“Procrastination and I Are Conjoined Twins”

It’s just a sad fact that for a decade or two, the deadline for this column to be sent to the not-even-close-to-a-hundred newspapers that publish it is, Monday, each week, at 12:00 noon.

A sad corollary to the sad fact above is that I seem to be completely incapable of writing the column early (unless an editor makes a cogent plea for such). When I say that I tend toward procrastination, what I mean is that procrastination tends to permeate every cell in my body. I doubt that I will ever know how well I might work were I not under pressure, because under pressure is pretty much the only way I work. I am impressed with my more disciplined colleagues. Disgusted. But impressed.

So, on Sunday evenings, usually rather late, I try to get a few words keyed into the computer for the column due the next day. If I can just nail down a paragraph or two, just make a start, words seem to continue to flow on the next morning. Unfortunately, on as many Sunday nights as not, I stare at the blank screen. My brain wriggles and writhes and I get, for my trouble, a yawn and a deep longing for the blissful oblivion of sleep. Sleep—I love it, and I’m good at it—is all too soon interrupted by Monday morning. About mid-morning, need and adrenaline kick in, and I write.

I read a fascinating book recently that recounted stories of a number of famously creative people, most writers, and their writing and working and living routines. Those routines varied widely. Some worked in spurts. Not at all for days and then furiously. Some worked intensely for hours, and then took long walks or long breaks or long sessions with friends at the local tavern. Most fell into or actively planned regular daily routines, though some were regularly and incredibly irregular.

For most of those folks, varying amounts—often copious amounts—of caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol were not uncommonly involved. I’m just reporting here. The book did not feature folks writing “faith” columns or regularly contributing to The Baptist Standard. All I can say personally is that I can’t imagine being so foolhardy as trying to write without the aid of coffee.

No surprise, it also helps if everyone else in the house is unconscious and it’s past the hour when civilized people usually call civilized people. In deep need, and if anyone nearby is still awake, I find noise-canceling headphones helpful—set to be almost totally silent, or to play some nice, light, and lyric-less saxophone and/or piano jazz, or to emit “white noise” such as airplane sounds (YouTube; people actually record this stuff and, surprise, for me it kind of works).

I hate Monday deadlines. I admit to having a weird view of Mondays. I love what happens on Sundays, but it’s no contradiction to say that I like Mondays because they’re as far as you can get from Sundays. In general, I like taking Mondays pretty much off. Except there’s that Monday deadline. Traditionally, a Monday break has been a good choice for pastors and barbers. One of my brothers, also a pastor, takes Fridays off because he says he’d hate to feel as bad on his days off as he would if he took Mondays. I understand. But did I mention that procrastination and I are conjoined twins? I need to grab hold of Monday before I put off taking it off and it gets away.

But there’s that deadline.

I should be able on, say, a Wednesday, to get Wednesday to self-identify as a Monday (poking reality in the eye is popular these days), get the juices flowing, take a couple of hours, and write. I should also be able to write a couple or three columns early. (I do, sometimes. Usually they’re “blow off steam” columns that get key-banged out and then stuck in a computer folder and molder, a good thing both for writer and potential readers.)

In any case, I’m about out of time explaining, lamely, why I’m about out of time.

I could nail this one down right now. Tack on something like… “Our Creator never rushes, never procrastinates, always does exactly what we need at exactly the right time. It was, after all, ‘when the time had fully come’ that ‘God sent forth his Son.’” That would morph it into something almost useful as a Christmas column. It would be finished, set aside, and ready. Not great, but ready. Months ahead.

Yeah, I could. But it’s Monday. 11:51 a.m. And I need it now.

You’re invited to visit my website, and I hope you’ll take a look there at my new “Focus on Faith” Podcast. At the website, just click on “Podcast.” Blessings!

Copyright 2023 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Garages, Dogs, and God’s Gifts

Garages are like dogs.

