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| Saloma Miller Furlong (photo courtesy of DNR) |
According to the article, Saloma made her decision to leave her Amish family and community at age 20 to get her “dream job as a waitress at Pizza Hut” and later to become a published author, one of several things she said she could not have accomplished otherwise. (“Leaving The Amish,” March 16, 2013 Daily News-Record).
A part of what motivated her to leave her family was her having an abusive father who suffered from schizophrenia and depression. She did say he later was prescribed medication and “never abused his family again”, but her emotional wounds were obviously painful and deep.
My own experience was quite different, in that I grew up in an imperfect but deeply caring family, but I also left my own Amish community (at age 21), not to get away from an unhappy past but in order to attend college and become a teacher. My parents weren't really happy about that, but gave their begrudging blessing, though they were afraid I would meet and marry a Mennonite girl if I attended what was then Eastern Mennonite College (which is exactly what happened!).
Unlike Saloma, who still seems to see the proverbial grass on the other side of the fence as undoubtedly greener, I recognize both the costs and the benefits of my choice. On balance I don’t regret my decision, but there are many things about the community I grew up in that I will always miss. When it comes to the most primal of human needs for identity, security and belonging, I may never be able to celebrate for myself and for our children as much as I have left behind.
I do feel I have an expanded life, and our children and grandchildren have increased opportunities to accomplish more things. Whether all of these are, in the end, truly better things is a judgment I'm not yet ready to make. I do want to be sure that in striving to have our children experience more of what we didn't have growing up, that we don't deny them some of the good things we did have--simplicity, community, humility and a set of basic, down-to-earth life skills I largely took for granted growing up in that faith community.
I felt Saloma's story could have simply focused on an individual leaving a family in which an abusive father failed to get some desperately needed medical help until it was too late to salvage his relationship with his daughter. Instead, the article portrayed their whole community as dark and abusive in a way that I felt was completely undeserved.
The Amish are far from perfect, and are the first to say so. But like a kind of Protestant monastic movement, they teach us the wisdom of not blindly embracing every innovation as automatically bettering our lives and that of our communities, and of following Jesus' example of loving God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving and blessing our neighbors everywhere--and even our enemies--as ourselves. It's almost certain that our planet would be far better off if it were inhabited by far, far more of them.
P.S. For your information, Saloma, there are numerous Amish who are published authors. One of my favorites is David Kline, a self-taught naturalist, organic farmer and Amish bishop from your home state of Ohio. Then there is Linda Byler, a Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) Amish author of best selling novels about her people who remains a member of the group to this day.
To read more of my Amish-related posts, check this link http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=amish
Well put, Harvey. You and I, of course, grew up in the same Amish communities so that may account for our similar reactions. I've occasionally glanced at Furlong's writings and have a vague uneasiness about what I've seen. Maybe it has something to do with an impression of using the ex-Amish label as a sort of badge enlightenment and an accompanying earned right to appear as an expert on all things Amish. It's a subtle thing; and seems to crop up now and again among former Amish. It makes me sad when I see it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John, good to hear from a friend and cousin, especially when he agrees with me!
ReplyDeleteHere's another response to the talk, written by Don Clymer, that makes an important point.
http://donrclymer.blogspot.com/2013/03/brainwashing-amish_16.html
Yes thanks; the Clymer post was the bread-crumb trail I followed to get to your post.
DeleteSome years ago in casual conversation with some university colleagues (I don't even remember the topic) I made a passing remark about how, as I was getting older, I was discovering how deeply Amish I still was. One of my colleagues responded with something like, "Why of course. We've seen that in you all along!" I was a bit taken aback but have actually come to value that comment and observation; there is something indelibly embedded in those of us who share those roots, I suspect, that in some way represents who we are at a profoundly deep level. I suspect it goes far deeper than religious or even cultural practices and has more to do with a way of being and a way of seeing ourselves in relation to rest of the world. Maybe that's why some of us have this almost visceral reaction to those who want to sensationalize or commercialize something that is so deeply important and personal to us.
BTW, I thought Valerie Weaver-Zercher did a very nice job in the April issue of The Mennonite of reflecting on Amish romance novel phenomenon.
Excellent! It is very refreshing that you don't feel the need to "lambast" the Amish to make you feel better about your decision to leave. Also appreciated the insight that even when making what you felt was the best decision for your life, there may be some positives that you sacrificed in doing so.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Merle, and you might want to check out Clymer's blog (see link above) where he questions the assumption Furlong seemed to make about the Amish being "brainwashed". A case can be made that our whole media-saturated and profit-driven society has been and is being brainwashed daily into conforming to a kind of unquestioning "group-think" that is anything but that which leads to "happily ever after".
DeleteExcellent article! While I was born and raised English, my best is Amish and we both reside within the same Amish community that Saloma grew up in. As with any other religious denomination or community, there are good and not so good folks. Fortunately most of my interactions have been positive. When my girlfriend lost her full term baby at Christmas two years ago, due to the circumstances, the Amish community came to my aide as well and supported me. While it was a horrific tragedy, it was also a positive and uplifting experience that carried me through. Again, the same Amish community that Saloma puts a dark cloud over.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experience. Every community has its strengths and weaknesses, and each one, and each member within it, deserves to be judged on its own merits.
DeleteHello fellow Yoders.
ReplyDeleteMy father-in-law left the Amish as a young man of 21. He is in his 60s today and has never given his wife or children any reasons as to the decision that he made. It has made my husband very curious about his family history, of course. I feel that the situation could have been at the hands of an abusive relative, thus his reluctance to speak of it openly. I plan to share this post with my husband; perhaps it will give him some peace as to his father's decision to keep his reasons for leaving so close to the vest. Thank you for an excellent article and a great perspective on the sometimes negative light unfairly cast on the Amish as a whole when one decides to leave the church.
Thanks for your response. I'd be glad to hear more sometime if you or he would like to be in touch, at harvyoder@gmail.com.
DeleteI heard Saloma speak at EMU and enjoyed the presentation. I'm also grateful to see this response from you, Harvey, who had a happier Amish childhood than Saloma's and yet still found it necessary to leave. What you demonstrate is that there is no ONE story of growing up plain. May all the flowers bloom --so long as they are truthful and the memoirist/blogger digs deep into self as well as the values of the group. Here's my favorite meditation on the single story:http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment on my blog today. Let's keep the dialogue going!
Harvey, I understand and appreciate your point of view, especially that the Amish have many good things to offer. However, I understood Salma's memoir rather differently than the view you share here, specifically the part you seem to regard as Amish bashing.
ReplyDeleteAs someone with no connection to the Amish, I understood her decision to leave as motivated by despair about the sort of internal shunning her family experienced due to her father's perceived sloth (actually due to undiagnosed mental illness). She seemed not to feel the sense of identity and belonging you were blessed with.
Having been on the fringes of too many groups myself, and excluded from others at various times in the past. I KNOW about that. It rang true. That's about hypocrisy, paradox and pain. This tendency to exclude deviant members is shared by dozens, maybe hundreds of groups. It's a form of bullying and deserves to be highlighted wherever, whenever.
It's been some time since I read her book, but that was the message I got. Since it's a widespread phenomenon, I didn't feel it singled the Amish out. In spite of it all, I do understand the displacement you obviously felt after you left.
May the world be a perfect place tomorrow, since today is drawing to a close!