Dreab Days

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. ~ Anne Bradstreet


The Amish summed up in one word the description for grey, drizzly, dreary days. Their word is "dreab." Doesn't that just about say it right?


I don't do well with too many dreab days in a row, which is what we are having in Western Massachusetts. Does anyone have any suggestions with how to make our own sunshine when the sun we crave is hidden behind an impenetrable bank of grey clouds? I'd love any suggestions you have!


Wishing everyone a good weekend, and Happy Spring, should she care to show her face in your area. She seems to be hiding from us this last week. 


Cheers!
Saloma

Amish "Theology"

Shirley wrote:


...if you have not done so already, I'd love to hear about the theology of salvation preached from the pulpit. 


Much of what I heard from the Amish "pulpit" or rather from the doorways in homes where church gatherings took place, was not not so much "theological" in nature as it was admonishments for how one should live or not live. The manner and content varied quite a bit from one preacher to the next, yet many Amish sermons have blurred together in my memory. However, there are a few that made enough of an impression on me that I remember them.


One soft-spoken minister, who later moved to Mio, Michigan, once said something I found to be so simple in the way he stated it, and yet I remember it to this day. He was talking about not becoming attached to things on this earth and he said something to the effect that those things we consider luxuries now, the next generation may consider necessities. At first blush, this doesn't seem so profound, but how true it is! So many of us in mainstream culture find our lives are too complicated, often by gadgets that we were promised would simplify our lives, but they did the opposite. Perhaps the Amish have it right to hold the latest fashions and technologies at arm's length and to examine how they might adversely affect our lives before deciding whether to adopt them or not. How many of us knew before the NPR report, that iPhones have the ability to track everywhere we go?


Another minister, during a wedding service as he was advising the couple getting married, said something like this: "I always think a good place for a wife is right under her husband's left arm, next to his heart." Even at the time, I knew this was unusual. Normally the advice for the women on their wedding day, for living a good married life, was that she should be submissive to her husband in all things. 


The idea of salvation was often ambiguous -- in the Amish way of thinking, there was no sure way to achieve it -- the best we could do was hope that we will make it to heaven. Funerals were used as a chance to remind people of how earth was not our home, and how fleeting life on earth is, how we never know when our time will come to leave this earth, and how we need to be ready to die when our time came. We were taught that Satan never stopped tormenting us and tempting us to walk the wide road, rather than the straight and narrow one that leads to the Heavenly gates. Once we died, we would come before our Maker, or our Judge, who kept track of all our deeds in the "Book of Life." At the point when we died, if the good outweighed the bad, then we would go to heaven, and if not, then the Judge would point the way to Hell. And this was usually the opening for a fire and brimstone sermon.


Even though there was no sure way to achieve salvation in the Amish mind, there was a sure way of it's opposite -- that of going to Hell. One merely needed to leave the Amish life. And with the fire and brimstone speeches, I imagine I wasn't the only one with a visceral image of what that meant. One bishop had a particularly loud voice that he would raise for emphasis in key parts of his sermons. Here is a sample of one:


"... and leit (people), if we think we can comprehend what that would be like, we are mistaken!" He lowered his voice, "I am sure we have all been so cold that we have shivered. But has anyone here ever been so hot that they have shivered..." here he paused and looked around the room, for effect. (As a child I wondered whether he expected anyone to answer, which was never done.) Then he continued, "No, probably not." And then he raised his voice, "That, leit, is what it's like to burn in the Hell fire -- it is so hot and so unbearable that our teeth will chatter. People will try to climb out, but there is no escape! And when a thousand years of this kind of pain and suffering has taken place, it will be like one day -- because Leit, this kind of pain will go on forever and ever!" 


By the time "Jake" was done with this kind of sermon, I felt like my teeth were going to chatter out of sheer fear. I then would wonder why I was afraid and wondered if I was guilty of sins I didn't even know I had committed. It always seemed to me, despite what the preachers said, that we know whether we are on the right path or not, and that we know on some level whether we will achieve salvation. Yet confusion would often set in, especially when I found myself incapable of fully submitting to the Amish ways.