All dogs are descended, canine genetic researchers tell us, from wolves. (A canine genetic researcher is not, I should mention, a dog who does genetic research. “Genetic canine researcher” is nonsensical. “Researchers who study canine genetics.” There ya go.)  No, your garage has nothing to do with wolves. Be patient.

Chihuahuas are dogs. Weimaraners are dogs. Pomeranians are dogs.

My garage is a garage. My friend’s garage, down the street, is a garage. Same word. Descended from the French word garer, which has to do with “docking” or “mooring” as in “docking a boat.” And also the Old French word varer, “to protect oneself against.”

The theory is, I suppose, that a garage is a place where a vehicle can be docked and kept safe. But, in practicality, my garage bears about as much resemblance to my friend’s garage as a chihuahua does to a pit bull. Still, we use the same word for his and for mine.

My friend’s garage has walls. Mine does, too. But you can see his garage walls; you can see only a few square inches of mine. When I wanted to hang up a dart board, I was forced to create a fold-down wooden panel upon which to mount it. No wall space available.

He can park a car, as in “docking” or “mooring” his car, or even two, in his garage. If I can ever park even one car in mine, I’m rather amazed.

His garage is clean. I wonder if he ever does anything, makes anything, putters about working on anything. His garage is too clean to provide evidence of useful activity beyond his work.

My garage is dirty. Pretty much always. Evidence of activity, useful or not, abounds. I do projects, make stuff (much of it mostly useless), and occasionally fix stuff. And I keep old stuff. New stuff. Almost all stuff. I putter around in the garage, cutting stuff, sanding stuff, soldering stuff, gluing stuff, occasionally taking a break to offer stogie incense as I pause the messing with stuff. Then I continue nailing stuff, mixing stuff, painting stuff, staining stuff, destroying stuff, building stuff, and piling up all sorts of collateral stuff dust and debris. (Debris is from the Middle French word debriser, “to break into pieces.” Yep.)

A person could eat off of my friend’s garage floor. Even sweeping mine is a dirty job. And blowing it out should never be done without donning a mask or respirator.

My friend’s garage has about four tools, catalogued and hung perfectly above a small unused workbench. My garage includes many tools and many tool duplications because it’s always true that one or two of the same tools that I have are lost or buried in the garage, and I “needed” another one. If I get hit by a truck or stroke out, the kids are gonna have a tough job mining that garage, but they will occasionally find, I predict, a lost nugget of treasure. Even now for me, a rare “clean the garage day” is frustrating, but it’s also almost as good as Christmas when I find that which was lost. (Hmm. Sounds like a parable.)

My garage. His garage. Both theoretically docking places for vehicle safe-keeping. His, mostly used for that very purpose. Mine, much more used than his but not for that purpose. My garage, a shaggy Australian Shepherd. His garage, a hairless Xoloitzcuintle (some people actually prefer a “hairless” dog with a “primitive temper”).

Okay, I admit that my friend is a fictional composite whose character is based on the garages of several friends whose garages are too clean to belong to mentally healthy and well-balanced people like me.

But you get it, right? All dogs are dogs. All garages are garages. But inside the same category, their specific iterations are spectacularly different.

This is not profound. It is mostly, I suppose, evidence that I need some petting the dog time, or some garage time. Or some time off from writing stuff time.

But it does remind me that it’s no contradiction to say that even as God’s children are more alike than they are different, the gifts we are given can be very much alike, even as they are incredibly different. The same. Different.

I need to think more about this. Maybe in the garage… Maybe discuss it with the dog…

You’re invited to visit my website, and I hope you’ll take a look there at my new “Focus on Faith” Podcast. At the website, just click on “Podcast.” Blessings!

Copyright 2023 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

A Change That Begins at Home

“Change. What we need is change!”

That word and sentiment, or a jillion variations of them, work well as political campaign slogans. Toss the rather plastic word out there, and most folks immediately think of some fairly solid and even specific improvements in their circumstances, though slick politicians usually get away with mouthing “change” in vaporous terms.

