My 83 year old neighbor is one seriously dirty old man. Mind you, Uncle Lybe is 3/4 blind and so most of the dirtiness is in his mind, but then again isn’t it always? And he hates Americans, but we are friends. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but it is true. I am an American mostly in the passport sense. Honestly, we don’t live nor act very Americanish . . . few people here would quickly identify us as Americans . . . Westerners certainly, Americans not.
But I have left poor Uncle Lybe sitting at his table.
Now this 3/4 blind octogenarian constantly walks by our house, as his is situated behind ours. And when I am “working” I don’t see him much, but when I am “relaxing”, e.g. working with my flowers or trimming the yard, he walks right past me and we talk. Of course then it is no longer very relaxing for me, because Uncle Lybe speaks a particular form of Macedonian that is liberally sprinkled with archaic words (because of his age I guess) and Serbian words. He is hard to understand. But he often gets this conspirator gleam in his eye, he leans forward so that he head is touching mine (don’t pull back as most foreigners do!), and he tells me he is on a walk to watch the girls wiggle!
Now I have cleaned up what he precisely said for the sake of the blogging community, but you get the gist of it. He boldly proclaims that “the Macedonian girls are the most beautiful in the entire world” and that “they are so pretty they make me pant” and etc, etc. I am pretty sure he can’t tell if the person passing him on the street is a girl or a guy, except by the perfume they are wearing, because he is so blind! His nose and ears are still functioning well though. I tell him that he is going blind because he has been watching the girls wiggle and jiggle for far too many decades, and he giggles in agreement.
Now we are not friends because I chide him about watching girls, or rather wanting to watch the girls. We are friends because I can see him and I treat him with care and dignity. He lives behind us as I said, along with his 50 something year old daughter. Together they bring home about 200 euros a month ($250). They are poor and live on the ragged edge of life. Heck my rent alone is three times their gross monthly income.
So one day Uncle Lybe stopped by in the evening while I was pruning my roses, and told me that they were smelling mighty good. I asked him what all that commotion going on at his house was about? He told me that they were doing some necessary repairs to the roof because it was leaking, but that they had to stop because the wheelbarrow tire went flat. I mentioned that I had a pump and would come and put some air back into the tire. He was amazed, and pleased as punch that I would do that. And I did it a number of times, because clearly the tire had a slow steady leak and every few days the tire would go flat again.
So this week, Uncle Lybe came walking by as I was resowing some grass in the back shady part of the house. He was not his usual calm self, he was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, reminding me of my son when he had something he needed to tell me. I asked Uncle Lybe if he had something to tell me. He said, “no I need help.” It clearly killed him to ask, because we are Americans after all and he has made it clear many times in the past that America is responsible for much of the unrest in the Balkans, and I often agree with him, which unsettles him even more.
“I need help, because as you know the inner tube in the wheelbarrel is doomed and it needs a new one which I have . . . but I can’t see well enough to install it . . . and I can’t afford to have a meister do it.” Now if you look carefully here, he did not actually ask me to do it, but rather made the need known. I wasn’t about to take his dignity away and make him ask me, so I told him that if he could wait a day, I would see if I could help him. I did not want to promise to help, because the modus operandi of ministry here (perhaps everywhere?) is to under-promise, over-deliver.
It worked out last night that I was able to go and change the tube for him, and he was telling me ribald jokes and stuff like usual. When they were funny, I laughed; when they were just dirty I did not laugh. He said after I finished, “would you sit down and have a drink with me?” I said, “sure”. So we sat down and drank oyzo together. And they asked me many questions about Faith and Belief and action for the next hour as I sipped my oyzo. As I got up to leave, Uncle Lybe commented that while I am not much for checking out the ladies, I lived out Faith in my actions . . . I had helped him do what he could not do for himself.
As I walked away, I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that I am not the good man that Uncle believes me to be, nor is he quite the dirty ole’ man that he purports to be. We are both more and less than we appear. I wonder what God will do with us today?
