Authors: Donald B. Kraybill,Steven M. Nolt,David L. Weaver-Zercher
The Amish Way (21 page)
Because their childhoods are steeped in nature, it’s not surprising that Amish adults find spiritual refreshment and renewal in such hobbies as bird watching. A column devoted to birding appears monthly in
The Diary
, and families travel by van or bus to migratory sites. For some, birding is an intergenerational hobby. A few years ago we participated in an Audubon Society-sponsored Christmas bird count led by an Amish man who roused us—and his elementary school-age grandsons—at 5:00 A.M. to “call in” owls.
The Diary
, and families travel by van or bus to migratory sites. For some, birding is an intergenerational hobby. A few years ago we participated in an Audubon Society-sponsored Christmas bird count led by an Amish man who roused us—and his elementary school-age grandsons—at 5:00 A.M. to “call in” owls.
Amish people enjoy many outdoor forms of recreation. Those living near the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, or inland lakes frequently fish as well as hunt for ducks or geese. Although many
Gmays
forbid members from owning motor boats, some fishermen rent them. In some communities, unbaptized teens, unconstrained by the
Ordnung
, enjoy waterskiing on rivers and lakes.
Gmays
forbid members from owning motor boats, some fishermen rent them. In some communities, unbaptized teens, unconstrained by the
Ordnung
, enjoy waterskiing on rivers and lakes.
Killing humans is considered a sin, but the Amish have few qualms about shooting animals. Hunting, especially for deer, is widespread in Amish communities from Maryland to Montana. Those who hunt consider it a mix of recreation and work, noting that they are harvesting meat and sometimes protecting their gardens and crops.
Another common recreational activity is stargazing. Several Amish publications have monthly columns on sky watching, with suggestions for finding stars and tracking planets and their moons. A September column advised, “In the morning Venus rises in a dark sky a little north of east. Mars is high in the east and right of Venus. By October 1, look low in the east for dim Saturn, brighter Mercury a little higher, and gleaming Venus above the pair.” A Bible passage that appears in some sky-watching columns reminds readers of the grandeur of God’s creation: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
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Birds and stars are favorites, but Amish appreciation for the natural world is wide ranging. David Kline recounts a walk he took on a forty-five-acre plot of land that one of his friends called “a small honey spot.” Kline was inspired by what he found: “The wind in the trees and the water flowing over the shale-bottom creek seemed to whisper, do not come closer. Take off your gum boots, because you are standing on holy ground. . . . The sight of the hepaticas in bloom reaffirmed my belief that many of us need wild, unspoiled places where we feel close to God.”
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In some ways, Kline’s ramble on the “honey spot” is unusual, for it appears he hiked there by himself. It’s more typical for Amish people to enjoy the gifts of nature with others. Whether birding, fishing, or collecting berries, the Amish usually do things in groups, visiting and chatting as they go. Their recreational practices reveal their appreciation for the outdoors and their commitment to collective, participatory activities. Although some youth and adults occasionally buy tickets to sporting events, the bulk of Amish recreation involves do-it-yourself activities, such as hiking and birding, rather than spectator ones.
The Amish know that the natural world contains more than pretty birds to watch and “honey spots” for hikers. They also know nature’s raw, violent side firsthand. Children see red-tailed hawks snatching up mice, and foxes eating chickens. They see bulls mating with cows, wet chicks hatching, and slimy calves slipping from their mothers’ wombs. They see dogs dying, worms infesting broccoli, and blood dripping from the necks of roosters that lost their heads on the chopping block. They see cows shaded by an oak tree in the pasture, only to be seared by lightning a few hours later as they huddle under its branches for shelter. Theirs is often a grubby and gruesome encounter with the natural world.
These everyday observations in gardens, barnyards, and fields also mean that the Amish, unlike many North Americans, know where their food comes from. They see the direct link between the milk on their cereal and the cow, the baked potato and the garden, the fried chicken leg and the bird that used to perch on it. Their view of nature is unsanitized and unsentimental. Death is seen as a natural part of life, not something that happens in a faraway slaughterhouse or even in a local veterinary hospital where pets are “put to sleep.”
When deciding how to deal with the natural world, the Amish take their cues from both their farm-based heritage and from Genesis 1:26, where God gives the first humans “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.” The Amish believe, as do many Christians, that this God-given assignment means that humans have both the ability and the obligation to manage nature—farming its fields, mining its resources, and domesticating its animals.
