The Timberline Letter

Written By: Amy McArthy

Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy

After years of foot problems, I found custom orthotics that became gold to me. I could slip them into any closed-heel shoe and wear them for hours without pain.

Then, one day, they simply vanished.

For months, I checked every pair of shoes I owned, multiple times. I cleaned out my closet. I looked under my bed. Finally, I resigned myself to wearing only my boring, “sensible” shoes— the ones that promised feelings of “walking on a cloud.”

One evening, my daughters and I walked through a local department store. Near closing time, the place was deserted. Drawn by the rows of clearance tables, I decided to take a quick look at the footwear; I am a magnet for a good deal. I was immediately drawn to a cute pair of boots. The price was perfect, so I hurried to slip them on before the store shut its doors.

But I noticed something peculiar inside the boots. I didn’t really want to stick my hand in to retrieve whatever was “lurking,” but gathering my courage, I reached in and pulled out—my orthotics! What? How was that possible? In that surreal moment, it all rushed back: I had bought these very boots online months prior and returned them, apparently with my inserts still nestled inside.

We want so much to control our environment. When we lose something—or lose our way—we come face-to-face with the reality that we aren’t in charge. But really, were we ever?

Whether it’s driving on unfamiliar roads at night, absorbing the reeling loss of a loved one, or even the disappearance of a cherished item like a wedding ring or shoe inserts, loss leaves us unsettled. It reminds us we are not in control. We have lost something or someone precious.

The Bible tells of a father who brought his son to Jesus, seeking healing. Jesus asked, “Do you believe?” The father replied, “I believe; help my unbelief.” This may be the most honest prayer ever modeled. In that same spirit, we can also pray, “I trust, help me to trust.” Perhaps the next time we face a loss, we can let that feeling of helplessness push us towards the only One who ordains our steps and brings order to our world.

From that place of trusting God, maybe we can allow our loss to help us really see those we pass in a different light. What if we stopped and took the time to hear stories? Might we learn what they’ve lost? Like the cashier at a local grocery store who lost her child and the use of her arm when she suffered a stroke during pregnancy. Or my neighbor who lives alone, surrounded by darkness and clutter, because he has lost the ones he loved the most. Connection is the best way to rediscover peace after loss.

Connection can come through the caring touch on the shoulder, fellowship over a cup of coffee, or just listening to a story. That connection may allow the one overwhelmed by loss to emerge into a newly discovered safe place.

Losing shoe inserts doesn’t compare to the pain many have known. However, the connection after my inserts were found is what I still remember from that mysterious event in a deserted department store. My daughters saw that what was lost had finally found its way home. They also saw what that loss—and recovery—did in and for me.

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I once heard the great preacher, Ern Baxter, talk about why we have such powerful language symbols. He said:

“God has ransacked all of nature, all of history, all events, all of creatures, relationships, and situations ... to come up with metaphors and similes and symbols and likenesses that He could use to communicate to us the various aspects of divine truth.”

No wonder the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Virgil, C. S. Lewis, and others used ants, eagles, snakes, lions, horses, donkeys, and bees as models of behavior and wisdom for humans. Sometimes, we need to see examples from other species in order to detect our Creator’s signature.

Consider the sandfish, a small reptile that lives in the Sahara Desert and other parts of North Africa—places of deadly heat, predators, and drought.

Yet the sandfish is superbly suited to that environment. Its name reflects its way of pulling its legs close to its body to “swim” through sand, slipping beneath the surface to escape predators and find relief from the heat. Its wedge-shaped head allows it to dive quickly below the surface, while specialized eyelids and nostrils let it move through sand without damage or suffocation.

What it needs is always nearby.

Perhaps the central lesson the sandfish teaches is the wonder of adaptation. They don’t curse the sun, the sand, aridity, or predators; they adapt to reality. As ancient nautical wisdom says, “We can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”

The anger and polarization of the current age try to persuade us that crowds will save us. If we can just convince enough people to march in the streets, hang scripted messages on social media, or give enough money, we can change the course of wind and water.

That is profoundly false.

Tides, light, seeds, fire, migratory patterns, survival instincts, the hidden movements of weather and history—these are the forces that carry real change. If so, humility, patience, and flexibility may serve us better than anger and conflict.

Human nature will always try to convince us that this place is just not right, that it needs fixing. It’s too hot, cold, wet, dry, Republican, liberal, indifferent, etc. And so, we organize, resist, and fight.

But thinking that way can be like buying lumber at Home Depot to build a tree. Planting a seed is better, but slower. That requires patience. But as James Carville said, “The best time to plant an oak tree was twenty-five years ago. The second best time is today.”

Perhaps the sandfish points us toward quieter truths: we have been given a place we did not choose; we are shaped by forces we do not control; we live in the wide open spaces of our constraints.

Within that ecosystem, we find new traction.

