Author: Henry O. Arnold

I went through a rigorous audition process for the role of Atticus Finch in a play version of To Kill a Mockingbird. The artistic director had chosen nine actors for the final callback. Any one of them would have been an excellent choice.

When I was offered the role, I called Kay with the exciting news, then called both our daughters. I was able to reach Kristin, but not Lauren. Days later, when I spoke with Lauren, and dropped the “I got the role of Atticus Finch” bomb, her reaction was pure impulse: “Oh Daddy, I’m so excited. Atticus Finch is the father I always wanted.”

This was a moment of profound realization. I knew I was about to square off with a quintessential American icon seared into the consciousness of society. We still laugh at Lauren’s faux pas, but it is not easy to go up against the iconic Atticus portrayed in the film adaptation of the novel.

One theatre patron’s comment to me outside the stage door after a performance was, “You out Gregory Pecked, Gregory Peck.” I assume this was meant as a compliment, but the truth cannot be denied: the image of Atticus Finch will forever be associated with one actor. I mean, he’s got his own stamp for heaven’s sake.

The trouble with icons is that they never set out to be icons, whether born of literary imagination or born of woman. When a kid gets asked what they want to be when they grow up, the answer is never, “I want to be an icon.”

An icon carries with it the implicit expectation of a virtuous character. Family members and friends of the icon know all too well the fallacy of such a notion. When the spotlight is not on the icon, he/she must continue their mundane life of just being human.

A more desirable aspiration is to become a genuine human being. Icons are placed on pedestals and put into stain glass windows with appropriate mythologies built around them. I never have to worry about being placed upon a pedestal or my image fabricated into a multi-colored window. My flaws are too numerous and apparent for icon status. I desire to be authentic in all things and in all ways. Others can have the status of icon. It is enough of a struggle just to be human.

John Milton of Paradise Lost fame, wrote in a letter to a friend, “Why is the Bible more entertaining & instructive than any other book?” Because the stories are addressed to “the imagination, which is spiritual sensation.”

More than forty writers are attributed to authorship, and the divinely inspired literary styles and stories range from historical, poetic, wisdom, prophetic, narrative, epistolatory, to apocalyptic. Some of my favorite passages are in the Psalms. Every human emotion is expressed in those one hundred and fifty psalms. Honesty at its most raw.

Scripture also does not shy away from revealing every distinguishing trait of human nature, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some stories are so outrageous that people can’t believe they are included in such a holy book. I say, how could they not?

This great quote from Bono describes one of many reasons I have such affection for the Bible: “That the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers, and mercenaries used to shock me. Now it is a source of great comfort.” Ancient times or modern times, nothing is new under the sun.

When I began to write my biblical historical fiction series, The Song of Prophets and Kings, I dreamed of gleaning truths from these three-thousand-year-old stories without altering any of the historical events and put them into an artistic context so a modern reader could relate to the situations and the emotional life of the characters.

With the publication of Crown of the Warrior King, the second installment of this series, the tension between the characters has sharpened, the conflict between the monarchy and the theocracy has intensified. The choices made by the main characters threaten to destroy the nation of Israel and bring down the reign of King Saul before it has barely had time to be established.

The human struggle in this novel is as relevant now for the modern reader as it was for those who lived through it so long ago. We can learn from our past. It is not inevitable that we repeat it.

When my rational mind began to question the existence of Santa Claus, my parents pulled me aside and ‘fessed up. But they welcomed me into the myth-making business by insisting that I must not tell my younger siblings of my loss of faith.

Now I had to submit my requests to the indisputable givers of Christmas gifts. That year I had my eye on a clock radio, a pricey item. My parents reminded me that we “weren’t made of money.” If this gift was to be acquired, then a bigger economic plan would need to be devised: the monetary forces of parents, grandparents, and an aunt and uncle thrown in for good measure, would come together to make this purchase.

The big day came, and I anticipated the family gathering and gift exchange at my grandparent’s house where I hoped to receive the desired gift. It was torture to wait until the gifts had been distributed to all the family members. Then my parents forced me to watch as each family member opened their gift before my present was even revealed. When it was finally my turn, to add to the dramatic build-up, my mother had me sit in the center of the room, and I was instructed to close my eyes.

As soon as the box was placed in my lap, I grabbed it and began to shake it. The sound of the contents confused me. I should have heard the thud of a single object bouncing off the sides of the cardboard box. Instead, it was a rattling sound like a bunch of loose parts.

I tore away the paper and yanked off the lid, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a jumbled mess of radio parts with no instructions for assembly. If this was the best my parents could do even with economic support from other family members, then we really must be poor.

