This past weekend I had the opportunity to Shipshewana, Indiana, an Amish town.
Now I'm gonna be honest. I was not excited for this. I thought that I knew everything you need to know about the amish. Horse and buggie, no technology, etc. However on this field trip I realized that I didn't really know everything about the amish.
Something that really stuck out to me throughout the whole day was the sense of community.
While we were at the furniture shop, the men who owned it told us about the fire that had happened in their shop, completely destroying it. They continued to tell us that other people throughout the town came together and helped them rebuild the entire shop.
This is incredible. In our "world", this would probably never happen. Sure, you'll have one or two people who will tell you that if you need anything, they'll help you out, but that's as much as you'll get from someone. I remember when my neighbor's house burnt down. My parents helped them salvage as much as they could from what was left of their house, but that was the extent of the help we gave. Now, I'm not saying that my parents are terrible people for not helping my neighbors with the actual handiwork of building my neighbor's house. The amish just have different values and live a different life than we do.
However, I think that we can take some notes from the amish. Nowadays it just seems like we have our eyes and minds set on ourselves and what we are doing. The verse that comes to mind when I think about this is Ephesians 4:2, "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." Just being around the amish community for a few hours it was clear that they clearly care about others. I think that if we start looking outside of ourselves and our own lives, we can really have an impact on others.
Overall I did end up enjoying the field trip. It was eye-opening to see just how self-focused we all are. I really learned to take a step back and think about others and how I can help them.
I appreciate your honesty because I, personally, was not looking forward to this trip either, but I also ended up enjoying it and learning from it. I think the weirdest thing (maybe you can agree with this) was that if you had asked me before this trip if I would have rather visited an Amish community or an industrial dairy farm, I easily would have chosen the dairy farm. Afterwards, though, I'd go back to that Amish community anytime. You're absolutely right: the community in that kind of an environment is astounding, and there's something appealing about it. I'd have to agree with you and say that we, as a people, can learn quite a bit from the Amish. We obviously don't have to incorporate all of their philosophies into our lives, but it seems like they've got something figured out that we don't.
ReplyDeleteI think that we all were pretty astounded by the sense of community that was present in the Amish of Shipshewana. I would also agree with you that our own culture is quite different from that we saw on the trip. You mentioned that your parents didn’t help physically rebuild the home of your neighbor. I’ll echo your statement that this certainly does not make your parents bad people by any means. To be perfectly honest, such a form of help would be a bit out of place in our culture. Typically the job of rebuilding the house would have been done by a professional company – friends of the family wouldn’t really be expected to band together to rebuild the home. I can’t say for certain whether one system is better when comparing the way we and the Amish handle a destroyed home or workshop, but I think we can all appreciate the level of care that the Amish have for one another that they would be able to rely on one another in such a way. At times I wish that we could institute such a support system within our own culture, but I realize how much it goes against the way we function. For the most part each individual household tries to be self-sufficient and take care of things on their own. Even if one family felt compelled to try to act in such a way as the Amish, it requires the entire community being on board for such a system to be truly effective. In the instance of the Amish workshop, I’m sure it took more than just one family stepping in to get it rebuilt and functioning in less than two months. I wonder how our own culture might be different if we all sought to take such good care of one another.
ReplyDelete-Brad Fitzgerald
I really enjoyed your thoughts on community and how it relates to our culture as well. Your example of your parents helping your neighbors is a great contrast to the version of community help in the Amish community. I do think that it will be difficult to apply some of the ideas of community to our culture right now.
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