Caution

I've deleted recent posts for obvious reasons.

Please feel free to leave a note saying"Hi" that I know you have been here to encourage and pray.

Hair of Love

I’ve been busy lately.

After our road trip I came home and have been jumping into a lot of chores.

There’s the garden of course. Weeding and watering and picking and more weeding and (gosh fresh potatoes are so good... I love my Yukon golds!)...

The bigger chore was dealing with some overgrown trees. We went a little nuts on trees (or were we a little fruity?) about 15 years ago and planted too many, failing to appreciate how large they would become. So... down came the apple... over went the peach... We climbed and thinned and pruned and cleaned up the maple and the dogwood and the walnut. We did the same for the fig and the cherries and the pine and the flowering plum. The rhododendrons (seven of them) went from over ten feet tall to about seven. Then for good measure I took out three rose bushes.

What piles of brush that created! That led to another major project (see previous post).

We rented a chipper.

When we were done the landscape area around the rhododendrons (approx. 15’ X 40’) was six inches deep in chipper regurgitated flora.

Brenda was a little surprised to find me at more chores the next day. I went to Canby Builder’s Supply and bought some wood and paint and a few hours later the trim around two doors was repaired as good as new.

I arranged a nice little area in the backyard for repotting plants.

After church today I got out my splining tool and a roll of screen material and fixed a couple of screens.

I have more projects lined up.

There is a 50’ pine tree in the yard I am removing. “Joe the Tree Guy” is going to take it down in pieces, lop it into 18” lengths, chip and haul off the limbs. I will then see to splitting the pieces of wood into fire wood, grinding the stump (it is nearly four feet wide!), and level and reseed the yard.

Brenda came out, heading for the store, and paused to watch me press the spline into the screen frame.

“You’ve sure been busy lately.”

“Yup.”

“What happened? Get a wild hair up your a$$?” she chuckled. (Her language is a touch more colorful than mine.)

I smiled. “Just trying to get a few things done around here.”

“Has some elf folks come in the night and left a changeling in your place?”

“You sure have a backhanded way of giving a compliment, you know?” I smiled, taking the sting out of the mild rebuke. “‘Gee, you aren’t nearly as lazy as usual,’” I mocked in a light falsetto.

“Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. Thanks for all you’ve been doing the last few days. I appreciate it.”

The tensions of marriage rise and fall. A few days ago were a little hard for her. She had been pushed beyond her limit and had blown up at her mom. The waves from that little storm washed up on the shores of our home for a day or so.

It’s nice when she is happy.

I try to make her feel loved. I touch her gently as I pass her in the kitchen or hall. I tell her I think her beautiful, I tell her I love her, I buy her little things.

I heard about a book once... The Five Love Languages. I should probably read it some time. The premise of the book is that there are several ways that people express and feel love, that conflicts arise when the language of love of one person, how they express and how they perceive love, differs from their partner’s language of love.

I have been thinking about that idea and it occurred to me that perhaps I have been telling Brenda I love her in a language she does not hear.

Touch, gifts, compliments... those may not be hers. In fact they almost certainly are not, since those are not ways she expresses love to me.

She is a hustle bustle type. Always busy, never slowing down to appreciate quiet time together. Always with a list of chores to do.

I decided to try to speak her language. I looked hard at the things that could be done, things I have been putting off. And I made a mental list of those tasks.

I got the chain saw serviced and started working in the yard.

Branches started dropping, chips started flying, old wood came down, newly painted wood went up, screens popped from windows, sprang back repaired...

“You get a wild hair up your a$$?”

(Those of the fair sex find their own way to make a point. Those of the unfair sex should sometimes let them.)

I told her I wanted to just get a few chores done. She said something about the fact that I was even putting all my tools back properly.

Another backhanded compliment. (She has a point.)

I had the hair of love.

Wild!

Isaac's Photographic Vision

For the past week we have been doing yardwork. I cut down two trees and pruned six others. The piles of leaves and branches covered the yards.

On Friday we went and rented a limb chipper and went to work.

The boys were great, worked real hard.

Isaac wanted to document the whole thing.

"Dad, I can take pictures, and you can put them on your blog!"

"Sure, buddy."

So, in keeping to my word here is Isaac's photo essay of our day working together:

Isaac wanted me to get a picture of him in the flowering plum being a hero and using the handsaw.

Quite a pile of branches!

Rental shop opens in a half hour!

The yard already looks very different!

I like how you framed this picture, Isaac.
See how the angles of the building and street and the pole in the background work together?
Good job!

Isaac likes to take pictures of his dad. Meanwhile, three little kids keep yelling at us from a window in a house just out of view. The youngest one wanted us to know that he really, really likes trucks, cops, and trains.