As we learn its rhythms.

As we move with its grain.

As we adapt rather than harden.

In doing so, we may—like the sandfish—discover our limitations have become portals of wisdom.

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Written and Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

I don’t spend a lot of time stumbling around in my past. Land mines lie scattered just below the surface, threatening to blow up my psyche if triggered.

But I’m smart enough to know I wouldn’t be here had I not first been there. The giants who helped shape, mold, sand, and color my being over the past three quarters of a century include characters whose stamp left an indelible imprint. One of those was a force of nature who taught my high school English classes.

Mary Robel liked her Camels unfiltered, her Coca-Cola chilled in the 6.5-ounce green glass bottles God intended, and her races segregated. Arriving on this planet 47 years after the end of the Civil War, she grew up in a community where wounds from that conflict still festered. The South might not rise again, but I never knew her to stand for the playing of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Maybe the best way I can describe her presence is to say she filled her space. Her classroom was in the “new” wing, and she moved from the teachers’ lounge in the wooden-floored older building with a strong sense of purpose when it was time, bright-red lipstick freshly applied. Her deliberate stride called to mind that of a general approaching the parade ground, always firmly gripping the double handles of her soft-bottomed tapestry satchel; to call it a purse would have been an insult.

I never saw her thick gray hair worn any way other than upswept in a French twist. It suited her somehow: all business, nothing left astray. Gray glasses defining her steel-blue eyes took the color theme further.

My classmates and I knew little about her personal life, though we were always intensely curious. Once someone brought in a high school yearbook with a photo of her as a student. We stared in awe at her youth and beauty, feeling as if we were trespassing on forbidden ground. It was hard to make the connection between the decades-old photo and the teacher we encountered every day. Time, tobacco, and something rumored stronger than Mississippi sweet tea had left their impact.

In my 10th-grade year, this maven gave me an understanding of English grammar that ensured my later studies in that arena were mostly reminders. She fanned whatever spark of potential she saw in me, pulling me aside quietly as a junior and telling me it was time to start working on college scholarships.

As our class of 40 began our senior year, Mary Robel rolled out what became her biggest gift. In addition to her general lesson plans, she expected us to turn in a 3-page essay each Monday and recite before the class an assigned poem each Friday. In this environment I learned to get comfortable with words and to rewrite a piece until it flowed without a hitch across a reader’s comprehension. If my leading thesis wasn’t clear, I learned to recognize that quickly and fix it. If my paper headed toward sappy, I could reframe or choose a more appropriate topic. In short, I learned to write by writing.

The gift of editing my own work, and later the work of colleagues and clients, became as natural as breathing. And the recitation thing? Speaking before classmates continually as a 17-year-old set the stage for presentations to workshop and convention audiences years later.

People move in and out of our lives as purpose dictates. Some plant, some water, some weed, some bring to fruition. Today I hear in my memory the firm clack of no-nonsense heels tapping out a determined cadence on the concrete, and I nod and smile and silently give thanks.

After receiving a PhD in English at Ole Miss in 1977, Faye moved to Texas, where she met and married Walt, her IT guru, cruise partner, and barista. She is the mother of four children – Aimee, Carla, Steven, and Caryn – and the grandmother of Lexi, Sarah, William, and Rahel.

After serving as a copy editor at “American Way” and “Southwest Spirit” magazines while her children were young, she began a 20-year career with United Way of Tarrant County, planning and implementing community projects, while serving 26 years as a local school board member.

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For more than a decade, I’ve had the growing sense that we’re all missing something.

Not a policy or a program, but a social coherence; a warm, metaphysical essence that is quietly being displaced by something colder, more rigid, something unforgiving.

I’m not suggesting we need to do something. It’s not that simple. The usual suspects in this conversation—politics, gender, religion, technology, AI, etc.—are not the issue and are not helpful.

There is a light we simply do not see.

Birds and Butterflies

Lately, that thought has taken me back to a conversation I had thirty years ago with my dear, and now deceased, friend, Lee Earl. As we talked over lunch one day, his heart seemed to groan as he said,

“White people are obsessed with understanding black people. But as a black man, I don’t care if you understand me or not. I want your respect.”

Later, as we drove away, he continued: “Birds fly in a straight line. Butterflies don’t. But birds don’t try to teach butterflies how to fly.”

In that moment, I sensed something universal. Beneath all our affiliations and arguments, people want respect—not for their qualifications, conformity, connections, or status—but for something older than all that. For reasons that reach back to that holy moment when they were “... formed in utter seclusion... woven together in the dark of the womb.” (Psalm 139:15 NLT)

From Community to Centrifuge

From birth, sparks of destiny began glowing into our times and spaces. We tasted, touched, reached, and retreated. We found our voices, encountered virtues and vices, fell in love, raised barns, and served on school boards. Through it all, we discovered the treasure in others, that mysterious green sprout of life rooted in the moment they were “formed in utter seclusion.” All that formed our own ecosystem, our community.

