Friday, August 25, 2017

The Amish Way

Rod Dreher is a writer and senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative and author of several books on religion, politics, film and culture. The views expressed here are his own.

Is there any place on earth that more bespeaks peace, restfulness and sanctuary from the demons of modern life than a one-room Amish schoolhouse? That fact is no doubt why so many of us felt defiled – there is no more precise word – by news of the mass murders that took place there. If you’re not safe in an Amish schoolhouse ... And yet, as unspeakable as those killings were, they were not the most shocking news to come out of Lancaster County.

No, that would be the revelation that the Amish community, which buried five of its little girls, collected money to help the widow and children of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the man who executed their children before taking his own life. A serene Amish midwife told NBC News that this is normal for them. It’s what Jesus would have them do.

“This is imitation of Christ at its most naked,” journalist Tom Shachtman, who has chronicled Amish life, told The New York Times. “If anybody is going to turn the other cheek in our society, it’s going to be the Amish. I don’t want to denigrate anybody else who says they’re imitating Christ, but the Amish walk the walk as much as they talk the talk.”

I don’t know about you, but that kind of faith is beyond comprehension. I’m the kind of guy who will curse under my breath at the jerk who cuts me off in traffic on the way home from church. And look at those humble farmers, putting Christians like me to shame.

It is not that the Amish are Anabaptist hobbits, living a pure pastoral life uncorrupted by the evils of modernity. So much of the coverage of the massacre dwelled on the “innocence lost” aspect, but I doubt that the Amish would agree. They have their own sins and tragedies. Nobody who lives in a small town can live under the illusion that it is a haven from evil. To paraphrase gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil does not run along the boundaries of Lancaster County, but through every human heart.

What sets hearts apart is how they deal with sins and tragedies. In his suicide note, Mr. Roberts said one reason he did what he did was out of anger at God for the death of his infant daughter in 1997. Wouldn’t any parent wonder why God allowed that to happen? Mr. Roberts held onto his hatred, purifying it under pressure until it exploded in an act of infamy. That’s one way to deal with anger.

Another is the Amish way. If Mr. Roberts’ rage at God over the death of his baby girl was in some sense understandable, how much more comprehensible would be the rage of those Amish mothers and fathers whose children perished by his hand? Had my child suffered and died that way, I cannot imagine what would have become of me, for all my pretenses of piety. And yet, the Amish do not rage. They do not return evil for evil. In fact, they embody peace and love beyond all human understanding.

In our time, religion makes the front pages usually in the ghastliest ways. In the name of God, the faithful fly planes into buildings, blow themselves up to murder the innocent, burn down rival houses of worship, insult and condemn and cry out to heaven for vengeance. The wicked Rev. Fred Phelps and his crazy brood of fundamentalist vipers even planned to protest at the Amish children’s funeral, until Dallas-based radio talker Mike Gallagher, bless him, gave them an hour of his program if they would only let those poor people bury their dead in peace.

But sometimes, faith helps ordinary men and women do the humanly impossible: to forgive, to love, to heal and to redeem. It makes no sense. It is the most sensible thing in the world. The Amish turned the occasion of spectacular evil into a bright witness to hope. Despite everything, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.


Monday, August 14, 2017

Conversation With God

If time can fly, then why can’t it stand still?

CAPPY: Hey God, I know it’s been a while since we talked, but I just don’t have the time these days. Can you give me a few more hours each day? I'm a good person. I pay bills, do laundry, buy groceries, cook meals, go to church. I even visit Aunt Gertrude every year on her birthday and she can’t stand the sight of me. If I had an extra hour or so I'd have time to write. And pray.

GOD: Hold on, Cap! For years you’ve talked about allowing your creative juices to flow on paper like milk and honey. I recall your vow to knock out a novel every year. So what happened?

CAPPY: Life happened, God! Husband; children. Stuff.

GOD: But your grown son has a hairline like the coast of Florida and your daughter's middle-age spread is the size of Oklahoma. Why didn’t you set the publishing world on fire once your responsibilities had dwindled?

CAPPY: I don’t know. Every day when I wake up I promise myself to type my fingers to the bone.

GOD: And?

CAPPY: Duh! Stuff happens. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding the cat and paying bills. I'm too tired to think after that. I can't write if I can't think.

GOD: People generally do what they want to do.

CAPPY: No, they don't.

GOD: Don’t contradict Me. I’m God.

CAPPY: Writers are natural procrastinators. 

GOD: Nonsense. NOT writing is so NOT an option if you want to be a successful writer. Make it happen. Time equals energy and energy is a commodity. Burn it up with excuses or redirect it. Your choice.  Create space and your dream will become a reality.

CAPPY: I just asked for a few more hours, God, not a lesson in quantum physics. Creating space where there is none might work for You, but it won't work for me.

GOD: And just why not?

CAPPY: Because nobody takes me seriously. 

GOD: Then take yourself seriously, Cap.

CAPPY: Huh! If my husband comes home from playing duplicate bridge and finds me writing, I know what’ll happen.

GOD: What?

CAPPY: He'll say, What's for dinner? I'll say, There is no dinner because I didn't cook. He’ll say, Why not, and I’ll say, Because I was too busy taking myself seriously and you need to take me seriously, too.

GOD: Sounds about right to me.

CAPPY: Not gonna happen.

GOD: Okay, here’s the plan. One day a week, do everything that you think will prevent you from writing.

CAPPY: Like what?

GOD: Hello?! Like cooking?

CAPPY: YOU designed us with a built-in eating schedule. i.e., three meals a day, 24-7. Once a week ain't gonna cut it at my house, Boss.

GOD: (Sigh) So use the creative juices I gave you when you sucked air for the first time. Spaghetti. Soup. Casseroles.

CAPPY: My family won’t eat casseroles.

GOD: Then buy some TV Dinners. I gave the world the microwave, didn't I?

CAPPY: I told you ... it won’t work.

GOD: And I told YOU not to contradict me. I’m God. I know these things.

CAPPY: Even doing it Your way, I still don't have enough time in the day. 

GOD: Then get organized, Cappy. I hatched up a little something with the Pope called the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 A.D. Get yourself one.

CAPPY: Something that old won’t help me. It's the Twenty-first Century, for heaven's sake.

GOD: (sigh) I KNOW what year it is. Just get a calendar, Cappy. If you let busy work overwhelm you, the only thing you'll ever write is a grocery list.

CAPPY: But, God, I'm only one person, and ...

GOD: Waaaa! Waaaa! Waaaa! It looks to me like my work is done here.

CAPPY: But wait! You said you'd give me more hours.

GOD: (sigh) Listen up, Miss Priss. If I made more hours in the day, the Gregorians would be protest chanting till Doomsday. I told you how to create more time for yourself. I’m not going to do for you what you are perfectly capable of doing for yourself. 

CAPPY: But you don’t understand. My life is not my own. All this stuff keeps getting in the way of doing what I really want to do.

GOD: Goodness gracious! Would you look at the time? Gotta run. I need to help a promising mystery writer who is trying to cope with the Freytag pyramid–Denouement and that sort of thing. Time to say Amen, Cap.

CAPPY: Amen? But … but…