Davis: No point getting mad about rain

As these words are being written, I am sipping on a cup of Chicory coffee. Café DuMond, New Orleans, was the source of the can itself, from which I made this cup.

This reminds me of the theme of this column, due to the fact that people in New Orleans, and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast, throw hurricane parties when the weather brings the opportunity to do so. Relatedly, when I was helping chaperone the CCS senior trip to St. Croix, U.S.V.I., the day we left the island was the day before the start of hurricane season. The usual question there, 1,000 miles out in the Atlantic, is not whether the island will get hit with a hurricane.

link Clyde Davis

The question is how many, when, and which areas. In that context, the inhabitants also throw hurricane parties.

The column theme, however, is not limited to hurricanes. Simply put, both hurricane parties and the theme of this week's column remind us that we cannot control the weather.

In the perspective of this columnist, the larger issue at hand is that we cannot control the works of our Creator.

We've had, for our area, unusual rainfall for several days. Most readers of this column probably saw the pictures of flooded streets, perhaps even experienced some flooding themselves.

I've dealt with flooding before, but many folks in Clovis, who have spent most of their lives in the southwest, have not. Native New Mexicans are more likely to be familiar with tornadoes and wildfires.

In each case, we should again be reminded that there is One who controls the weather, and that One is not Doppler Dave from Amarillo.

One set of positive memories which I hold from my time spent in the New Mexico National Guard revolves around fire fighting deployments. The reason this remains so positive is that we were engaged in a real mission where people really needed our help.

Most Guard units do not actually fight fires; that is a job for trained professionals. Guard units do what they are professionally trained to do: protect firefighters and civilians, drive and distribute truckloads of emergency supplies, etc.

The purpose of this becomes obvious when one is trying to defuse an angry resident who is on the verge of punching out a young NCO, who is simply keeping the civilian from possibly losing his life by driving up a road partially enveloped with flames.

Your multimillion dollar vacation home is not worth the loss of your life. Our choices to build such homes do not control the Creator. A pattern of burning and restoration has, for millennia, been a method by which our high plains, high desert, arid mountain environment manages itself.

So the rain has crimped your July 4 plans. Relax. You can't change it. There's some Chicory coffee brewing in the kitchen. Go get a cup and chill for a while.

Clyde Davis is a Presbyterian pastor and teacher at Clovis High School. He can be contacted at:

[email protected]