Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Well, I guess the turtle was right, and rain was on the way. If you can’t trust a turtle, the epitome of slow, faithful plodding, who can you trust? Not flighty or flitting, manic or depressive, just one step at a time dependability — that’s the ticket, turtle! But I’m getting ahead of myself. A couple of days ago, I looked through a window at the back of our house and spied, trudging across the property in a generally southerly direction, a fine example of Terrapene ornata,...
The segment actually aired several years ago, but I still remember a fascinating piece 60 Minutes produced on sleep. (About sleep. Not while sleeping.) Since sleeping is one thing I’ve always been particularly good at, I was immediately interested. Even professionals can hone their technique, so I was happy to tune in. May I share a bit of what I learned? In 1980, a study was done using rats who were kept awake indefinitely. After five days, they began dying. They needed s...
By writing today’s column, I am breaking a promise, one that I made to myself. I didn’t make myself take an oath aloud or sign anything. I suppose it was less a promise than a mental warning not to stroll into any mine fields. The topic is difficult and highly charged, a tough one for any of us to deal with wisely and rationally and one where many folks seem to opt quickly for foolishness and irrationality. The best of writers could be easily misunderstood on this sub...
In the midst of this roller coaster year and its blur of events and emotions, we’re speeding toward Father’s Day. As I find myself thinking of my father, my thoughts quickly turn in immense gratitude to my Father for giving me such an incredible gift, my earthly father. If anyone asked me for the name of the best man I have ever known, I’d not have to pause a nanosecond before replying, “G.B. Shelburne Jr.” My dad. I’ve said that many times, not because I feel haughty abo...
A glance through the window on the other side of the room tells me that we’re “in for it” again. It’s mid-morning and the trees are already waving their branches maniacally, flailing arms raised in surrender, as the wind lashes them unmercifully. They seem to know that they are facing another withering day of wind-scourging, aided and abetted by blistering, unrelenting, sap-boiling, life-sapping heat. The calendar says that it’s not officially summer yet. But the window an...
The man we know as the prophet Amos wrote these words: “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet.” He said he was just a shepherd and a caretaker of sycamore trees when he was called by God to deliver the Lord’s message. I understand. I’m a “non-prophet” myself. And right now I’m “sucking air” on delivering anyone’s message, even as a deadline for this column is racing down the rails toward me. Newsworthy current events are currently plentiful. We just successfully l...
Mobs. I never have cared much for them. Personality — mine, that is — explains part of this. I’m not particularly freaked out by large crowds, I just don’t enjoy them and am happy to avoid them. It’s not a phobia. (“Enochlophobia” is “fear of crowds,” I’m told.) It’s a dislike. I don’t enjoy what often seems mindless and is most certainly loud, and those two features tend to cluster around big crowds like flies around a dung heap. Peace is good. Quiet is precious. And the so...
Just for the record, it might be worth mentioning that “sheltering in place” is what we’re not doing. Forgive me, please. I am far too much in love with freedom to turn anyone over to the COVID-19 police. I won’t be scowling at you if I meet you pushing your basket the wrong way down the jelly aisle at the supermarket. Besides that, it’ll probably be me swimming upstream; I seem to be clueless when it comes to noticing arrows on floors. Nor will I cast a masked smirk at...
Our church went back to church on Sunday. Our governor had said that we could, within some COVID-19 guidelines. Our little bunch chose to wait a week longer than required and, just speaking for me, myself, and I, I’m glad we waited. One size does not fit all, though we’re all trying to plot a way through this mess. Backseat drivers are already plentiful, and, though toilet paper was hard to come by a few weeks ago, I suspect, once we get a bit past this present pandemic cri...
One size never fits all. If you’ve lived for 10 minutes or so, I probably don’t need to tell you that. But one of my brothers just sent in a text to the rest of his brothers a photo of a government form designed by some nameless bureaucrat or committee of bureaucrats or building burgeoning with bureaucrats (of the sort some folks would like to place in charge of the part of our nation’s healthcare the government doesn’t already control). Form 1040-V (“V” for “voucher”)...
I was scrolling through some news and ran across a completely nonsensical “headline” in the midst of much “non-news.” Some popular actress or other generic celebrity (I don’t remember her name), the headline promised, would tell us all about “her truth.” Great. I suppose that if we’re interested enough to read that article, we can logically look forward to some companion articles, some sequels. Maybe she can later tell us about “her gravity” or “her multiplication tables.” If...
A language problem. We have a language problem, writes geriatric psychiatrist Dr. Marc Agronin in the Wall Street Journal, which is “Why It’s So Hard to Talk to Your Parents About the Coronavirus.” We don’t want hard times, struggles, and suffering. But one thing they do for us is bring to the surface truths that we already deeply or instinctively knew were lurking just barely underwater. Then we wonder why we didn’t see that hidden, but real, fact all along. This generatio...
As most of our friends and parishioners know, my brothers and I, all four of us preachers, head to Robert Lee, Texas, a couple of times a year to spend some time together at the old home place of our maternal grandparents. We were supposed to be there last week, but the COVID-19 virus, national and state authorities, and our wives clipped our wings. The Coke County Ministerial Conference. That is what I call our usual biannual get-togethers. I’ve derived far more m...
