was a newer and different model and I was stumped between the positive and negative posts. Now the wise person should have processed thoughtful deductions: look at the manual (never crossed my mind), call the auto parts store and ask for help (no way), call the mechanic at our service center (ditto), call a more knowledgeable friend (ditto, ditto), watch an instructional video (ditto, ditto, ditto). I got this, remember? I had a fifty-fifty chance. Even if I blew it the first time I could just switch the jumper cable connectors, right? So “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.” I clamped the cables onto the posts and hopped into Kay’s car. I turned on the ignition but got no response. I expected the engine to give me some sign of life; in spite of the cold, a grumbling turnover would have been encouraging. Then I noticed a trail of smoke and smelled burning rubber and melting plastic. I bolted from the car. To my horror, my cables were burning on the ground between the vehicles. I dashed into my car and turned off the engine, then yanked the clamps off the batteries posts. On the front of each car bumper was a smoldering scar left by the incinerated cables. I slammed the hood on each car muttering some non-church language. Later, when sharing my story at a big family dinner, my grinning nephew responded, “You know, Uncle, people have gotten hurt by doing what you did.” I scoffed with a “I laugh in the face of death” wave of my hand. One likes to make one’s wife proud. One likes to think of oneself as rescuer in times of trouble. At the very least, one likes to think of oneself as handy and useful when it comes to simple domestic tasks. But alas, Kay got stuck with a husband who only knows the difference between stage right and stage left and is able to construct paragraphs into a written story. That old song lyric, “It’s so nice to have a man around the house,” does not apply in my case. For better or worse,…

In the days of my youth, athletic games were announced in gym, I watched the large group I was in split amoeba-like into competitive teams. High achievers in a sport—dodge ball, basketball, flag football, etc.—were designated leaders of a team. After a coin toss to see which captains got to make the first choice, a brutal Darwinian process of natural selection began. Please, dear God, don’t let me be picked last. It was 1974 and I had just graduated from Pepperdine University. I had landed a job with Opryland USA and was cast in the “Showboat Show.” The show incorporated a mixture of old standards like “Old Man River,” with contemporary numbers like “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and an instrumental version of “Shaft” for a big dance number. The set was the façade of a steamboat and the outdoor setting overlooked the Cumberland River. Spoken narration tied the songs and story together. During rehearsals all the cast members auditioned for musical solos and featured dancers. I croaked through “Old Man River” and “Leroy Brown,” then we were put through our dancing paces. The choreographer gave the cast a more complicated routine than what we were given at the general auditions. In that audition, I was the guy in the opening credits of the Bob Fosse film, “All That Jazz;” a stage packed with dancers and one pitiful bloke keeps bumping into everyone. For this complicated routine in the “Showboat Show,” the choreographer had each cast member do a solo sequence in a diagonal line. There was no hiding my lack of dancing skills, and I scooted across the floor asap. I settled into my mortification as the cast gathered in the middle of the rehearsal hall while the show director, choreographer, and music director confabbed and decided who would be a featured dancer, who would sing the featured solos. Once the triumvirate broke huddle, they called out their selections. As the chosen were called, each one peeled off the larger group, giggly with excitement, and stood behind their respective leader. In a matter of seconds I was alone in the middle of the rehearsal hall feeling like the Elephant Man. The choreographer huddled with to her dancers and the musical director did the same with his singers, which left the director to ponder what to do with the odd-man-out. I had faked my way to this point but had been found out. To have gotten this far was a miracle. The director approached. The squint in his eyes was one of either pity or perturbation. He stopped before me and said, “And you, my son, shall talk.” Thus the role of “Captain Jerry” was born. I would speak the narration written for the show. If only by default, the director spotted my one talent and gave me the occasion to exploit it. I’ve been doing my best to exploit it ever since, and so far, no one has found me out…yet.