Of course, there’s always an exception. Something really specific. Chickens. 

I found myself thinking of the old political slogan that promised voters “a chicken in every pot.” That is change, positive change, if your cookpot is normally chicken-less. So, vote for Herbert Hoover, urged an ad paid for by Hoover supporters (not an ad created by him) during the 1928 election, and there’ll be “a chicken in every pot” and, they enlarged on the promise, “a car in every garage.”

Do a very little research and you’ll find that, though he was wise enough not to promise it (writes Brian Burrell in American Heritage), King Henry IV of France (1553-1610) said, “I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday” (Wiktionary).

I need to dig some more to find out how that went for Henry IV, but I already know that 1929’s stock market crash resulted in many fewer chickens, pots, cars, and garages, a lot of misery—and nothing good for Herbert Hoover.

“Change” is a one-syllable word, slides off the tongue easily, and once launched, leaves the taste buds with a nice “finish,” the sweet taste and mild buzz of a quick nip of virtue.

Hmm. I didn’t really mean to teeter into an alcoholic metaphor, but here we are. And sometimes I do wonder what our society has been drinking.

Don’t we know that “change” isn’t confined to a positive direction, and that we need to be careful which direction we choose? Starting the day by hanging your little toe on a bedpost counts as change. So does a flare-up of hemorrhoids. I don’t plan, without some serious thought first, to hold up a sign recommending “CHANGE.”  

If you mean “change” politically, I’d personally (forgive me) love to see a presidential election where Elmer Fudd and Jabba the Hutt are not our options yet again, and we might actually elect someone who could at least “move the needle” positively with some genuine combination of integrity, character, discipline, and wisdom. That’s a change I could go for and one we should insist upon.

What occurs to me, though, at this moment in June, is that, if we really want positive and amazing change that truly matters, we can let chickens and pots and presidents simmer on the back burner for just a bit. You see…

I can hardly imagine a change that would bless this land more than for each of us who are fathers to ask the Father of us all to help us fill that role as we should. To do that, we need God’s help. We don’t have to be perfect, but we do have to be present.

What would better bless this land than for fathers to ask for their Father’s help to love their children and, yes, do so with a combination of integrity, character, discipline, and wisdom?

Being a real father has more to do with unselfish and committed love than with loveless and self-centered procreation. I’ve always loved the words of the amazing leading man and famed “stereotypical Latin lover type” Ricardo Montalbán: “A great lover is someone who can satisfy one woman her entire lifetime and be satisfied with one woman his entire lifetime. It is not someone who goes from woman to woman; any dog can do that.” He meant it. He and his first and only wife were married for sixty-three years (until her death).

A real father “mans up” and makes the practical choices to genuinely love his wife and his kids more than himself.

A real father knows that love, to be genuine, must be freely given and can’t be earned, but that genuine respect must be earned and can be received in no other way.

A real father knows that his wife and kids will forgive many flaws and failures if they know they have his heart.

“What we need is change! We need to change the world!”

Can you imagine a more practical and beneficial change in our world than to have more fathers who truly seek to love their families humbly and unselfishly? We desperately need many more committed fathers than we have, but even a few more in each of our communities would change them immeasurably for the better.

Guys, do you want to change the world? Start at home, and make sure your heart is there. No accolade the world offers could mean more than the respect of the family you’ve chosen to genuinely love.

You’re invited to visit my website, and I hope you’ll take a look there at my new “Focus on Faith” Podcast. At the website, just click on “Podcast.” Blessings!

Copyright 2023 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.

Peer Pressure, a New Mower, and Wisdom

I bowed to peer pressure recently. Ironically, the pressure came from the very offspring I’d always sternly counseled to avoid peer pressure.

Yes, and I’d also taught them to resist blaming other people for their own actions. None of this, “He made me mad, so I decked him.” Nope. You let the kid punch your buttons and you—yes, son, you!—chose to deck him. You made the choice. Now, own it, and deal with the consequences.

