From foreign lands:
Aylmer, Ontario, Canada: A few miles north of the community is a
farmer that has a small herd of buffalo. I think there was a
bull, five cows and three calves. One night last week,
someone apparently opened the gate and in the morning… all the buffalo
were gone! They spotted them not too far away (all except the
bull) and herded them into Joe Stoll’s barn or loafing area where they
keep the horses during the winter time.
Double Head Cabbage, Belize: James and Mary Ellen Stolzfus and family
from Pa. will be moving [here] on Tuesday. Being dropped into a
unit, church and different culture and becoming the person bearing the
brunt of responsibility is not exactly what I would call fun.
May God grace them with patience (with themselves more than anything).
The adjustments simply take time.
One can’t help but admire the honesty
of these writings. Admirable above all is the sense of true
community expressed again and again, from the men rebuilding a
neighbor’s barn to the women cleaning the church for the widow’s
meeting and the boys loading straw for a neighbor. A granny checking
on the neighbor’s children is simply taken for granted, as is pitching
in to find and herd up some missing buffalo for a non-Mennonite
neighbor (sounds like that was kind of fun, too, for the men-folk).
These values are not totally lacking in other communities, but I have
seen an ambulance come and go from my neighbor’s house just across the
road and waited several days to stop in and ask why. I’m betting
there is no delay in offering comfort and expressing concern among the
Amish/Mennonites, even for friends who live quite a distance away.
Love of birds, of plants, of nature is
writ large in "The Letters." The Amish women do lawn maintenance
and try not to take pride in their beautiful flowers (the Gelassenheit
again). My husband is a bird lover, yet he disdains the notion
of feeding the birds, for fear they will become dependent on us for
sustenance. To the Amish, by contrast, encouraging birds to
stick around is not just an enjoyable pastime, but a sensible
intervention in the natural order, a way to ensure that seeds get
dropped where needed. Birds are funny -- and they help make good
honey.
And of course, the good works of
Mennonites overseas are undeniable. Both as missionaries and as
colonized farmers, they bring their gentle sharing way with them.
And the Amish travel constantly! As much as half of The Letters
are taken up with who visited whom. Amish honeymoons consist of
visiting far-flung family; they travel overseas to visit friends in
missions or for a working vacation; and they travel for the quiet,
slowed-down pleasure of it. No Amish and a minority of
Mennonites own automobiles, so the question of Amish travel is among
the many issues examined in detail in Donald Kraybill’s seminal work
The Riddle of Amish Culture.
But… there were things in the Letters
that disturbed me. Why is life without electricity and other
ills of modern society so dangerous? And why were
children so often the ones who suffered in accidents? And why
was it okay to go to see the doctor for an emergency, but not for
chronic ailments, not for whooping cough? And why do the Amish
get whooping cough? No immunizations? The more I
thought about these and other issues, the more I realized I would need
to delve much deeper into the culture, by whatever means, to find
answers to the more complicated questions about the Plain People.
Another trip to Holmes County was
certainly in order…..