The picture is a little blurry, Isaac, but it does give the sense of hauling the chipper home.

I guess it seems weird to see Dad drive through the yard.

Branches go in...

...and disappear!

Engaging the blades of the loud beast.

Dad is checking where the chips are landing.

Like I said... he likes to take pictures of his dad.
(Gosh I need to lose weight!)

Good job, Jeremiah! Almost done!!!

Rocky feels this has been a pretty good day with his peops.
(I love the expression on his face!)

That's it!

I don't know why Rocky is tired!

(Thanks for the comments, everyone! Isaac loves it!)

Leaving A Mark

I was roaming western states. Brenda was at home, enjoying a house sans testosterone. Well the inside of the house anyway.

A home is an island within a community, but society laps its coasts and a corner lot offers more shoreline.

Our fence was tagged.

It also happened a couple of years ago.

I can see it is a pretty tempting target, it's a 70 foot by six foot white cedar canvas just taunting the delinquent artistic within any gang member.


So while I was rolling along highways, byways, and roadless desert lake beds, Brenda was purchasing and applying white primer to cover the artistic attempts of youthful vandals.

When I returned I bought a gallon of paint and did the whole fence along that side.

Brenda was pretty ticked by the whole thing. I was a little more philosophical.

I understand the need to let the world know that I exist, to leave some evidence that I passed this way (is that a motive behind these digital missives?).

I saw some graffiti which surprised me while I was traveling. I was in Yosemite, enjoying the beauty of a tall waterfall, and I saw the marks of a familiar gang on a sign beneath whispering pines.


Isn't that interesting? Even in this beautiful place a youth had hiked up to see a wonder of nature, a wonder of God, and felt compelled to leave the mark of his association.

Graffiti has always been around. It was scratched on cave walls during the paleolithic and it has appeared on public walls ever since.

Paleolithic Graffiti

There are probably a lot of reasons for it. It's at least a statement that "I was here!"

Leaving a mark.

Graffiti runs the gamut from artistic to crude, wishful to rude, political to declarations of love. I was in my classroom a week ago sanding graffiti off some wood along counters.

Roman Graffiti: “Alexamenos worships his god”

Making fun of someone who has adopted a new faith who’s god is being crucified.

While I was painting the fence neighbors stopped by, commenting on the hooligans who defaced my nice white fence.

I know they were basically giving me an “attaboy” for keeping up appearances in this small town that is unused to gang activity. I was more concerned about something else.

Gang activity has risen sharply the last few years in this rural community. (For an amusing tale about my attempt at being a hero in the face of gang activity, click this link.) There was an article in the local paper a couple of months ago about a gang fight where a half dozen young men were arrested. I was sad to recognize a couple of former students in those mugshots.

I’ve heard folks say these gang members are illegal aliens. I don’t think so. In my experience they are usually second, third, or fourth generation children of immigrants. They usually haven’t a father at home.

We are doing some creative things in our school to help such children. We have a peace program promoting concepts of cooperation and care with events throughout the year. We have an event at the beginning of the year marking September 11th in our Peace Garden reminding ourselves of the value of seeking peaceful resolution to conflicts. The culmination of the year is a peace prize ceremony modeled after the Nobel Peace Prize.

To help our hispanic students fit in and break up cliques of all sorts in the school we have a series of activities which mixes groups up, gets children to share, support each other.

We do our best to mainstream all children into regular classes, offering a few support classes to help them with language, social, or behavioral challenges they face. In general students are mixed together.

Still... there are students who feel apart from their classmates, who feel the world is out to get them, and they seek out others who feel likewise.

It is sad.

When I see those faces in the paper, or wearing gang-like clothing on the street, I worry about them, say a prayer for them. Funny, when they see me, even when dressed like that, they duck their heads and mumble a polite "Hi, Mr. Greenleaf."

Everyone wants to belong.

I see how people look askance at minorities... Looks of suspicion, distrust. I hear the racist comments of my neighbors who suspect hispanics are behind the ills of our town (all I can do with those ol' biddies is say something indicating I don't agree and leave abruptly). I see the apprehension in the faces of my brown-skinned neighbors when I greet them, they're wondering what I will say or do.

It is easy to feel superior when one is in the majority. It is easy to feel fearful when one is in the minority.

So these youths, these children who sense they are in dangerous territory, sometimes choose to join others. In such groups they can posture and demonstrate their bravado before their peers.

And they are throwing their lives away.

While I paint my fence I feel a little irritation, but I feel greater sorrow. These young men think that they are declaring grand things, carving out a piece of the world as their turf, the territory. The blue paint streaming from their paint cans does more than mark the edge of their gang’s “hood”... it marks the edge of their world, it defines their future, paints a hard edge to their potential, their hopes and dreams.

