Plain and Simple: A Journey to the Amish

There is a smart, well-educated African American woman at work, who is constantly bringing up the virtues of the Amish and longing for their sort of a simple life. Just about anything we encounter that shows the negative side of technology or of the heartless development of the Georgia countryside leads her to speak of the good life of the Amish. She's a reader of bonnet books, also called bonnet romances or bonnet rippers, a new division of the inspirational romance genre, which was invented by

There is a smart, well-educated African American woman at work, who is constantly bringing up the virtues of the Amish and longing for their sort of a simple life. Just about anything we encounter that shows the negative side of technology or of the heartless development of the Georgia countryside leads her to speak of the good life of the Amish. She's a reader of bonnet books, also called bonnet romances or bonnet rippers, a new division of the inspirational romance genre, which was invented by Catherine Marshall, one-time Atlanta resdient and author of the bestseller Christie, the tale of a young, Presbyterian teacher in the Southern mountains and a huge publishing sucess in the 1970s. Cindy Woodsmall, who lives outside of Atlanta in Cobb County, which was until recently a beautiful rural area, has joined the band wagon of the bonnet romance, with book sales of about 134,000 for her Amish series, according to a 2009 article on the bonnet book phenomena in the Wall Street Journal. Of course that's just a dim reflection of the success of Beverly Lewis, mother of the bonnet romance, who, the Wall Street Journal reports, has sold an estimated 13.5 million books. Lewis transfered the story of her Mennonite grandmother when she wrote her first bonnet book, The Shunning, in 1997. In that book as in the story of Lewis' grandmother, a young woman chooses love for a man outside the community over the life of her upbringing. The Mennonites, who among other things were early settlers of the Carolinas, are similar to the Amish in background, though not as strict. They have made more concessions to modern life. Lewis made her fiction series Amish to emphasize the contrasts between traditional Anabaptist practice and modern life. The heroine's struggle to chose love is harder and more compelling in such a setting.

Amidst all this, a phenomena that has seeped into my work-a-day life, I'm very happy to have found this interesting book. Plain and Simple came out in 1989, well ahead of the bonnet book trend but four years behind Witness, the popular 1985 movie starring Harrison Ford. Witness introduced the beautiful actress Kelly McGillis as the sort of innocent beauty destined to capture imaginations later in the bonnet ripper. I enjoyed the movie and I vaguely remember the popular presence of Sue Bender's Plain and Simple. Anyway, I was finally drawn to Plain and Simple, now years past its bestseller days in the 1980s, when I serendipitously found another one of Bender's books, Everyday Sacred: A Woman's Journey Home. About midway through Everyday Sacred, Bender distracted me by offering that she was not a Zen Buddhist. This was confusing as so many of the friends decribed in that book were Zen monks and she went on Zen retreats. Most of all, the central metaphor of Everyday Sacred is the Buddhist begging bowl. I was engaged enough to pause and go back. Fortunately Plain and Simple was easily obtained from my local public library shelf. It's a quick read that perfectly explains the lure of the Amish in a 20th Century woman's life. Bender was first drawn to Amish culture when she encountered Amish quilts used for a retail display in Sag Harbor Long Island, where she and her family apparently summered back then. The quilts expressed a purity that infatuated Bender and made her long for more. Eventually, she found she needed to go on Amish pilgrimages, two extended stays with Amish families. Her experiences with the Amish are respectfully offered and she explains how their way of life changed her. The fact that the Amish hallow all work, including the ordinary and tedious, seems most helpful. Bender was raised to be a "star." She has two impressive degrees. The Amish helped her to a new humility and to a different way of seeing things. Bender acknowledges the strength and goodness of Amish life without romanticizing it. A therapist and ceramic artist, Bender is interesting. In Everyday Sacred, a 1995 book, I often felt a bit impatient with an atmosphere that seemed dated in our post 9/11 times. As a therapist, Bender was trained in the sort of psychological navel gazing that characterized the "me" and "self-help" tone prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s. Fortunately, this tendency did not afflict Plain and Simple. Her reflections on Amish life seem more timeless. After this brief book, I probably won't be spending much more time on the Amish phenomena, which has a decidely dark side too. I do respect the Amish and I long for the freedom of living without so much technology.

I seem to be catching up on the spiritual memoir trend that was so popular twenty to fifteen years ago. I'm also reading Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk, a bestselling memoir from 1996 about living in the Medieval world of a Catholic monastery as a modern Protestant. It's interesting and reminds me a bit of Plain and Simple in that it tells the story of a modern woman who decides to become part of a world rooted in another time. I think I like The Cloister Walk better than Plain and Simple though I'm only half-way through it. Eventually, I'll go back to Everyday Sacred. Bender has a third book after that, Stretching Lessons:The Daring that Starts from Within. With time invested in her first two books, I'll probably eventually read that one too.