Forgiveness was a big thing preached about among the Amish. We were taught that forgiveness meant to "forgive and forget," which basically meant when we forgave someone, we wiped the slate clean, and trusted that person as if he hadn't wronged us in the first place.  And no matter how often we were wronged, we were obligated to forgive again and again, even if required that we do it "70 times 7." We were told that if we didn't forgive, then we would not be forgiven. Because we were taught that we needed God to forgive our sins to make it to heaven, it was implied that unless we learned to forgive freely, we would not achieve salvation. 


It seemed to me, even while I was still Amish, that if one followed this concept of forgiveness through to its logical conclusion, the person who was being wronged had more of a responsibility than that of the wrongdoer, and that forgiving that freely removed the consequences of the wrongdoer's actions. Coming from a martyr culture, in which our ancestors, the Anabaptists, were persecuted for their faith, I can understand how these beliefs are still part of the Amish culture. I personally still struggle with what it means to fully forgive someone, but that is a discussion for another day.


So, here are a few samplings of Amish "theology" or world view. Do these raise other questions for anyone? What is your reaction to these concepts?

Amish Communion Service - Part 3

Just when I thought I could not sit a moment longer, the deacon brought in a jug and round loaves of bread. He placed them on a table. Then Bishop Dan asked us all to rise. He talked about the bread in a solemn tone: “First, in the spring, the ground is prepared. Then the seed is sown. The weeds are plucked from the fields as the wheat grows. When the grain ripens, it is cut. When the right time comes, the wheat is harvested and the grain separated from the straw and ground into meal. Then it goes through the wives’ hands and is kneaded into bread. As the grains joined to make this bread, they gave up their individuality. In the same way that each grain gave up its individuality to become part of the bread, so must we give up our individuality to become a part of the community.”

After that, I couldn’t concentrate on what Bishop Dan was saying. I was thinking about the concept of giving up one’s individuality to be a part of the community. Was I willing, or even able to do that? I thought to myself, at least the grains had been fully developed “individuals” to start with. Didn’t we need to be individuals first, before we could come together as a community?

I imagined the grains being ground on a grindstone. I wanted to be one of the grains that would fall by the wayside, to escape being ground.

I wondered if I was the only one in the whole congregation who had these feelings and thoughts. I chided myself for having wayward thoughts at my first communion, and forced myself to concentrate on the service.

Bishop Dan continued: “Jesus said, ‘This is my body, when you eat of it, remember me.’” I watched the bishop, two ministers, and the deacon exchange communion bread. Then the deacon followed Bishop Dan with thick slices of bread as they walked up to the oldest man in the congregation, Al Miller. Dan broke off a small piece and handed it to him. Al ate the bread, bowed, and then sat down. The bishop moved down the line, giving the men communion bread. They all put the bread in their mouths, bowed, and sat down. Noah, the bishop’s son, was the last man to receive communion bread. Then Dan and the deacon walked to Al Miller’s wife, Ada, and served her bread. He started with the older women and worked his way down to us young women. I was the third to the last to eat my communion bread. I bowed and sat down.

When they were done with the bread, they had us all rise again to receive the wine. Bishop Dan went on to describe the process grapes go through to become wine, focusing again on how the individual grapes give up their identity to make the wine.

Then he and the deacon passed the cup around. As I saw Datt drink from the cup, I realized I had to drink from the same one. Purple drips trickled down the side of the white enamel. The bishop had told everyone how we should not shy away from drinking from the cup just because others had drunk from it. I wanted to say, That is easy for you to say; you got the first drink. I was never more aware of how the community sorted people first by gender, then by age. Even the youngest male got his drink of wine before the eldest woman in the church. When it was my turn to drink from the cup, I turned it around and drank from just above the handle.

After communion came the foot washing. The deacon carried in four buckets of warm water and towels. Chairs were set up in the front, and the older men started to wash one another’s feet, using two sets of chairs, while two older women did the same. I was happy to see that the men and women had separate buckets of water. After each pair had washed one another’s feet, they shook hands and gave one another the holy kiss. Bishop Dan said we shouldn’t think about whose feet we washed, because we were all the same in the eyes of the Lord. When it was Elizabeth Gingerich’s and my turn to wash one another’s feet, we took off our shoes and socks. Then she splashed the warm water over my feet and dried them off with the damp towel that half the women before us had used. Then I washed her feet, and we exchanged the holy kiss. We put our shoes and socks back on. My feet were still damp, and my socks stuck to my skin in an uncomfortable way. I reminded myself that it didn’t matter—it was the humility of the ritual that counted.