There was silence in the room as everyone awaited my reaction, which, after a few seconds of stunned disbelief, was a flood of tears. Not the reaction any of them expected from their “Dirty Santa” trick.

All the conspirators leapt from their seats and crushed me with love, comfort, and penance. My father dashed behind the Christmas tree and presented me with the real and assembled clock radio. Moral of this story: I should not have lost my faith in Santa Claus. He never would have done this to a kid.

When a modern person talks about having a religious experience, that could mean anything from having an excellent cup of coffee to watching a sunset. One could say the same when having a sacred moment in a house of worship, or listening to a piece of music, or standing on a mountain peak, or reading a book. No location is required, nor a prescribed activity, nor a pre-conditioned state of mind that must be in place for someone to experience a moment of other-worldly ecstasy.

A unique kind of joy can be had standing before a painting or in the company of another person when the conversation is both fascinating and enlightening, that too can give one a sense of bliss. While such experiences might be considered spiritual in a loose sense of the word, they are not necessarily holy. Holy moments are astonishing and rare, and often result in a complete change of one’s life and character.

Twentieth-century German theologian, Rudolf Otto, coined the term mysterium tremendum in his book The Idea of the Holy. Otto describes that when one is truly in the presence of the holy, the first thing the person realizes is the state of his wretchedness. We modern people are too busy propping up a perception of our self-esteem to want to risk being confronted by the barrenness of our soul. It takes a deep vulnerability to be open to the presence of holiness.

In my new novel, Crown of the Warrior King, available today wherever books are sold, the prophet Samuel has one mysterium tremendum in the story that so overwhelms him, he falls on his face. For Samuel to understand the heart of God, he must feel what God is feeling. The Almighty invites Samuel into this shared experience, and he comes away with an understanding that the impact of a wayward soul breaks the heart of God and there is a painful cost in restoring it.

When Samuel gets back onto his wobbly feet, he knows he cannot be still. He cannot be silent. He must speak. He must act. There is no going back from this point. The course of history for a prophet, a king, and a nation will be changed forever. It is the inevitable result of an encounter with the holy.

The invention of tragedy as a form of dramatic storytelling is often attributed to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks. The basic construct of a tragedy is that the protagonist, one with outstanding qualities, rises to prominence, and then either through personal failures or circumstances beyond their control, or a combination of these two factors, succumbs to disaster and is destroyed. Tragedy has been a creative style of expression in multiple art forms ever since.

When told well, a literary tragedy gives an audience the opportunity to experience what is known as a catharsis. Simply put, when we become engrossed in a story, we experience deep and intense connection with the characters, and thus identify with them. With our imaginations, we enter the story’s unfolding action and see ourselves in the different characters. Our emotions are engaged, and by the end, we will have had a complete empathic experience. It is like a cleansing for the soul.

Long before the Greek playwrights wrote their stories and the actors donned their masks and began to orate in the amphitheaters, there was King Saul, the first true tragic figure of this kind in the Bible. Long before Sophocles wrote of Oedipus’ encounter with the prophet Tiresias there was Saul’s encounter with the prophet Samuel.

In this new novel, Crown of the Warrior King, release date set for December 1, 2021, the story of King Saul picks up where my first novel, A Voice Within the Flame, left off. Saul is in the early days of his kingship, winning the hearts and minds of the people of Israel with his success on the battlefield and benevolent leadership. But then personal hubris (excessive pride and self-confidence), creeps in, and the tragic formula begins to develop.

Art holds up the mirror of our humanity reflecting the tragic and comedic realities of our human nature. In Crown of the Warrior King, Saul reveals those human qualities we recognize in ourselves and will make choices that prove to have fatal consequences. It is a cautionary tale for us all.

I have freely acknowledged in these newsletters my poor academic achievements in my K-12 education. Mr. Dyslexia was a sure hindrance in my scholastic endeavors, but I was also accused of having what was then, and still is, referred to as a “bad attitude” about…well, most everything, that kept me academically below average. “Bad attitude” has since morphed into “curmudgeon,” but somewhere along life’s way I became a moderately productive citizen.

As a creative person I believe being a “late bloomer” has worked in my favor. I have endured my share of the proverbial struggles while living the life of the starving artist. And though I maintain low levels of fame and fortune (no Paparazzi camped in my front yard); I have been blessed with enough opportunities to have what might be called a career in the business of making art.

The writing side of my life was decades in the making. I collected rejection letters from publishers and producers far and wide. Those letters have all been burned, by the way. I see no reason to keep tangible reminders that perfect strangers didn’t have the good sense to recognize my genius.