The specifics of this human dominion—what is acceptable behavior and what is not—are often a source of contention, among Christians and sometimes among the Amish as well. Some Amish farmers treat their cows like milk machines, work their horses too long without water, and raise pet-store-bound puppies in cramped kennels. For them, dominion means squeezing benefits from animals with the least amount of cost. Like some Christians in the broader world who treat the natural world as their slave, these Amish farmers regard nature as little more than a means to an economic end.
Other Amish people take a different approach. An article in
Family Lif
e reminds readers that “the animals that share the earth with us are flesh and blood like we are. They have feelings of thirst and hunger, tiredness and pain just like we have.... Our domestic animals are willing servants when they are treated kindly and with respect.”
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David Kline’s deep affection for his “voice-activated horses” derives in part from the horse’s role in Amish life, which goes far beyond pulling a plow. “The horse is our pacer,” says Kline. “He sets our pace of living. When he needs to stop at lunch, we take a break. If we need to rest him in the afternoon, it gives us a natural break in the flow of things. We can’t use horses for night work, and so it gives us a break in the evening.”
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Family Lif
e reminds readers that “the animals that share the earth with us are flesh and blood like we are. They have feelings of thirst and hunger, tiredness and pain just like we have.... Our domestic animals are willing servants when they are treated kindly and with respect.”
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David Kline’s deep affection for his “voice-activated horses” derives in part from the horse’s role in Amish life, which goes far beyond pulling a plow. “The horse is our pacer,” says Kline. “He sets our pace of living. When he needs to stop at lunch, we take a break. If we need to rest him in the afternoon, it gives us a natural break in the flow of things. We can’t use horses for night work, and so it gives us a break in the evening.”
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When expressing his love for animals, Kline often cites
Christenpflicht
, the Amish prayer book. He’s especially fond of a friend’s translation of this line at the end of a five-page prayer: “and help us be gentle with your creatures and handiwork so that we may abide in your eternal salvation and continue to be held in the hollow of your hand.”
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Christenpflicht
, the Amish prayer book. He’s especially fond of a friend’s translation of this line at the end of a five-page prayer: “and help us be gentle with your creatures and handiwork so that we may abide in your eternal salvation and continue to be held in the hollow of your hand.”
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For Bishop Kline, these words signal a mutually dependent relationship with nature, “whether with the robins in the dooryard, the domestic animals, the dog by the wood stove or herding sheep, even the earthworms.” He then continues, “The question we need to ask ourselves is: are we good shepherds to these animals entrusted to our care? . . . The only way we can repay the animals in our care is with kindness.”
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Few Amish people articulate the connections between nature and Amish spirituality as clearly as Kline. But others have espoused similar ideas. Writing in the 1970s, one Amish leader noted, “After a man becomes a Christian, his animals will feel the difference.” For this man, Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,” directed Amish farmers to be mindful of their animals’ feelings of “pain, thirst, and hunger,”
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For his part, Kline traces his views to his Amish father. “My dad always considered it his duty, especially in the winter-time, to provide for the animals in his care—good feed, fresh water, and a clean and dry place to sleep—before returning to the house for his own meal. He always thought, or at least I got the impression, that how we treated the animals is how he expected to be treated by God. A simple practice of the Golden Rule: treat the lives in our care with respect, love, and compassion.”
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For his part, Kline traces his views to his Amish father. “My dad always considered it his duty, especially in the winter-time, to provide for the animals in his care—good feed, fresh water, and a clean and dry place to sleep—before returning to the house for his own meal. He always thought, or at least I got the impression, that how we treated the animals is how he expected to be treated by God. A simple practice of the Golden Rule: treat the lives in our care with respect, love, and compassion.”
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An Amish friend occasionally e-mails us from a computer in a non-Amish company where he works. He calls some of his friends—the ones engaged in organic farming, solar power, and recycling projects—“Green Amish.” “Hey, maybe I could drive these Green Amish up to your place in my solar-powered electric buggy,” he joked in one e-mail. “It has an auxiliary engine powered by fuel made in an anaerobic manure digester which we feed with a potent cow manure produced by an eco-friendly diet of organic baked beans.”
