The Least We Can Do

My An Arkie's Faith column from the June 16, 2021, issue of The Polk County Pulse.

The sun was beginning to come up as I drove into Little Rock. A faint yellow-orange glow forced its way through the overcast sky. For the past two months, I have been going to Little Rock very early in the morning to pick up the auto glass that I need for my business. My supplier no longer delivers to Polk County, so I have to make two trips a week to Little Rock to pick up my glass. I had a large order that would more than fill my truck and a busy day scheduled when I made it back to my shop.

As we started to load the truck, my supplier’s software system was slow. The warehouse employee enters each piece of glass into the software to bill me and take the glass out of inventory. What should have taken just a few minutes dragged on for half an hour. I was getting restless thinking about the long drive home and the customers who would be waiting for me. Finally, with every slot in my rack filled and with four side glasses and five cases of urethane crammed in the cab of my little truck, I was on my way home. There was barely enough room for me in the S-10, and it wasn’t easy to shift gears. 

After driving for an hour, I needed to get out and stretch my legs and use the bathroom. I pulled off the road into a busy gas station, parking in the only space available. As I got out, I noticed the sign on the door of the vehicle next to me. It said, “Elmer Beard, Poet.” A spry, older gentleman was walking towards the car. “Are you the poet,” I asked? “Yes, I am.” We exchanged pleasantries and talked about the weather. “Let me give you a copy of my book of poetry,” my new acquaintance said. “I would like that,” I answered. “I am a writer and have a copy of my latest book in my truck. Would you like to trade?” Both of us had to move things around in our vehicles to get to our book. We each signed our books to each other, and after exchanging phone numbers, we went on our way. As he was leaving, Elmer’s final words to me were, “If I come to Mena, I will give you a call.”

As I was driving home, I thought about my interesting encounter with Elmer. He had been so polite and upbeat. He seemed like a man who enjoyed life and lived it to the fullest. It was such a chance meeting at a random gas station beside the road. But Elmer had made a deep impression on me, and I couldn’t get him out of my mind. If I had been able to load my truck without the software issues, I would not have been in the right place at the right time to meet Elmer. But I was thankful that I had. I couldn’t wait until I had time to sit down and read his book. 

That evening, I sat in my favorite turquoise Adirondack chair on my deck and started to read Elmer’s book of poetry. The cover has a photo of Elmer in an old Ford pickup from the early sixties. The title is “Let Reason Roll: Race, Religion & Reflections. I was intrigued by the author title at the bottom of the book; Poetry by Elmer Beard The Octo Griot. From the book, I learned that Elmer is in his eighties. Octo is the Latin prefix for the number eight, so that part made sense, but what about the griot. A quick internet search led me to the answer. The Oxford Dictionary lists the definition of griot as “a member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa.”

As I read his poetry, It seemed like I began to know him as a man. Elmer has a way of exposing his inner self through simple words. He tackles tough topics with gentleness and the insight of someone who has gained wisdom from his life experience. The friendly, unassuming black octogenarian grew up in the small southern town of Chidester, Arkansas. He earned degrees from Arkansas Baptist College and Henderson State University and spent many years as a teacher. He ended his teaching career as an adjunct English professor at Arkansas Baptist College and National Park College in Hot Springs. In addition, Elmer made a difference in his community by serving for sixteen years on the Hot Springs City Council.  

As I finished the book, I kept going back and rereading one short, simple poem titled “The Least We Can Do.” Elmer’s words kept going through my mind as I longed for a world that followed the simple concept of the poem. “I am who I am. And so are you. Courtesy is costless. The opposite is expensive. Respect is deserved. The least we can do. Is be kind and gentle. Regardless of values. Or our experiences. That’s the least. We can do.”

People who are kind and gentle have the potential to be rude or proud, but they have deliberately decided not to behave that way. They have intentionally chosen gentleness. That takes more strength than it does to treat others harshly. In his book Grace for the Moment, Max Lucado offers a pledge that we could all make our own: “Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice, may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.”

For us as Christians, it is the least we can do. Galatians 5:22,23 (KJV) says, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. When we see harshness and hate for others among Christians, we can see that they are not living in the Spirit. “Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.” Matthew 7:20 (NLT)

Gentle Reader, gentleness is a strong hand with a soft touch. It is a tender, compassionate approach to others, even those who are different from us. “Kindness, peace, love—may they never stop blooming in you and from you.” Jude 1:2 (VOICE) I leave you with the words of the Octo Griot, “I am who I am. And so are you. Courtesy is costless. The opposite is expensive. Respect is deserved. The least we can do. Is be kind and gentle. Regardless of values. Or our experiences. That’s the least. We can do.”

Failure To Thrive

Frederick II was a man of extraordinary culture, energy, and ability. He was king of Sicily and Germany during the first half of the 13th century. He was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1220. Frederick is considered by modern historians to be the most gifted, vivid and extraordinary of the medieval Holy Roman Emperors.

Frederick astonished his contemporaries who called him stupor mundi, ‘wonder of the world’.  His court blended Norman, Arabic and Jewish elements.  He was witty, entertaining and cruel in six different languages, Latin, Sicilian, German, French, Greek and Arabic.  He was a man of serious intellectual distinction, and he was friendly with Jewish and Muslim sages.  He encouraged scholarship, poetry and mathematics, and original thinking in all areas.

Frederick’s openness to ideas kept him at odds with the Roman Catholic Church. His demands that the Church renounce its wealth and return to apostolic poverty and simplicity did not sit well with the papacy and its supporters, who branded him as Antichrist. He was excommunicated not once but four times.

Frederick was an avid patron of science and the arts. He had an unlimited thirst for knowledge and learning, and considered himself to be an equal of the scientific minds of his times. He carried out a number of cruel experiments on people.

I recently watched a video presentation by Ty Gibson titled, ‘Frederick’s Experiment’. In it he tells of one of these cruel experiments. The purpose of the experiment was to discover what language children would naturally grow up to speak if they were never spoken to.

King Frederick took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were forbidden to speak in the babies hearing. Along with the prohibition on speaking, a second rule was imposed. The nurses were not allowed to touch the infants other than to clean or feed them. To his great dismay, Frederick’s experiment was cut short without finding out what language the babies would speak. The babies grew up to speak no language at all because they died. In the year 1248, an Italian historian named Salimbene di Adam recorded, “They could not live without petting.” The babies literally died for want of touch.

Modern medicine calls this phenomenon, “failure to thrive.” For some reason, we humans flourish under the influence of love and we gradually die without it. Dr. Dean Ornish in his national best seller, Love and Survival, presents study after study demonstrating that love is a chief influence for mental, emotional, and even physical health. He says, “The scientific evidence . . . leaves little doubt that love and intimacy are powerful determinants of our health and survival. Why they have such an impact remains somewhat a mystery”

The problem for many scientists is that they are trying to understand the human need for love within the context of Darwinian evolution. Evolution begins with a survival-of-the-fittest premise; it states that self-preservation is the highest law and the main factor in our survival. Love, is self-giving rather than self-preserving, and, therefore, makes no sense in the evolutionary context.

If evolution is the truth of human origins, then human beings are merely biological animals and there is no such thing as love. And yet, here we are; creatures who thrive on love and are utterly dependent on it. Every human has a desire to love and be loved.

We can’t help but ask the question at some point: What is that something more that we so desperately long for? In 1 John 4:16 the Bible tells us that “God is love”. And in Genesis 1:27 it states that, “God made mankind in His own image”.

Scientist may feel that the reason that love and intimacy have such an effect on our health and survival is a mystery, but I don’t. God made us to love and be loved.