For years I sat at my desk and hammered away on my typewriter. In 1989 I won five hundred dollars in a literary contest and bought my first computer. The clicking typewriter keys and manually slamming the carriage at the end of every line became a by-gone sound effect, which I miss, but still the words did appear and eventually turned into complete stories.

I was age fifty-eight when my first book Hometown Favorite was published, and age fifty-nine for my second, Kabul24. Then came an eleven-year hiatus before my latest novel, A Voice Within the Flame, the first volume of my biblical fiction series The Song of Prophets and Kings, saw the light of day. Now I am pleased to announce that the second volume in this fiction series, Crown of the Warrior King, will be released by WhiteFire Publishing, December 1, 2021.

Writing for me is a three-fold process each one producing a specific emotional response: there is joy in the everyday discipline of writing; there is bliss when the book appears in print and may be purchased wherever books are sold; and there is rapture when someone tells me they have read my book and found it to be an enjoyable experience. It is not that my genius has been rewarded, but my perseverance.

I get a momentary rush of power each time I make an executive decision. Kay and I will sometimes come to each other and announce, “I have made an executive decision,” which means that we have not gone through the normal democratic process of seeking the opinion of the other before an action is taken. It doesn’t happen too often, and whatever executive decision one of us has made, the other usually will go along with it.

When wear my executive hat, I quote the line spoken by Yul Brynner as Ramses II in The Ten Commandments. The great Egyptian Pharoah makes his pronouncement and follows it with, “So let it be written. So let it be done.” And, like old Ramses in the film, I walk away. The drama of my exit adds to the power of the words.

Recently our oldest daughter sent me a short video snippet of a documentary showing a group of people around a conference table. A vote had been taken by the group, a decision was made, and the leader said something that my daughter wanted me to hear. The volume on the video was very low, and I had to crank up the sound level as high as it would go. I played it repeatedly but was just not sure what the guy said. So, I responded to my daughter in an e-mail what I thought I heard him say, which was, “So let’s get rid of the celebrity dog.”

Must be a panel for the Westminster Kennel tossing out an unruly contestant, I concluded. As clever as this was, I scratched my head as to why my daughter would want me to hear it. She responded with multiple “laugh” emojis and told me what the guy had actually said, which was, “So let it be written. So let it be done.” And the people around the conference table were astronomers discussing black holes in our universe.

Time to schedule an appointment with the audiologist. It just proves that at times we are all hard of hearing or suffer from selective hearing. We want to take what we hear and objectify it so that we can use what we think we heard to support what we believe. Hearing the truth can sometimes be an unpleasant experience when it does not “tickle” the inner ears of our personal beliefs and biases. So let the truth be spoken. So let the truth be heard. So let the truth be written, and let the truth be done.

The early patriarchs of the Old Testament were constantly on the move. Once Abraham separated from his kith and kin and left what is now southern Iraq, he never looked back. For the next one hundred years he and his family were pitching their tents up and down the topography of the future Promised Land. Imagine the kids screaming from the back of the camel, “Are we there yet?”

Son, Isaac, and grandson, Jacob, lived the same nomadic life as Abraham. Wherever these early biblical families traveled, the first thing they did once the tent pegs were driven into the ground was to build an altar and dig a well. One was for worship and the other was for sustenance. Both provided refreshment: one for the soul; one for the body. The First Families of the Promised Land could not live without either.

There is a story in the gospel of John where Jesus met a woman who came to a well outside the village of Sychar that was dug by Jacob nineteen hundred years earlier. Much was discussed in their brief encounter: personal thirst, personal life, personal worship. In the story Jesus offered the woman the opportunity to have her thirst quenched, not her physical thirst, but the deeper thirst for worship.

In that divine moment, Jesus became both an altar and a well, unifying the fulfilment for all human need. In the joyous rush of this epiphany, the woman forgot all about her water pot and ran back to town to tell everyone who she had just encountered and what he revealed to her. She experienced personal revelation that resulted in quenching all the deepest needs of her heart.

Nothing has changed in all the millenniums since those early days when the ancient ones dug wells and built altars. We must drink liquid to sustain our bodies. And the human soul is thirsty for the divine life. We are designed for worship, and we will worship something. What we choose to drink to satisfy our physical thirst and what we choose to worship to satisfy our spiritual longings is a choice of free will. What we drink can weaken or sustain the body. What we worship can keep us mired in a “slough of despond,” or release our souls to soar. Choose wisely.