Amish Aspirations

What's behind the longing for a simpler life?

Last month, I was walking past an Amish farm at sunrise, and coming from inside a simple home with a door painted the color of a robin’s egg, I could hear a woman singing. I couldn’t make out the lyrics but her voice was clear and beautiful, and before I knew it, the music she was making at that early morning hour made my eyes fill with tears. Outside, her husband quietly picked apples off of a tree and dropped them in a metal bucket—plop, plop, plop. I kept on walking, but the scene had filled me with a surge of appreciation and longing for a simpler life.

Sometimes I aspire to be Amish.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I aspire to build my writing platform and to publish a book. I told him “No, I don’t think so,” but how I should’ve answered is “I think I aspire to be a little more Amish.”

I aspire to sing in my home at sunrise for an audience of zero and to not take shortcuts to my assigned work. I aspire to grow berries in my yard that ripen in the summer sun and I aspire to pick those berries and put them into a metal bucket—plop, plop, plop. I aspire to take the time to wash and pat those berries dry and mix them with sugar and lemon zest and tuck them into a buttery pie crust I kneaded with my hands. I aspire to invite my neighbors over to eat the pie and talk around the table until our rear ends fall asleep which prompts me to suggest that we move to the living room for tea and, “Would anyone like to read some poetry?” I aspire to not be embarrassed to read poems out loud with people I do and do not know because I believe that the beauty of language and friendship and summer nights and blueberry pie are best when shared.

I have a theory that there’s a reason so many of us love to read Wendell Berry and Irish novels and poems about rain and birds and grass and why we’ve created apps to help us stop using our phones and why the life of Amish people is so very appealing—even something we aspire towards. It’s because life-as-we-live-it has become too much—“it” being life, politics, text messages, and the overflowing promotions folder of our Gmail inboxes. I suppose when I say that I aspire to be a little more Amish, I mean that I aspire to live a life that is simpler than the one presented to me by the systems and societies I am assimilated to. I aspire to find my way out of my own ambition that disregards my life-giving limitations.

As a college student, I was an opportunity maximalist, chronically cramming my days with activities, academics, and side hustles. But eight years after graduating, it seems like with each passing year, some of my ambition slips away. Sometimes I wonder if twenty-two-year-old Grace would be disappointed by who she is today. Honestly, I think she might’ve been. “But you had so much potential!” “Why’d you leave the city?” “Why didn’t you take that job?” “Why don’t you travel more?” “You’re so boring now!” And perhaps most shocking of all to her: “Why are you living in the middle of nowhere, Ohio?!” But hearing those questions back from my past self feels necessarily sobering. My past self’s questions remind me that, historically, my priorities are often misguided. I’m far more inclined to believe the serpent’s crafty lie in Genesis 3 that more is more. 

In the last few years, I’ve realized that while ambition is not bad, neither is letting a few dreams die. Instead, I’m finding out that a pared-down life has room for rest, joy, and greater presence with the people right in front of me. This is what I mean when I say I aspire to be a little more Amish.

One of the greatest gifts of the last few years has been the ability to enjoy time at my parents’ home, nestled in the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania. In the cool of many mornings, I have walked amongst the neighboring Amish farms and watched their honest, humble, and hard work. I do not know what dreams these people have, or what aspirations they keep hidden away in their own hearts. But I do know that they deeply respect their sense of place, their limitedness, their family ties, the simple gifts of rain and good dirt and a study pair of leather boots. And perhaps most striking for me: while the Amish work hard, they always, always keep the Sabbath.

In the last few months, I have begun, for the first time in my adult life, keeping a Sabbath. While it hasn’t necessarily remedied my tendency towards chronic opportunity maximalism, it has slowed me down enough to feel a bit more Amish. On Sunday mornings, I put my phone away and I take walks by the river near my home. I listen to the sounds of the birds and I imagine they are singing a hymn. I read poetry and I write a letter to a friend. I slow down. Sometimes all of this is very hard, but in the silence and stillness of an ordinary Sunday, I have started to hear God sing back. I can’t quite make out the lyrics, but his voice is clear and beautiful. I believe the words he speaks are the language of heaven—the words of life.  

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” –Zephaniah 3:17