Whether or not your taking the jerk down a notch or two was, in fact, a benefit to humanity is another question. But it’s the stated policy of this family (I paraphrase from the Shelburneshire Code of Conduct, Chapter 2, Section 3, Paragraph 21) that it’s foolish to let fools punch your buttons, and, generally speaking, we avoid punching people even if they need to be punched.

All to say, I did bow to peer pressure. No one made me.

It’s just that in addition to seven incredible grandchildren, eight mostly above average grand-dogs (I include one bug-eyed pug who might lower the average a bit), and, presently, a few chickens, ducks, and ducklings, our corner of the Shelburne clan has come to own three zero-turn riding lawn mowers.

Those things are amazing. I admit that I got to the point that I couldn’t walk past one of them parked in one of our family garages without coming seriously close to breaking the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet…”

Well, “thou” really shouldn’t, but I guess “I” really did. Anyway, I found myself reading reviews of the various brands and options of those amazing mowers that will, quite literally, turn on a dime. They’d be incredibly fun to pilot even if you never turned the blades on. They have rather massive cutting widths, and I figured that using one of them would cut not just grass but the time it takes me to cut our grass in about half. The seems like good stewardship of time, certainly a virtue.

I should mention here that my wife and I are approaching 48 years of marriage. (That’s the real number. We didn’t test drive for 12 years before taking vows.) For a number of those years, I’ve counted pretty heavily on the fact that it would likely be too much trouble for her to break in another one. I may at times be presumptuous, but I do know that buying a very high-dollar item (these gold-plated mower things count) without running the idea by her would be a mistake.

So, I flew a balloon or two. Just commented as I passed a son’s grass-cutting machine, “Wow, it must be nice to have one of those! Hmm. Wonder how much that thing would cut down a three-hour mowing challenge? Ten thousand square feet of yard. Boy, my back’s still sore from the last time I tackled mowing the estate.”

She saw it coming. Caught me fiddling with what amounted to zero-turn lawn mower porn on my computer. Drooling.

Yep, she knew the signs. And, retired municipal judge that she is, issued an edict bereft of judicial authority but scary nonetheless, “You can get one of those, but only after you clean out the garage.”

So, of course, I did.

I maintain that I did. She maintains that the job is not yet even close to finished. I admit that she has a point, but I counter that now, with a little effort, her minivan will fit.

She charges that I cheated. I say that it was because I figured she’d be happier if I went ahead and purchased the mower while she was away delivering “Meals on Wheels” that I did so.

We’re not in the right denomination for me to simply argue that the Creator of the universe was on my side and wanted me to have this machine. “Well, dear, I just felt led…” Nor is my wife gullible.

I’m still working on the garage. She has even test-driven the mower, though not engaged the blades yet. Hasn’t stuck a blade in me, yet, either.

I wish I could blame my sons. I still claim that at least a few of my points in favor of buying this machine were at least partially rational.

I know. Jesus was certainly right when he said, basically, that Lady Wisdom has many folks who claim to be her children, but, to change the metaphor, the “proof’s in the pudding.” Wisdom is real if it produces worthwhile results.

Hey, it’s been raining ever since I bought that mower. More rain at once than we’ve seen in years. To a friend who said, “It’s starting to smell like Houston,” I replied, “It’s not smog; that, my friend, is mildew.”

Mower. Moisture. Mildew. Muleshoe. Marriage.

There you have it. Five M-words. Oh, wait! Six. Mulch.

And everywhere I look, the evidence mounts. The mower is green. Grass is green. The mower has a very comfortable seat. My back likes that seat.

I was meant to have this mower. Wisdom. Proof. Pudding. All there. The purchase is even biblically sound.

Surely, this will now be clear to my wife. She’s far too wise not to recognize wisdom when she sees it.

You’re invited to visit my website, and I hope you’ll take a look there at my new “Focus on Faith” Podcast. At the website, just click on “Podcast.” Blessings!

Copyright 2023 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.