Comments on: Amish beginnings

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 01:28:48 +0000

TulipGirl,

In Florida, I don’t suppose they garden for a living, do they? It’s…just…not…an…option…here.

By: TulipGirl

TulipGirl — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 03:57:09 +0000

my initial pinings were misguided and ill-informed. But I was a teenager, and that explains everything.

*LOL* Can’t that explain a lot of things in our lives?

Btw, our neck of the swamp in Florida is home to a sizeable Amish and Mennonite population. Instead of buggies, however, they ride adult trikes.

By: kerri

kerri — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 04:21:49 +0000

I tried to get my hubby to go be Amish with me. He wouldn’t do it. We don’t have any Amish around here, but we did visit a Mennonite church nearby. But shortly after that I read RC Sproul’s “Chosen by God” and became a Calvinist. Wouldn’t work.

I do think there is A LOT we can learn from them. As to their being so isolated.. So many people are so struck with them they pay tons of money to ride around in buses just to get a LOOK. Maybe if we were a little different..

By: Holly

Holly — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 02:49:21 +0000

Okay, I must pipe up with my most “unlikely” Amish story. We used to live in the South Bend, IN area. There were large settlements of Amish there…Elkhart, Nappanee, Middlebury, Shipshewana…so that was always fun. The funniest thing I ever saw was Amish ladies rifling through negligees at a garage sale….holding them up for size, etc. Hmmmm?

By: Jenna

Jenna — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 02:18:19 +0000

I’ve always been interested in simple living, which is why I have always been curious about the Amish. I would just do terribly under the legalistic eye of my neighbors though, as so much of their faith is “works righteousness”.

I don’t know about other places, but it was interesting to find that there are people in Michigan who are trying to get together a group of people to purchase large tracts of land for a “plain living” community.

By: Valerie BBG

Valerie BBG — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 18:47:08 +0000

At the end of a row of hand-laundered t-shirts was a printed shirt, emblazoned with “Hooters”…

OH! That is such a HOOT!!

By: rev-ed

rev-ed — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:48:17 +0000

The idea of the Amish lifestyle is a romantic one… until you spend a lot of time around the present-day Amish community. Like your “Burger King Amish” experience, I see these folks in all kinds of states of looking un-Amish. It’s pretty obvious that they are regular sinners like the rest of us.

I did have to laugh the time I drove by one Amish house with the weekly washing out on the line. At the end of a row of hand-laundered t-shirts was a printed shirt, emblazoned with “Hooters”… Stuck out like a cat at a dog show.

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:03:19 +0000

Tiffany said:

Just something simple and honest about working the earth and providing for your family and living in a commmunity. There doesn’t seem to be this desire to constantly get ahead to big and better things. I don’t know if it can really be acheived on that level elsewhere.

This is the draw, if you will, that I think many people have of the Amish. It is the contentment that they have, that we want. I think that kind of contentment can be achieved anywhere: in the city, country, or suburbs. It is just a little harder in the city and suburbs. I read in one study that found the Amish as the happiest people group in America (also attributing to the lowest suicide rate, as well, percentage wise.)

Wherever God calls us, we are to embrace it fully and be content in the circumstance. (Easier said than done, I know.) But so long as God keeps opening doors in this direction, we’ll pursue it. Thanks for the food for thought, and I hope to get into this more later. Thanks for reading.

By: tiffany

tiffany — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 14:42:07 +0000

My best friends and I also wanted to apprentice with an Amish family. We both loved to cook and sew and had both lived on farms when we were earlier and I was conversational in German so we thought it would be perfect. I knew I could never go completely technology free though because like you I am married to a physics man.

There is definitely something apealing about their way of life. Just something simple and honest about working the earth and providing for your family and living in a commmunity. There doesn’t seem to be this desire to constantly get ahead to big and better things. I don’t know if it can really be acheived on that level elsewhere.

But as was pointed out, it is also very isolated. So, you may have things figured out but the only ones who know that are the other ones who have things figured out as well…. food for thought I suppose….

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 14:18:14 +0000

p.s. She also said that the little strands of hair at the temple that are braided or not differentiates them from each other. (I supposed that the more wild ones were the ones with braids under their caps with just the tiniest bit showing…) I suppose it’s just another form of “rebellion”, another way to push the rules in their community.