Not many of our Amish friends send us e-mail messages. And not all Amish are green, although some are moving in that direction. Most Amish farmers, in tandem with other American farmers, started using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides in the mid-twentieth century. More recently, however, some have begun to raise organic vegetables and poultry. With the help of outside expertise, Green Field Farms, a well-known Amish cooperative based in Ohio, and other Amish farms and businesses now sell organic products in national markets. Other Amish farmers have started dairies that produce milk from grass-fed cows, and farms that sell grass-fed beef.
This move to organic and other sustainable farming practices reflects Amish attentiveness to a growing consumer market for natural, organic foods. But it also emerges from deep springs in Amish spirituality, which has long emphasized the goodness of God’s creation and humanity’s responsibility to care for it. In a how-to booklet, fifteen Amish farmers describe their motivation for grass-based farming: “We, in the spirit of good land stewardship, are managers of the primary plant of God’s creation—grass. We harvest this grass in the most ecological way by our cooperation with the laws of nature and the dictates of the bovine species. We then sell her milk as a reward for our stewardship and gain the satisfaction of providing our families and our communities in a manner that violates neither the earth nor those that tread upon it.”
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David Kline was green long before it became trendy. He summarizes his theology for eco-friendly living in these words: “If one’s livelihood comes from the earth—from the land, from creation on a sensible scale, where humans are a part of the unfolding of the seasons, experience the blessings of drought-ending rains, and seek God’s spirit in all creation—a theology for living should be as natural as the rainbow following a summer storm. And then we can pray, ‘Help us to walk gently on the earth and to love and nurture your creation and handiwork.’”
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If his people remember this, Kline is sure they will be living the Amish way, the way described by another bishop in these words: “We should live as if Jesus would return today, and . . . take care of the land as if he would not be coming for one thousand years.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Evil
We don’t believe in pressing charges or going to court.
—AMISH MAN
whose relative was killed by a negligent driver
whose relative was killed by a negligent driver
A
mo-bashing,” the assailants called it. In 1996 near the northern Indiana towns of Bremen and Nappanee, five men and one woman targeted Amish men riding bicycles along country roads. Pulling their car alongside a cyclist, one person would lean out the window, brandish a tire iron, and club the Amish rider on the back or the head. They would then rob the man of his wallet and speed off.
mo-bashing,” the assailants called it. In 1996 near the northern Indiana towns of Bremen and Nappanee, five men and one woman targeted Amish men riding bicycles along country roads. Pulling their car alongside a cyclist, one person would lean out the window, brandish a tire iron, and club the Amish rider on the back or the head. They would then rob the man of his wallet and speed off.
As many as fifteen Amish victims suffered this fate—but responded with silence. Even though some had suffered head injuries or broken collarbones, they refused to report the attacks to the police. Finally, however, one of the men, Earl Slabaugh, decided to report a description of the car when its occupants narrowly missed hitting him. “He didn’t run to the cops to get [the assailants] in trouble,” Slabaugh’s wife explained when reporters sought the family’s comment. He did it because he feared someone would eventually die.
Meanwhile, the Kosciusko County deputy prosecutor was frustrated with “the reluctance of the Amish community to come forward, report incidents and testify against someone.” This silence, said the prosecutor, made his task “extremely difficult.” He was irritated because he knew it would be “nearly impossible to impeach an Amish witness, whose reputation for truth and credibility precede him by generations.”
The Amish had different priorities. After police arrested the assailants, Slabaugh went to the restaurant where the driver of the car worked. He told the young woman that he forgave her and hoped she would stop before she became involved in more serious crimes. “We have to forgive them,” a member of Slabaugh’s
Gmay
explained. “We just can’t forget it. We have to remember it for our own benefit, to teach our younger generation to stay out of things like that.” Offering words that were sure to baffle the prosecutor, the church member agreed that the police and court system had to stop wrongdoers. But he refused to comment on the assailants’ jail sentences. “That’s too close to judging,” he said.
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Gmay
explained. “We just can’t forget it. We have to remember it for our own benefit, to teach our younger generation to stay out of things like that.” Offering words that were sure to baffle the prosecutor, the church member agreed that the police and court system had to stop wrongdoers. But he refused to comment on the assailants’ jail sentences. “That’s too close to judging,” he said.
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The Amish response to evil and wrongdoing strikes many outsiders as contradictory, if not hypocritical. Yet few things highlight more poignantly the beliefs and practices that stand at the center of their spirituality.
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