Homo sapiens have this propensity to blunder and ruin our own interests, yet in spite of the folly we inflict on ourselves and on each other in our weaker moments, most of us have this deep desire to be in a rewarding relationship, awkward and hurtful as it may be many times. This urge for relationship goes beyond the biological human instinct for self-preservation and propagation of the species. In the creation stories found in Genesis, we read that the gainful employment of naming exotic animals in an idyllic, unspoiled environment did not provide enough personal fulfillment for a single human. Creative Artist that God is, there was an evolving process in the acts of creation, and after a bit of minor surgery,viola, a second human was formed.Two humans of equal value and strength were fashioned as a complete reflection of the imagination of God when they “became one flesh.” That astounding concept of human union goes much deeper than a need for the genus to survive. Personal relationships offer potential for great joy deepening the mystery of our individual connections with meaning and pleasure, but too often we clothe ourselves in protective layers to avoid vulnerability and shame. When it comes to the “iron striking iron” dynamics between two people, sparks are inevitable, sometimes sparks of romantic passion, sometimes sparks that leave burn marks. The potential for carnage and exquisite joy is always there. Lest you be deceived, in the iron-sharpening business, Kay and I have experienced both extremes. As Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, a 20th century English writer commenting on his own marriage at the time, said, “The conception of two people living together for decades without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.” The reality of our living together for so long dredges up some unpleasant aspects of our opposite personalities, things we choose to overlook in each other after decades of marriage. That is a sobering and disturbing reality, but like a good play, love and marriage is a mixture of comedy and drama, of passion and pain. As Romeo opines on love, it is, “…a madness most discreet / A choking gall and a preserving sweet.” The truth is Kay and I were and are two lost souls who found redemption in our faith and shared lives. There are no perfect or clean solutions to fault lines of our union. While we bear those cracks and failures and inflicted hurts, we endure because of our committed stab at love and survival. Survive we did and do.

I love when I’m given the opportunity to do a play. I’m liberated to use my Outside Voice without fear of Kay’s disapproval or from a host of others who consider my volume level an infringement on their personal auditory space. During rehearsals and performances I tramp about the world, my mind and body conjuring my character, my voice modulating in tones and qualities searching for the right physical and vocal nuances that will lend emotional truth to my creation. I’m “getting into character,” and Kay cannot scold. Early into our marriage whenever Kay and I were having a disagreement she would stick her fingers into her ears and say “Stop shouting. Use your inside voice.” “That’s not shouting, my dear. That’s projecting. I make my living by projecting.” She rolled her eyes then and does so today whenever I use that lame excuse for my increased volume. On more than one occasion my Outside Voice has usurped my Inside Voice causing, well, consternation. A notable moment was in a church setting years ago when our girls were old enough to be sitting with us in the pew and young enough to be indifferent to the sermon…much like their father on this occasion. When the preacher made an inane doctrinal point that God’s love was contingent on our behavior and the performing of good works, I took umbrage. The preacher’s line went something like, “Belief in Jesus is well and good, but you have to earn your place in heaven with good works.” Silence was not an option. I looked at our little darlings seated between Kay and me, happily playing Tic-Tac-Toe on the church bulletin, and said, “Girls, what he just said is a lie.” When a stage whisper is properly applied and used in the correct setting, it is for everyone in the theatre to hear what was said. The game of Tic-Tac-Toe halted in mid-contest, their little heads popped up like gophers, and two pairs of eyes looked at me as if their father had use profanity in church. Trouble was, other congregants in a multi-pew, 360 degree radius also registered their shock at my distempered remark. Heads turned. Faces scowled. My stage whispered comment had raised some hackles. It's easy to imagine Kay’s reaction; from shock to “As soon as I get you home, I’m gonna kill you,” in only a millisecond. When it comes to speaking my mind at inappropriate times, I have racked up more “fails” in the pass/fail grading system, whether I speak at full vocal projection or sotto voce. I am learning, but there’s still work to be done. And in case you were wondering that church door has not been darkened by my shadow since.