But I have left poor Uncle Lybe sitting at his table.
Now this 3/4 blind octogenarian constantly walks by our house, as his is situated behind ours. And when I am “working” I don’t see him much, but when I am “relaxing”, e.g. working with my flowers or trimming the yard, he walks right past me and we talk. Of course then it is no longer very relaxing for me, because Uncle Lybe speaks a particular form of Macedonian that is liberally sprinkled with archaic words (because of his age I guess) and Serbian words. He is hard to understand. But he often gets this conspirator gleam in his eye, he leans forward so that he head is touching mine (don’t pull back as most foreigners do!), and he tells me he is on a walk to watch the girls wiggle!
Now I have cleaned up what he precisely said for the sake of the blogging community, but you get the gist of it. He boldly proclaims that “the Macedonian girls are the most beautiful in the entire world” and that “they are so pretty they make me pant” and etc, etc. I am pretty sure he can’t tell if the person passing him on the street is a girl or a guy, except by the perfume they are wearing, because he is so blind! His nose and ears are still functioning well though. I tell him that he is going blind because he has been watching the girls wiggle and jiggle for far too many decades, and he giggles in agreement.
Now we are not friends because I chide him about watching girls, or rather wanting to watch the girls. We are friends because I can see him and I treat him with care and dignity. He lives behind us as I said, along with his 50 something year old daughter. Together they bring home about 200 euros a month ($250). They are poor and live on the ragged edge of life. Heck my rent alone is three times their gross monthly income.
So one day Uncle Lybe stopped by in the evening while I was pruning my roses, and told me that they were smelling mighty good. I asked him what all that commotion going on at his house was about? He told me that they were doing some necessary repairs to the roof because it was leaking, but that they had to stop because the wheelbarrow tire went flat. I mentioned that I had a pump and would come and put some air back into the tire. He was amazed, and pleased as punch that I would do that. And I did it a number of times, because clearly the tire had a slow steady leak and every few days the tire would go flat again.
So this week, Uncle Lybe came walking by as I was resowing some grass in the back shady part of the house. He was not his usual calm self, he was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, reminding me of my son when he had something he needed to tell me. I asked Uncle Lybe if he had something to tell me. He said, “no I need help.” It clearly killed him to ask, because we are Americans after all and he has made it clear many times in the past that America is responsible for much of the unrest in the Balkans, and I often agree with him, which unsettles him even more.
“I need help, because as you know the inner tube in the wheelbarrel is doomed and it needs a new one which I have . . . but I can’t see well enough to install it . . . and I can’t afford to have a meister do it.” Now if you look carefully here, he did not actually ask me to do it, but rather made the need known. I wasn’t about to take his dignity away and make him ask me, so I told him that if he could wait a day, I would see if I could help him. I did not want to promise to help, because the modus operandi of ministry here (perhaps everywhere?) is to under-promise, over-deliver.
It worked out last night that I was able to go and change the tube for him, and he was telling me ribald jokes and stuff like usual. When they were funny, I laughed; when they were just dirty I did not laugh. He said after I finished, “would you sit down and have a drink with me?” I said, “sure”. So we sat down and drank oyzo together. And they asked me many questions about Faith and Belief and action for the next hour as I sipped my oyzo. As I got up to leave, Uncle Lybe commented that while I am not much for checking out the ladies, I lived out Faith in my actions . . . I had helped him do what he could not do for himself.
As I walked away, I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that I am not the good man that Uncle believes me to be, nor is he quite the dirty ole’ man that he purports to be. We are both more and less than we appear. I wonder what God will do with us today?
1 comment:
One of the hardest things to "get" in life is that there are no "good guys" or "bad guys," there are just people - all of us flawed, sin-sick, and in need of Jesus. We want to categorize people as "good" or "bad," because then we can categorize ourselves as "good," or at least "better than THEM." Kudos for a great story that punctures that tendency thoroughly. The worst delusion is self-delusion.
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