Greetings to you all,
This past weekend we celebrated our third-born son in multiple ways. He was baptized in church on Sunday, and then the next day he turned eighteen. For his birthday, he received multiple Liverpool FC gifts along with a “Grammar Police” t-shirt.
He wrote a beautiful testimony for Sunday. After church, a woman caught me in the doorway to the church and said, “Your son is a writer. You know that, right?” I nodded. While I am proud of his ability and the fact that he might be inclined that way because of my influence, I also know that my influence is why he got a Grammar Police t-shirt. Ah, parenting.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Leavings
I planted some shrubs this week. It’s part of my long-range goal of converting our front yard into some kind of order instead of the wild weed haven it is right now. I planted them along the fenceline at the base of our property, in the middle of an area that was knee-deep in leaves.
It was knee-deep in leaves because of one of the most colossally passive-aggressive neighbor moves I’ve ever seen: about halfway through last fall, our next-door neighbor was gathering fallen leaves on his property. He was bagging them up for the city to collect. The trouble was, he decided that some of the leaves were actually ours since they had fallen from our trees. So, under cover of nightfall, he loaded up his small trailer with fallen leaves, drove his lawn tractor out of his fence, and unloaded the leaves onto our yard. He did this a few times, until, I imagine, he decided that justice had been done.
I admit that when I first saw the leaf pile, I laughed out loud. I texted a couple of friends. Then I got mad for a little while. Then I felt bad.
I feel bad because we are those neighbors. (You know the ones.) We used to run around every fall like everyone else, routinely blowing, raking, and bagging up the leaves from our myriad trees. Our property is heavily wooded throughout, and we have oaks, maples, and beeches, among others. We would usually fill 50+ bags over the course of one autumn.
Then, two years ago, we stopped. We now let the leaves stay where they fall. We might rearrange them from time to time — opening up a flower bed here or there, protecting small plantings, or something of the like. But the open wooded areas just stay covered in leaves. (Side note: it’s better for your little piece of earth if you do this, too. Just be warned that it might kick up a silent conflict with your neighbors.)
As a result of our new leaf-leaving philosophy, some of “our” leaves1 blow onto our neighbor’s yard. And if you’re a leaf bagger who lives next door to a leaf leaver, I imagine it’s pretty infuriating to try to make progress in the fall.
As I worked with my shovel the other day, moving an immense amount of leaves around to try to reach some earth, I thought about my neighbor, and how my newly-found ecological approach to earth-keeping meant that he was probably frustrated with us for a while last year.
There are ways that these little upsets happen in other areas of life, too. Somebody thinks they’re making a decision that’s best for them, but it affects somebody else in a way that they didn’t anticipate. Sometimes, they’re not aware of it at all. Most of these decisions have no moral value one way or the other; they’re neutral. But suddenly somebody’s got a yard full of leaves that they didn’t sign up for, and they’re mad.
When I saw that leaf pile, I was pretty annoyed. Seriously, have you ever heard of such a petty thing? But in general, my neighbors are nice people. They work demanding jobs; they have little kids; they take care of their home and yard. Truly, I am sorry that I made their life harder.
These little ruffles happen all the time in life and neighborhoods and churches, and usually, the best thing to do is quietly bear with each other. Pick up the shovel, move the leaves, and plant some things where you can. Extend kindness. Try to understand why the other person was annoyed. Carry on for the sake of the neighborhood.
Let brotherly love continue. - Hebrews 13:1
For the Anglophiles
Mini Royals photo alert:
Reads & Listens of the Week
This article is extremely long, but I will be chewing on it for awhile: Christians in the Gray Zone. “…we can preserve the reluctance to exercise judgment, characteristic of the recently departed open society, without lapsing into a sort of political atheism, wholly captive to imminence, as the post-liberals fear. We can, and must, have a common life ordered toward the transcendent and seasoned with mercy.”
I think you will benefit from the most recent episode of French Friday from the podcast The Holy Post. What do you think of when you hear the word “liberalism”?
What Tim Keller learned from Chinese Christians: “…to get desperately needed perspective, we must listen to the voices of believers in parts of the world where the opposition is much more pervasive and often takes the form of violence.”
Closer to Home
This week, our third son turned eighteen. Against my better judgment, I republished the story of how and why I went into labor with him ten days early. It had something to do with Kramer from Seinfeld.
“It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book….” - Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
Whether or not any of these things are truly “ours” is a deeper question for another essay written by someone with more time and more advanced degrees than me.