This was called normal life. Then, somehow, our age became a centrifuge.

It spun faster and faster until it pulled us apart. Minds, bodies, personalities, and beliefs were sliced and stratified. Apparently, we were not acceptable as whole persons; markets preferred us reduced to particles, easier to sort and sell.

What Matters Most?

I first caught sight of what we are missing when my friend, Rex Miller, a speaker and author, convened specialists in architecture, education, commercial construction, and other disciplines for a collaborative approach to writing books. I served as the project editor.

Day after day, city after city, we worked with those leaders as they grappled with serious issues facing Western societies. Because of their education and careers, most were likely left of center politically (others surely were not). But politics never walked into our deliberations. Even when we met on November 8, 2016, the day Donald Trump was first elected—politics never grabbed the microphone.

The relationships in that room represented timeless examples of teamwork. People checked their stuff at the door, joined their minds and hearts, worked for a larger good, and kept their eyes on the ball. To paraphrase Goethe, they refused to let things that matter most to be at the mercy of things that matter least.

And no one tried to teach anyone how to fly.

The Possibilities...

Jesus once said of a generation “It is like children sitting in the marketplaces, who call out to the other children, and say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” (Matthew 11:16-17 NASB)

His words seem to reflect this present age. Culture bombards us with pulsating signals, directions to think, be, or do as it suggests. But real life does not allow external pings to jerk us into conformity with trends or experts. Beneath all the noise, we remain who we were when we were first formed.

For now, the best we can do may be to just get still and quiet. To become comfortable within our own limitations. Step away from the noise and fragmentation of daily life. Practice humility. Recognize and honor the wholeness in those around you, not for their skills or marketability, but for their internal and eternal value.

Perhaps what we’re missing is not light, but the eyes to see it.

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John Goldsberry, my maternal grandfather, expected little from life and received less. But he did all he could to feed his wife and their seven children in southwest Missouri during the Great Depression. He farmed, worked odd jobs, and made moonshine—a long path of futility that marked much of his life.

In 1936, he worked as part of a road gang blacktopping roads around Buffalo, Missouri. He was paid fifteen cents per hour. One hot evening, he stood with the other workers at the end of a long, hard day, listening to their foreman lay out the plan for the next day’s work.

Then, from across the road and about a hundred yards away, hymns began flowing out the open windows of a country church. As night fell, the work meeting ended and Grandpa walked down to the church, squatted beneath an open window, and listened to the stirring music. The next morning, his children woke to the sound of their father singing hymns he heard in the dark.

That moment marked the beginning of a Pentecostal pull on the family. They all walked the six-mile round trip twice every Sunday (they couldn’t afford the eleven-cents-per-gallon gasoline). But Grandpa would not enter the building with them. He didn’t feel worthy to enter a holy place, so he continued to crouch beneath the windows.

In April 1937, the family loaded up their old pickup and moved to Ford County, Kansas. Two years later, sixteen-year-old Mary traveled with other teenagers from their church in Dodge City to attend a “youth rally” at a church in Sun City. There, she met a family of eleven kids named Chinn. One of the Chinn boys was the good-looking, adventurous, face-to-the-wind Jack.

Love sparked—but Jack had already pledged himself to the U.S. Navy.

Five years later, on October 24, 1944, Jack was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Princeton when she was destroyed by a Japanese bomb in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. He survived. Two months later, he married Mary. I am their firstborn. Vernon and Carl followed.

When, as a child, my mind finally connected the details of this story, I became obsessed with its hinge moments—the what-ifs:

What if the road foreman had not called for the work crew meeting?

What if cool air had forced the church to close the windows?

What if Mary had not attended the youth rally?

What if Jack had died in the waters of Leyte Gulf?

Each hinge carried the call of destiny. Grandpa wasn’t the only one crouched beneath that church window in the dark; my brothers and I—and all our children and grandchildren—were there too. And my dad wasn’t the only one struggling to survive a naval battle; all his descendants were also fighting for their lives.

Our story began when an eternal sound—a wind chime from Heaven—rode the breeze into the ears and heart of a poor man living in life’s shadows.

Grace found him. In the dark.

It was a night when “...for those who lived in the land where death casts its shadow, a light has shined.” (Matthew 4:16, NLT)

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Written and Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy

The hospital lights were dimmed to create a “peaceful” atmosphere, but the chaos of pain I was experiencing sucked all serenity from the room. I yelled in the disoriented agony that can only come from childbirth. Thirty minutes earlier, I could breathe and talk through each contraction, loudly telling myself I could do this. Now, the jaws of pain clamped around my midsection, with no sign of release. The dreaded “transition phase.”