“People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine.” This quote from a E.M. Forster short story is entitled “The Machine Stops.” Yes, that Forster of “A Room with a View” and “A Passage to India” fame. The short story was first published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review in November of 1909. “The Machine Stops” is a futuristic tale with only two characters: a mother, Vashti, and son, Kuno. An invisible Central Committee had designed an omnipotent and omnipresent Machine and decreed all babies put into public nurseries. “Parent’s duties,” said the Book of the Machine, “cease at the moment of birth.” Vashti could visit Kuno in the nursery until the Machine assigned him a room on the other side of the earth. Hence forth, the only means of communication for mother and son was through devices and screens. The populations of the earth lived underground in an elaborate honeycomb system with individuals housed in small, hexagonal rooms. Every need was met inside the room. All requirements to sustain human life in one’s personally designed abode was provided by the Machine and its Central Committee. Few ventured to the “surface of the earth” except for a rare flight on an airship with the sky windows concealed by blinds. For humans to view the earthly sights of nature was determined too distressing. Kuno called his mother located in the southern hemisphere and asked her to take a flight to the northern hemisphere. He had something important to tell her. Flying in an airship was frightening enough, but Vashti was even more terrified to speak to someone in person, even her son. The advanced technology of this brave new world had made face-to-face contact obsolete. Public gatherings were abandoned. Knowledge was passed through lectures on screens taken from the Machine’s Book of Knowledge. Vashti was horrified to learn her son had ventured to the surface of the earth without permission from the Central Committee. Kuno experiences the natural world and encounters others “hiding in the mists.” When she asked why he took such a risk, Kuno explains, “We have lost a part of ourselves. I am determined to recover it.” Vashti tells her son the fact that he was only threatened for his foolishness and not banished was a sign of the Machine’s mercy. “I prefer the mercy of God,” Kuno replies. The prescient qualities of “The Machine Stops” cannot be denied. As time progressed in the story and the efficiency of the Machine increased, the curiosity and intelligence of man decreased. The ultimate goal of the Machine was to free the individual “from the taint of personality,” limiting all human-to-human contact and channeling the need to touch and be touched only by the systems of machinery and screens. Have we assigned demigod status to our technology? What may seem like personal empowerment at our fingertips may become our undoing. Call me a curmudgeon. I’ve been called worse.

Who wants to live forever? I’m guessing most people would like to slow down the aging process by living a healthy and balanced lifestyle, but there are those rare earth billionaires among us who are doing their darndest to reverse the whole process. The thought is, if one has enough money and will power, one can stop death in its tracks. Wealth and success has provided true believers such advantages that us mortals can only aspire. It is no secret that people in higher economic brackets enjoy a better quality of living than those who don’t have the disposable income for high-end exercise equipment, the gyms and personal trainers, the pricey vitamins and supplements, not to mention the sums of money one has to shell out to purchase groceries. As we move further into the world of A.I. designed for the betterment of mankind, will these advancements leave our near-empty wallets even more empty? Will these mechanical devices that measure our bodily indexes really slow down the ever-ticking timepiece that Death keeps in its pocket? I can’t afford a designer workout wardrobe let alone multiple A.I. technologies to reverse my biological clock. Since recorded history we have been searching for the means to extend our lives, questing for the elixir vitae that would make us immortal. The ancient Mesopotamians believed a plant growing at the bottom of the sea could yield the cure. The Chinese believed a diet of the earth’s long-lasting minerals provided longevity. How do you say, “That boiled jade could use a little salt,” in Chinese? Now the Philosopher’s Stone is found in A.I. devices, the workouts on cross-training machines followed by mixing up those fountain of youth cocktails full of nutrients to reverse the cellular aging that comes with, well, aging. I suggest something better for those who want to reverse the effects of mortality. A carpenter turned rabbi turned savior offered himself as the spiritual source for living water. This nutritious drink came with a guarantee: anyone who drank this true elixir vitae would no longer need to seek remedies for eternal life from other sources. I’m not saying toss all A.I. devices in the dust bin or forget your exercise routines and donate your Lululemon workout clothes to Goodwill. But if you really want to live forever, start sipping the living water of the Son of Man and embark on a journey of the beautiful mystery of God’s grace.

