Amish Wisdom

I HAVE recently been reading a book called Amish Proverbs. Words of Wisdom from the Simple Life. It is full of homely wisdom, such as, “If you sense your faith is unravelling, go back to where you dropped the thread of obedience.” The Amish are a religious group mainly found in North America, deriving from a strand of European Protestantism known as the Anabaptists. There have been several television documentaries about them, which have largely focussed on their simple way of life. They tend to reject much modern technology, making their own clothes, growing their own food, and often preferring horse-drawn vehicles to motor cars.

Saint Francis, in his own day, adopted a simple form of life, and drew others to it by his example. It was the example of the Friars of the little community of S. Antonio outside Coimbra that attracted Canon Fernando from the rich and influential Abbey of Holy Cross, so that he took the Franciscan habit, and the name of Anthony by which he has been known ever since. Simplicity and poverty have been the marks of the Franciscan movement at all times, which is surely one reason why the new Pope has taken the name Francis.

 

Prisoners of possessions

 

In speaking of poverty and simplicity, Anthony himself makes use of proverbs, or writes in the form of proverbs: “Humility is the mother of simplicity,” for example (Sermons I, 228). The less we think of ourselves, the less we will encumber ourselves with possessions. If we are honest, do we not all have far more things than we really need? Are not our homes, and lives, cluttered with things we have accumulated, but have no use for? And do we not cling to them? I know I have far more books than I need, but which I am reluctant to get rid of!

Often, I feel, we have become prisoners of our possessions. They occupy our thoughts, time and attention which might be given to God and our neighbour. They restrict our freedom, rather than liberating us. Francis and Anthony had a care-free attitude to material possessions. “Contempt for the world and humility of soul loose all bonds,” writes Anthony (I, 217). By contempt for the world, he does not mean a contemptuous attitude to the good gifts of God’s creation, but towards the worldly attitude that seeks to possess and exploit them. For Francis, all things were seen as “brothers and sisters,” deserving of our respect. As Chesterton says, because he possessed nothing, nothing could hold on to him.

 

Simple gifts

 

The Amish and similar groups such as the Shakers understand this. A well-known Shaker hymn is called Simple Gifts: “’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free/ ’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be/ And when we find ourselves in the place just right/ ’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.” However, we would miss the point if we thought of simplicity of living as just a way of ensuring love and delight for ourselves hereafter – that would still be self-centred. We should forget ourselves in our preoccupation with God our Creator, and with the needs of our brothers and sisters. Another Amish proverb is, “Live simply, that others may simply live.” The less we keep for ourselves, the more we can give to others.

In many places Anthony links poverty with humility; one of the sins he most fiercely denounced was avarice, the desire to hoard and increase one’s possessions. Francis wished his friars to own nothing; not limiting the virtue of poverty to the question of legal ownership, but meaning that the friars should regard nothing as exclusively their own, but should see everything as a gift, and a gift lent to them by God in order that they might better serve others. The miser says, “This is mine, and therefore NOT yours in any way.” The Amish say, “You are only poor when you want more than you have,” and, “He who has no money is poor, but he who has nothing but money is even poorer.” Our Lord told us to use our worldly wealth to win friends in heaven. The Amish say that the truly wealthy person calculates riches not in gold but in friends.

 

Not for everyone

 

The Amish way of life is certainly not for everyone – a few aspects seem to rest on a misunderstanding of the Gospel. But St. Francis’ way of life too (as he himself practised it) is not for everyone, which is why he established the third Order for people living in the world. All the same, the principle of seeing ourselves as simply stewards of God’s creation, using the good things entrusted to us for the benefit of all – that really does apply to everyone. Those who seem (to worldly eyes) to be living in an odd and unpractical way may actually be giving a sign that worldly eyes do not see everything as it is and ought to be.

 

Questionable aspects

 

The opposite of simplicity is complexity. We live such complicated lives today, do we not? Like Martha, we are busy about many things, when only one is necessary, to listen to the Lord. “Pure simplicity,” says St. Anthony, “is like the waters of Siloe, that go with silence. It makes the soul sober. It is as if the wine of worldly wisdom were turned to water, and the worldly-wise become wise unto sobriety. If those in religion are truly wise, God will gather them by means of the simple. He chose the foolish, the weak, the base and the contemptible, so that by means of them he might gather the wise, the strong and the noble: so that no flesh might glory in itself, but in him who went down and came to Nazareth and was subject to [Mary and Joseph].” (III, 341)

Some aspects of Amish life seem questionable, based on too narrow an understanding of the Gospel, but their simplicity and devotion are wholly admirable, and can be summed up in one proverb we could all make our own: “Only one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.” Francis and Anthony would say Amen to that.