What a sad situation, this reduction of limitless possibilities to a world of violence and drugs and crime.

What a sorrowful waste of lives, where young men, former children of my classroom, see their best hope is in joining a gang.

It is easy to be frustrated with gangs.

And it is easy to blame minorities for joining gangs.

What is more challenging is recognizing the humanity within the young thug who defaces property, sells drugs, lives in the hazy twilight of civilized life.

But it is what I am called to do.

When I think about the short futures of these young men, who see their lives as shooting stars, momentary flashes in the dark, it makes me sad. They think the best they can achieve is to grasp as much attention and glory as they can through machismo, bravado, and dangerous stupid illegal acts born of anger and desperation.

There are great costs in gang activity. There is the vandalism that home and business owners repair. There is the loss of property. There are the losses associated with drug use. And there is the loss of lives.

There is also the loss of the enjoyment in leading a productive life. The pleasure in knowing and being known by neighbors and community for one’s place there.

There is the eternal loss. There is the loss of not having a relationship with Christ. The loss of not joining in that community, that family.

When I see these young men in the paper, their mugshots held up to public scrutiny as a warning to residents and a caution to those who might emulate them, I feel saddened for their wasted lives.

I say a little prayer.

Being of Service

School will be starting up soon and I'm excited. In fact, I will be teaching a group of students for a week before the official start. A sort of jump start, helping a score of kids make the transition from elementary to middle school.

I am interested in service learning. I have had several projects which encourage kids to see real world problems, discover real world solutions, and make connections to their community.

Service learning is distinguished from community service in that it is a teaching strategy, not just a student activity. We are making connections between curriculum and the community. Kids need to feel they are apart of their community as they learn how to read, write, understand maps and charts and math and all the other elements of their education.

My wife and I used to watch Little House on the Prairie regularly. Aside from stories about family, faith, and community, it showed kids being a part of their running their farm, connected to their neighbors and friends in tangible ways.

There was a time when kids had clear roles in their society. They did what work they could do, from collecting eggs to helping Pa with the plowing, they pulled their weight.

Today kids haven’t such clear roles. Many fall into believing that a childhood is what they are about. Oh, and school... that too.

Service learning is getting kids involved in filling community needs while they learn lessons of researching, writing, math, and science.

The idea of service has changed over time.

We demand service from merchants. We need this product, or assistance with that, or dang it, shorter lines at the check out counter. I notice the demanding attitude of my fellow shoppers. An arrogant demander of services is an embarrassing role for someone to take. Not when we are really eternal beings created by a humble king.

I often see parents who are demanding more for their children (which is sometimes the right thing to do, sometimes it isn’t). I once had a parent come in with a lawyer and tell me I planted evidence of her child littering to give the student a lunch detention, just to be mean. A lawyer!

The primary goal is for students to learn. The secondary goal is in creating the connection between students and their communities.

There are a lot of negative connotations about service. There’s community service, often court mandated, or just something to be plugged in a resume. Sub-servience roles are held as low status positions, butlers and maids and gardeners and handymen. Hierarchy of authority. Echoes of bondage and slavery.

Nothing wrong in serving.

God serves Man.

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Colossians 1:17

He has arranged the universe so that prayer moves His hand.

"Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." James 5:14-16

Jesus, my Lord, was the servant to those he met... kneeling in the dirt to help the fallen, washing feet, preparing meals... even to the point of offering...

"He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth." Acts 8:32

He is a being of service.

I see helping students to see themselves as part of a community, as citizens who offer service to those in need, as a way of promoting the underlying principles of my faith.

I have many projects in mind this year. Projects which will connect children to our community, and in learning to solve the problems, move the barriers, avoid the obstacles, they will learn about research and writing and math and geography and science. They will see that learning is not what happens in a classroom but is the natural path of mental growth for all people of any age.

There is another aspect of serving which is good for people, at least it has been good for me.

A few years ago my pastor spoke about service and I realized that if God Himself could serve us, could hold the universe together so we may have a place to make our own choices, even to reject Him, then who am I to see serving as beneath me?

When I am asked to do something I try to see if I can do it. Period. I quickly assess if it interferes with what is good for my family, my wife, my children, and if it doesn't, I do it without complaint.

So there you have it. That is the reason behind the second part of my online moniker. I am Curious Servant because that is what He made me to be. I want to be of service.

This blog has various purposes. It permits me to think through the struggles in my life, to explore the challenges I face.

But I like to think it is also about helping others. That includes you. Yes, you who are reading this post from perhaps a half a world away.

What is it you need? Do you need prayer? Do you need help in some way?

I belong to my Lord, but I am your servant as well.

God bless.