As we passed through the doorway, the deacon sat there, holding a navy-blue cloth bag. We all put money in the bag, our contribution to the church fund that would help out families in need, especially those with big hospital bills. In the washhouse, we gathered our shawls and bonnets and prepared for the walk home. Communion service was considered a serious time and we were all expected to be more solemn than usual, so even afterwards we remained subdued.

At home, I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Now that I had had my first communion, I would never be able to leave the Amish. If there was one thing worse than leaving the Amish before baptism, it was leaving after baptism. Somewhere in the High German phrases I had repeated after the bishop four weeks before, I had promised to stay with the Amish church my whole life long. This was the time I was supposed to be sure that joining church was the right thing for me, and I was more uncertain than I’d ever been.

Amish Communion Service - Part 2

Around the time of the story of Abraham and Isaac, I leaned my elbows on my knees and put my head down and thought about how I would rather be out in our "autumn woods" on a walk. My sisters and I had different parts of the woods surrounding our house that we would take walks to, depending on the season. Our autumn woods had some of the brightest-colored red maples around, with a natural spring bubbling up out of the ground. There was a giant oak right next to it, and I loved sitting there, listening to the sound of the water bubbling, the birds singing in the trees, and the scurrying feet of the squirrels and "fence mice" (chipmunks). I tuned out the sing-song narration from the preacher. Slowly his voice faded as I allowed sleep to overcome my thoughts in the stuffy room, crowded with people. Sleep was my escape whenever I became depressed with the family life I had at home. Sleep had also become my escape from the sermons at church services. Most of the sermons had to do with instilling a fear of Hell, so that we would do anything to avoid going there. In all of that swirling fear, there was no room for me to form my own idea of God meant to me and decide where my spiritual path would lead. All I knew is that I felt closer to God when I was out enjoying Mother Nature than I did when I sat in a church service. 


I awoke with a start when everyone around me turned around and kneeled by their benches for the first prayer. The first prayer in each service was always quiet. It gave me several minutes to rest my head and come back to the waking world. Then everyone stood, and a minister began reading Scripture. Several young women began filing out, and I followed them. This was normally the time young people would take a break during church service, and I knew we all needed it more than ever -- we still had a long way to go to the end of the service. 


The Gingerich sisters and I took our turn in the bathroom, got a drink of water at the sink, and then headed back to our place, standing by the benches. The minister commenced his reading, and everyone took their seats again. A different minister got up to begin his sermon. I don't remember which part of the Bible the second preacher would start with, but I remember the dread I felt as I thought about the long day ahead. I reached into my packet and took out a stick of gum. Chewing gum gave me something to do, at least, and maybe it would keep me awake. I looked around at other people's expressions, and realized they were probably as bored as I was. 


Sometime before noon, several women left the service to put lunch on the table. Unlike regular church services, when the men would eat together at one long table, the women at the other, this day we would all eat in shifts. After a while, a small group of older men filed out, led by Al Miller, who was the oldest man in our congregation. His wife, Ada, led the small group of women who left. The clock on the shelf of the living room struck every fifteen minutes. It struck twice before the two groups came back. Several minutes later, a new group of men and a new group of women left. 


As the third group left, my 'sitter' was getting so numb and sore, I wondered how I was going to make it through the day. My stomach was growling, and I wished it would be our turn to go and eat. But I knew that those of us who had just been baptized four weeks before, the youngest of the women at the service, would have to wait until the very last. 


Just when I thought I could sit no longer, it finally became our turn to go for lunch. The last eight of us filed out, and stood around a round table in the wash house. It was cold there, so we couldn't stay too long. We had the usual fare (you can read about that here), followed by cookies and the other young women had coffee. I did not like coffee (and still don't), so I ate my cookies and drank water. Then we visited the bathroom again before heading back into the service. 


As I took my place on the backless bench, I told myself I should stop resisting it, and just listen to what the preacher had to say. I wished I could be like the other young women, listening demurely as they slowly chewed on their gum. 


To be continued...

Amish Communion Service

The seasons have a way of triggering memories of my long-ago life among the Amish. In the spring and fall, I often remember what it was like to attend Communion Services in my original community. I was just recalling some of the details of these to David today. At the risk of treading on Amish "sacred ground," I am going to, in the next few posts, describe what these are like. 


Regular church services usually lasted three hours -- from 9:00 a.m. to 12 noon. Every spring and fall, two weeks before Communion Services, there is Ordnungs Church, a service in which the bishop of the church reviews the ordnung, or set of church rules. This is a service that lasts until about 2:00 p.m. It always seemed to me this was in preparation for the mega-long Communion Service. I do not remember this for sure, but it seems to me we didn't leave for home until about 4:00 p.m. That is when I felt like I could not sit on that hard backless bench for another minute. By the end of the day, I found I was more tired than if I had worked physically all day.


I will start at the beginning. We would gather at the usual time on Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. Everything about the day was solemn, even the fact that the women all wore their black dresses for the occasion. We would put our "wraps" (shawls, coats, bonnets) in the wash house or entrance, and gather in a circle, waiting until it was time to file in to the service. If others were dreading the long day, I wouldn't have known, because such things were never discussed. 


We filed in and took our seats at the appointed time. We always knew our place in the church. The oldest women would file in and take their places, followed by the middle-aged women, and on down to the younger married women. Then the unmarried women would all file in and take their places, again by age. I always followed Sara Mae Gingerich, who was one day older than me. 


As soon as we were seated, the older men would file in and and take their seats, then the bishop, ministers, and deacon. Last, the unmarried men would file in and take their places, again by age. This was the order of things in my community.


Each Amish district holds church services every two weeks. That means that when a Communion Service takes place, the bishops and ministers from neighboring districts come and take part in the neighboring services on their "in-between church Sunday." There are usually four or five ministers in one church service, but at Communion Services, many more show up, especially if there is an ordination of a new minister happening that day.


One of the "foresingers" (leaders in song) announces a number, and everyone opens their black songbook (The Ausbund) to that page. The foresinger will begin the first word of the first line of the chant, and then as he begins the second word, the other men join in. The women join in with their voices and the song goes on for fifteen or twenty minutes. 


About two lines into the first song, the bishop, ministers, and deacons file out of the service and go into a room by themselves to plan who will preach that day. There are normally two ministers who preach in a regular service, but at a Communion Service, there are more.


After the first song, there is a period of quiet. Then a different "foresinger" begins the second song. This is always the "Loblied" or "Praise Song" in every service. You can listen to what this sounds like here. Because I knew the people in all the other Amish churches in our time zone would be singing the same song at the same time, I felt the steadfast, rooted feeling of being part of a long-standing tradition and community that dated back to our ancestors, the Swiss Anabaptists. Some of the songs were written and sung by martyrs who were imprisoned for their beliefs. They sang these songs together, even though they were in separate prison cells. It was their way of staying connected to one another. Many of the people who wrote these songs subsequently died as martyrs.


Sometimes the congregation would join their voices in a third song, before the elders came back into the service. Whenever they did, the singing would cease at the end of the stanza of the song we were singing. The songbooks were closed and laid under our benches on the floor. A hush would come over the congregation as the first minister would get up to speak. He would often start out with the usual sentiments about how we need to be thankful for our freedom to practice our faith, especially because our ancestors were martyred for their faith. He would clear his throat then, and begin telling the story of Adam and Eve. I would sigh then, because this was a reminder of what a long day lay ahead of me. The service would not end until the preachers had gone over all the major stories of the Bible. The Adam and Eve story was only the beginning.

To be continued...

Spring has Sprung!

It's spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!  ~ Mark Twain


All the snow has melted, even the big white elephant in our yard, where the town plow was piling the snow all winter. It is predicted that tomorrow the temperature will be in the 70s. David and I have been working on getting our house project moving along. We are just so tired of the upheaval of the remodeling. But at least the weather is cooperating, and we are not that far from seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.


Remember when I posted pictures of our attic when it was being insulated? I'll post one here as a reminder:

Below is what it looks like today. We painted it in January. Now there is only the trim to go up on the windows and the doors to install for the openings to the storage behind the knee walls. That comes after we finish replacing the window trim on the first and second floors. but the attic sure is a lot warmer, even without actually heating that space! And hopefully it will be cooler in the summer.

The attic stairway was never painted, so the boards were very dry and chipped. It looked like this:

Yesterday I painted the treads, so now it looks like this:

What projects are you undertaking this spring? Will you be celebrating spring in a usual fashion, or will this one be different for you?

The Amish: Practical or Philosophical?

Shirley wrote:

Enjoyed this conversation very much. It leads me to another question. Do you recall conversations that you would call "theological" in nature such as free will, eternal salvation, etc.? Or was most of the conversation among the Amish about practical matters--weather, crops, family, church issues? Were men or women more likely to engage in philosophical musings--or was this practice actively discouraged by community norms?


Shirley, the answer to the first question is, no, I don't recall any conversations that were theological in nature. These subjects were reserved for the preachers in a church service, so it was not a dialog, but rather an interpretation. Even still, such things as free will were never mentioned. Eternal salvation (or its opposite) were very much stressed by the preachers. 


Yes, most conversations were about practical matters, but there was also a lot of joking and "joshing" when people got together in the community. The Amish have their own brand of humor, which is actually of a very funny, earthy variety. It can also be cruel when it is at the expense of someone.


If men were more likely to engage in philosophical discussions than women, they must have done it all on their own, and I wouldn't have known about it. And it's not that philosophical musings are even actively discouraged -- they just don't happen. It's much like hugging, kissing, or showing of affection -- nobody says you can't, but nobody does it, either.


So, the Amish I know can be serious or humorous, depending on the situation. I would describe Amish as a people as being practical, but not philosophical. The young people are taught to follow the Amish ways without question, which is the antithesis of philosophy -- to engage in philosophical discussions, we need to be able to both examine our lives and to contemplate the mysteries of the universe.


I will close this post with a quote that really resonated with me that I recently read, which was attributed to Nicolaus Steno:


"Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend." 

An Unusual Family (and Amish?) Trait

Tattytiara wrote:


"Given so many Amish (my family and myself included) hate the sound of someone crunching"

Now there's something I'd never thought of as a cultural trait!


Very astute observation, Tatty! That did have to slip out, didn't it? I don't know how widespread the dislike for crunching is among the Amish, but I can tell you it was almost universal on my mother's side of the family. And try becoming insensitive to it if it bothers you! I don't think any of us have been "reformed." I hate myself when I cringe or gripe at David for crunching, because it's seems so petty. It's not that he should stop crunching, it's that I should stop hating it so much... but then I think about how deep the roots and branches of this go, and I have to throw up my hands. 


I often heard my mother tell the story of her grandmother's reaction to crunching. Her grandmother "Mose Katie" was not very well educated and so she didn't speak English very well. On this particular Sunday afternoon, they were sitting around eating popcorn. (This is a very Amish custom, to have popcorn on Sunday afternoons and evenings, along with juice and pie or some other baked goods, rather than having a full meal.) They had a gnecht (hired man) to help on the farm, and for some reason he had stayed over the weekend. He apparently was pretty enthusiastic about eating the popcorn. My great-grandmother kept fidgeting in her chair for a long time, not wanting to ask him to stop crunching, and then she suddenly got up out of her rocking chair and said, "Oh, I go to de udder end of da HOUSE!"as she stomped away for emphasis.


Subsequently, my grandfather and my mother hated crunching, and now me. I find as I get older, it gets worse. And I'm not the only one. I have nearly 100 cousins on my mother's side of the family, plus six siblings. I don't know any who are not afflicted with this "dis ease." 


And it didn't stop at our generation, though now that I think about it, my sons don't seem to mind it. (Perhaps because they vowed not to be like me.) When I was visiting my Mennonite cousins in Missouri, I met my cousins' sons. One of them was talking about the subject, and he said that he had a friend who "Could really destroy your peace..." and then he paused and continued..."With an apple."


When we were talking about the topic of crunching, my cousin Mary said that in her family, whenever they had corn on the cob for dinner, they had a rule that everyone had to start at the same time, so they wouldn't hear each other crunching. That would have been something to behold -- Mary grew up with 14 siblings. She was a twin with her brother, Melvin, and there were three other sets of twins in the family. That must have been quite a crunching fest -- one I was glad to have missed, thank you.