My father was stationed in Morioka, Japan after the surrender in September of 1945. He had spent months in the Philippines witnessing the horrors of war, and transitioning from combat to one of occupation Japan’s surrender was a welcomed relief. The war had ended and a level of normalcy was beginning to emerge. Dad was a prolific letter writer. His letters to his parents were filled with rich details of his military activities. As I read through a batch of Dad’s dispatches, I was struck by how quick he was to volunteer for whatever extra-curricular task required his time and talent. I saw this quality growing up, but by reading these letters, I realized he had been living this way long before I was born. I thought I had been the first one in our family to ever perform in a Christmas pageant, but the cast photo in this “Conversation” shows my father standing at the end of the line on the far left dressed as a Roman soldier. The photo was taken on December 5th or 6th, 1945 on the stage at the town hall in Morioka. In the correspondences to my grandparents leading up to this event, Dad wrote in detail his involvement with this event, from music selection to conducting the choir to staging and performing. This might have been his first theatrical production. Here was a multi-racial cast with a Japanese Joseph and Mary along with some of the citizens of Bethlehem side by side with American shepherds and soldiers. Dad played the music on “a little pump organ the church had” while directing the choir. Dad writes to his parents, “That was probably one of the first times since the war started that Japanese Christians and American Christians sung together…and it was beautiful.” Once rehearsal was over, Dad and another soldier treated everyone to his version of snow cream. There had been a fresh ten-inch snowfall that day, and while he had no vanilla or chocolate and a moderate supply of sugar, Dad made do with pineapple juice that “ought to make a good sherbert – And it was (Dad’s underline) good. Everybody enjoyed it a lot.” Dad, and then with Mom, knew how to create something from scratch, from a theatrical production to concocting something tasty to eat afterward. Like the members of the cast in this Christmas pageant, my parents were so inclusive. This theme of hospitality was as natural as breathing to my parents. Not just at Christmas but all year long. So often it is impossible to appreciate what you had growing up until you don’t have it any more. But then as I review my own life and the lives of my siblings and our collective children, I see how the gift of hospitality originating from the joyful hearts of Buddy and Bernie has been handed down to the third and fourth generations.

I love a good fire and will use any excuse to build one. If the chimney in our house was not so old, we would have a “live” fire. As it is, we put in gas logs, so we get the flame and the heat, but not the snap, crackle, and pop of incinerating logs. The one consolation is that the hearth is open, and flame and heat are not trapped inside “the abomination of an air-tight stove.” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words, not mine, expressed in his essay “The Old Manse” written in 1842. It seemed that the modern technology of the day dealt a crushing blow to old Nat’s inner peace and spurred a gloomier vision of the future. “I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly may it be said that the world looks darker for it. In one way or another, here and there, and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful, out of human life.” However his aversion to modern amenities, such technological advances did not prevent him from installing three of these “abominations” in his home in Concord. No doubt at the behest of his wife. For every generation there are those who point the bony finger of judgment on many things that might bring about our ruin: air-conditioning, space travel (when we landed on the moon in 1969 my great grandfather said, “If the Lord wanted us to travel to the moon, he’d a put stairs up there.”), television, comic books, social media, and oh my, Tik Tok. Has your brain dissolved into a puddle of slime at these potential hazards to society? Then there was/is the novel which has caused fear and trembling among civilizations. Thomas Jefferson was alarmed by what the reading of novels might do to impressionable minds. In a letter dated March 14, 1818, he stated, “A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for novels…when this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading.” I guess if you wrote the Declaration of Independence you are entitled to have an opinion about the modern novel of his day as “this mass of trash.” I wonder if our third president had lived long enough to read Nathaniel Hawthrone’s romance novels might he have had a different opinion? Still, President Jefferson did read Shakespeare and regularly attend the theatre. He wasn’t a complete wastrel with his leisure time. I like reading a good novel. I’ve written a few myself. Whiling away the clock with a novel can be a worthy investment of time and treasure. Much better than doomscrolling. Having your imagination carried along by an author’s story, one sentence at a time, can be a pleasant experience quietening the noise of everyday life. We owe ourselves those tranquil moments and imaginary flights that only good stories provide us.