​An Apple For The Teacher

He was maybe six years old, seven at the most. He appeared to be somewhere in the middle of my grandchildren, age wise at least. He was looking at me in the most curious fashion. Not overly interested necessarily, but slightly aggravated and a little sympathetic almost to the point of pity. I think his young mind was trying to figure out where on the evolutionary scale a man who didn’t know the proper way to pick up apples should be placed. Cap this with the fact that I didn’t understand Latvian, which rendered me speechless in his presence, and I figure he figured I came from an altogether different branch of the tree than he. Much to his relief, I might add.   

I was down on one knee under an apple tree, in the high, damp grass surrounding Camp Wesley at the apple festival. Camp Wesley is a Methodist youth camp just outside of Liepāja, Latvia. It is beautifully situated on twenty or so acres of pristine farm land that smells of newly turned earth and fresh mown hay. I have always found those two fragrances soothing and a little heady. It’s my kinda place. Add a gentle breeze, and the everlasting wwohh, wwohh, wwohh of the nearby windmills and a hammock comes to mind every time; but I digress.

I was on my knees, picking up apples and thinking of how ingenious Anita was for calling a workday a festival when this young boy comes up and does his best to pull me to my feet. I think he was concerned for my britches, which were quickly becoming soaked and soiled. He was a born professor, and he wanted to teach me how to do this thing properly.

First of all he tried to tell me what to do, but my sorrowful expression and blank eyes only confirmed his initial impression of me. So after determining that I was verbally challenged, he tried pantomime. In that most of the apples were on the ground due to a storm, he proceeded to demonstrate, in a very slow and extremely exaggerated manner the correct way to stand up straight, bend at the waste, extend your arm, pick up an apple and gently place it in the sack. He showed me twice, so I could get it.

In essence he was saying “They’re just apples, Sir. There is no need to bow down to them. Just pick ‘em up like a normal human being.”  He was very patient and just a little condescending.

What he didn’t know was that had I attempted his method of picking up apples, I would have quickly become nothing more than an oversized piece of yard-art with my head planted in the grass and my rear-end pointing skyward, never to move again.

At his age I may well have bent that way, but at my age it ain’t happening. Well, it isn’t the age so much as the mileage, but the result would have been the same.

So with great concentration I watched him twice, smiled, and then got back down on my knees.  His expression was priceless. “Yep, from a different branch of the tree than me;” with an implied, “Thank God almighty.” He wandered off shaking his head from side to side, thanking the Lord for his pedigree and wondering about mine.

Well, after some effort, with soaked and soiled britches, I finally filled up my sack and stood up to carry it back to the barn for processing. (cutting up and squeezing) You know, a good sized burlap sack filled with small apples is surprisingly heavy. So I was half carrying, half dragging this sack when I noticed a slight, but perceptible lessening of the weight. 

I looked down and my young professor had dropped his regal robes and was doing his best to carry the other side of the sack for me. His eyes said, “Sir, I might not be able to do anything about where you came from or how you do things, but I will do my best to lighten your load.”  

We made it to the cutting table, and dropped the sack. Then he took my hand and led me to one of the older church ladies from Tasi for safe keeping. He didn’t want me to hurt myself.

There was a brief conversation, and I can only figure that the matriarch told the young’un who and what I was, because his expression immediately changed from compassion for me to a combination of concern for the team, and childlike wonder at the vagaries of life.     

I watched him amble off and thought to myself, “Somebody is raising that child right.”

Later that day I watched as he taught David how to put apple pieces in a grinder. He seemed well satisfied with David as a student. David acted like he had some sense, at least.

The Lord gives me these stories to tell, and sometimes I wonder why. Not this time. This time the message is simple, essential and poignant. 

In a world, in a Church that seems bent on self-destruction through a focus on self to the exclusion of all else, this little professor taught a simple and golden truth: kindness before judgment, love before rancor, others before self and Christ above all.


Tony Rowell

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