Did you see the COVID-19 news conference the other day featuring a particularly noted, well-published, and often-quoted professor of epidemiology? Dr. Angus Jones-Brown has been studying virus transmission for many decades, and the data accumulated over those many years seems to rather clearly indicate, against all previous thought, that most of these viruses proliferate not by passing into our airways via our noses or by traveling through other mucous membranes. In fact, the...
Like most humans with a few years on them, I’ve had an occasion or a few (not too terribly many) to mention to the Lord that, in this distress or that difficulty, I have at least two requests. Jesus did, after all, teach us to ask, so I do. First, I’d much prefer to avoid the mess altogether. What I have in mind is not “strength to get through” this or that tough thing. I’d prefer a nice pass to get around it; I really don’t want “through” it. Second, if I must go through the...
I’ve long thought that, in so many ways, the biggest blessings of life are the small ones. The weeks we’re living through right now underline that, don’t they? If, just a few weeks ago, you were a little bored and tired of the “normal” routine of your life, I’ll wager that is not the case now. I admit that I can hardly understand ever being bored. I’ve always got more to do than I know how to get done, and, if I’m ever caught up with work and duties and that sort of challen...
I must begin this column with an apology and a plea for your patience. This is third column, in as many weeks, in which I mention the coronavirus. Witless, I know. But terror drives people to extremes. (Well, yes, but terror is not my problem; a lack of imagination is, and when a column idea flies overhead, I’ve gotta snatch it, pluck it, and cook it even if it comes in a familiar flock, flight, or gaggle.) The fact is, I’ve already had a deadly virus in that category and bee...
Oops! I doubt he cares, but it looks like a billionaire toy maker for cool kids just got himself into a bit of a bind. (He makes high-priced and over-hyped electric cars — he can keep those, as far as I’m concerned — and some seriously cool rocket ships.) All Tesla CEO Elon Musk did to generate knee-jerk howls was to tweet elegantly and articulately, “The coronavirus panic is dumb.” Not everybody disagreed. I’m told that he got a million “likes” almost immediately. Ma...
Quail. I have nothing at all against those birds. I enjoy looking at them. I’ve fed a few. Raised a few. Shot a few. Eaten a few. I enjoy them on every level, from my eyeballs to my taste buds. So I don’t mean to slander these fine birds when I say that their images should be woven into the logos of the world’s leading stock exchanges. Or maybe instead the exchanges could use in their logos images of a bunch of frightened old women leaning on walkers. But that would be gross...
“I love you for sentimental reasons ...” Yes, indeed, and I love singing that sweet old song and so many more of the “Great American Songbook” songs, songs like “It Had to Be You,” “The Very Thought of You,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and my favorite of all, “Unforgettable” (unforgettably rendered by Nat King Cole in tones of velvet). Old songs for sure. In order, above —1945, 1924, 1934, 1936, and 1951. I love them so much that I went to Nashville to get some unforgettable...
Dealing with reality can be hard, but it’s better than the alternative, which looks easy and turns out to be much harder. In Jesus’ parable of “The Two Builders,” he talks about two gents who both did the hard work of building houses. Yes, but only one, the “wise builder,” did the harder work of building his on the right foundation, one of rock; the “foolish builder” built on sand. Both houses looked fine — until “the rain came down, the streams came up, and the winds blew and...
It’s a good thing when your world expands. When I was a child living at 125 N. Goliad St. in Amarillo, my world expanded one sidewalk at a time. My younger brother and I were great adventurers. His mighty steed was a red and white tricycle. Mine was orange and white and slightly larger. All it took to turn the trikes into motorcycles was an index card or two and a couple of clothes pins. We would ride out from the porch and pedal down to the hill that was the driveway slope t...
A good many folks believe that if you do everything right, you might live to be well over 100. Two glaring presuppositions shine forth from this belief. One is that you actually might want to live to be “well over 100.” Not me, thanks. The other most obvious problem is actually two falsehoods for the price of one — that it’s possible to “do everything right,” and that you will. Under “doing everything right,” well, there’s a lot to check off. Most folks will tell you to spend...
Recently, I watered a weed. “Big deal,” you say. “Most folks in your neighborhood, mortals whose lawns are not perfect, water weeds every time they water. What makes you special?” No, you don’t understand. For a few weeks in the summer, I singled this weed out and watered it. It had popped up in a planter among some pretty little flowering plants of another variety. But it looked to me a little like some plants I’d ensconced there in a previous season, or, I thought, it...
This was the greeting offered to me recently by a cherished (and dare I say?) old friend who is one of my respected predecessors in my present (for almost 35 years) pulpit: “Well, you got old, too. I give up.” In his Gospel, St. Luke tells us that when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and “greeted” her, Mary was “deeply troubled and wondered what manner of greeting this might be” (1:29). The Bible writers almost never waste words in describing events, but my suspicion i...