In desperation I screamed, “Help me! Help me!” I was floundering, knowing there was no escape but hoping relief would come. Breaking through the turmoil, a nurse appeared angelic and took center stage in my tunnel vision. Grasping my right hand with hers and looking into my eyes, she said, “I am helping you.”

In the writhing and agony, I held onto her words like they were life itself. I wanted a tranquilizer, but her hand and eyes would have to do. I cried and pleaded some more. She remained, urged me to look at her, and repeated, “I am helping you.”

Minutes later, I held my precious, perfect baby. In the midst of the holy hush that descended on the room, the nurse gently adjusted my pillows, grinned, and said, “See? I helped you!” I laughed, cried, and agreed with all my heart.

In the hours that followed, I cried whenever I remembered the pain. But I also thanked God for the nurse who helped bear my burden with four simple words and one unflinching gaze.

What does “help” actually look like, and is it possible that we spend so much time worrying about what we cannot do that we don’t offer what we can? How hopeless would I have felt if that nurse had recoiled from my misery rather than boldly stepping into it?

We can learn the definition of “help” by reflecting on what brought relief in our moments of need. I remember when I was once lonely; a neighbor gave me a bouquet of hydrangeas from her garden. When I was scared, my husband kissed me on the forehead. When I was sick as a child, my dad would get down on my level and say, “I wish I could take it away.”

“Help” rarely looks like winning the lottery, receiving a miracle fix for my problems, or even being fully understood by a friend. More often than not, help comes in the form of a willing presence. It ignores its own shortcomings to just reach out. The best help almost always carries an air of childlike confidence.

What if we could get back to that uncomplicated eagerness to audaciously “pitch in” on projects we have no business touching? As a toddler clumsily stirs batter with a wooden spoon and shamelessly declares, “I helped,” are there purposes and people that would benefit from our joyous, and perhaps unsophisticated help?

It is too easy to disqualify ourselves from service. Easy. And arrogant. Who are we to measure the value of our contributions?

So, what can we do? Chaperone a field trip, even if you’re a “stick in the mud.” Visit your aging relative, even if they can’t hear a word you say. Stop assuming you understand the impact you have on others. Hold the hand of the one who is fighting a fight that only they can face.

Deliberately drop your “widow’s mite” into one of those slots of need in your community. Be glad you could help. Then, watch what happens next. You could find yourself ushering new life into a hurting world.

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Imagine you’re riding a passenger train as it rolls across rural America. You stare out your window at the blur of gravel, grass, roads, and rails. Although your view takes in billions of bits of information, it’s all just a streak, a smudge of colors and shapes. It moves too swiftly to give a perspective on what you see.

In order to get a better viewpoint, you would have to walk to the rear of the train and step out onto the (now virtually extinct) observation platform. From there, your view would instantly widen to give you the sweep of a larger landscape.

Many years ago, I heard a reporter (whose name I’ve long forgotten) use that metaphor to contrast journalism with history. Journalism records the near, but incoherent rush of current events. History, on the other hand, gives a depth of field, a wide panorama of context and clarity.

Today, we seem to live in the age of speed and blur. Our search for information—often useless but quick and addicting—creates the illusion of significance. Sitting in a porch rocker with a good book creates the illusion of laziness. But, as Dwight Eisenhower famously said, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

When people press their faces against the windows, drawn to the kaleidoscope of fractured images, what they see moves very fast, but it does not enlighten. For that, we have to cultivate a serene center, an eternal secret place of the heart. From there, we can practice the mystery of living in a higher realm.

It’s called “normal life,” a spiritual dimension that spills into our earthly seasons and places. That’s where we find the freedom to slow down, breathe deep, get quiet, sit still, think, meditate, pray. That place allows us to step away from the noise to watch the surf, walk through a redwood forest, gaze at the night sky.

Life in the lower realm disrupts those slow and graceful rhythms, prodding us to react, to move quickly ... now!

That may be why many scholars recognize the need for distance between themselves and the issues, personalities, and ideas of their own time. Because emotional, philosophical, and moral entanglements distort judgment, they need the passing of time—like 30 years—before they can more clearly understand and present historical events and people.

That sets up a struggle between the careful, thoughtful, and undisturbed approach to life and the centrifuge that spins us away from it. That’s why I am naturally guarded against any force, agenda, proposal, or crisis that tries to provoke me to do something. I know there are times when we must fight. And die. But that’s different from seeking conflict. Until we learn to live in the secret place, we will carry our own conflict and anger around with us all the time.

I owe it to my wife, family (blood and spiritual), friends, work, neighborhood, society, and nation to see broadly and deeply and to live generously. But I cannot do that if I allow this age to place electrodes on my spine, jerking me into compliance with its whims and flavors. Nuanced and multilayered thinking sees further and hears deeper; it catches distinctions, tones, and possibilities that just don’t seem to find traction with frantic souls and societies.

The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe