Rachel and I drove around the Amish settlement in Daviess County today and came across this guy spreading manure. (Poor quality, I know.) It was still cold today but the strong sunshine felt like a promise. After looking around the Odon Locker, we walked across the parking lot to a shop with a sign saying something about Amish goods, with the requisite buggy image. Turned out to be one of those faux Amish shops meant for tourists and church ladies.
Philip K Dick famously said, “The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.” Equally true: nearly all of the good in the world is happening in small acts, at a local level. If you never attend to the small and local, you will think the world is worse than it is.
Another entry in the series “we’re more Appalachian than Midwestern”: I grew up hearing a lot of people calling all moths (not a specific species) “millers.” Apparently, I’m not the only one.
Such is the centrifugal power of our economy that even the Amish are increasingly working away from home. Though it varies by settlement, generally less than half of Amish families farm full-time. Larger and larger numbers of Amish men are working in construction or in factories.
We just had a northern flicker at our suet feeder! First time we’ve seen one of those around here. Didn’t get a good picture, unfortunately. I was surprised how big it was. It was standing its ground with the starlings.
This post is a little long and rambly, but I think I’ll leave it. A few days ago I posed a question for Christians: “How would you square a belief in the inherent dignity of honest work with the idea that hard work was the curse of God on Adam?” I got some good responses, which you can see in the comments to that post. Caleb’s response, in particular, sent me back to the recent Plough issue on “Why We Work,” where I found a helpful piece by Alastair Roberts.
I found “Nordisk Sang” in a long-forgotten folder of music from iTunes. Haven’t listened to it in years. It’s great! 🎵 Also found in that folder: “Sonic New York” by Sxip Shirey.
An insightful observation from Bernd G. Längin in Plain and Amish:
All these conservative Anabaptist groups, heirs of identical church reformers, represent something similar to the medieval monsastic system of the Catholic Church. Transplanted into colonial America, they have persevered in living a Protestant ascetic alternative—but without the vow of celibacy.
The Amish ordnung can be compared to a monastic rule of life. Incidentally, early Anabaptist Michael Sattler actually was a Benedictine.
A question for Christians: how would you square a belief in the inherent dignity of honest work with the idea that hard work was the curse of God on Adam? This isn’t a gotcha. I’m genuinely interested.
I love this series of three haying videos from Just a Few Acres Farm:
There are a lot of reasons to love the series, but right now, on this cold day, it’s because I can almost feel that warm, bright sun as I watch them.