This weekend I am in Dubuque, providing music and worship leadership for something called the Grace Institute – and after that I’m heading up north for a retreat of my own with Kathy, her dad, Polly, Mark, and Lorelai. We will be away from home, away from work, and away from most of our obligations. And there’s one more thing we’ll be away from. The time-share where we are staying . . . insert dramatic drum roll here . . . has no Wi-Fi. I’m not sure what that means for Mark, who has to have at least one space age toy that will pull in the internet one way or another- and I think my wife can still check Facebook on her phone. For me, however, it will basically mean five days without the internet – or as I like to put it, five days of going Amish.
It’s sort of fun to throw up our hands in mock horror at the thought of a week without surfing the web, but in fact I’m sure we’re all looking forward to a few days of Blessed Unpluggedness, even if it means a few withdrawal pains here and there. For me, this is coming shortly after interviewing an author by the name of Tom Cooper, who’s actually a professor of media studies at Emerson College. His book “Fast Media: Media Fast” treads familiar ground in describing the media-drenched world in which most of us live. I really appreciate that he doesn’t brand all media as evil or to make sweeping generalizations about how much media is the right amount for each of us to allow into our lives – but he does suggest that way too many of us allow media to stream into our lives without giving any thought to what kind or how much. (Guilty as charged.) What really got me thinking was the part of his book where he proposes that people go on an occasional Media Fast- nothing permanent and maybe not even all that lengthy, but enough to clear one’s head a bit and maybe rediscover the roots of that most precious of gifts: imagination. So that’s how I’m looking at these next few days- intending to be Media-Less for at least a couple of days, in the hopes that I will think a bit more wisely about what Media I allow into my life —- sort of like the person who screens their calls —- while also coming to appreciate how Media enriches our lives. Because of course it does, unless your diet consists entirely of “Jersey Shore” and similar dreck.
Thinking about next week is reminding me about last Friday, my last day in Decorah, when my sister Randi took me (along with dad and Nathan, who came over from Madison, as well as my nephew Kaj) to see the Gunderson clinic office in Harmony, Minnesota where she now works. Harmony is plunked right in the midst of Amish country, and in fact Randi is the doctor for several Amish women in the area and deeply appreciates the opportunity to know some of these good-hearted folks who live lives so drastically different from the rest of us – the so-called “English.” We actually visited an Amish bed and breakfast and met the young proprietor – and also visited a small store located on another Amish farm, which is run by one of Randi’s patients. As we pulled into the driveway, we saw what looked like the mother of the family and a couple of children – one of whom was a little girl standing in the doorway of the house, looking at us with great curiosity and perhaps some misgivings as well. The father- or was it a grandfather- was outside one of the barns, working on something. But by the time we had gotten out of the car and ascended the steps of the little store, everyone in that Amish family had vanished from view.
Randi reminds me repeatedly – and with good reason – that the Amish do not really approve of cameras and do not appreciate having their picture taken, so I do my very best to restrain myself. But I simply had to snap the picture which you see above, in which you see Kaj walking out into the yard where the Amish had been talking just a couple of minutes before. Just before he headed out of the store, he poked me on the arm and said quietly “I bet it would it fun to be Amish.” I forget exactly what my initial reply was, but it was basically “yes, I think it mostly would be.” But then I added, “of course, you would have to give up all of your video games. . . “ (his eyes got big) “. . . and all of your toy guns and soldiers” (at which point his eyes got even bigger.) At that point, he slowly and quietly walked down the steps of that little store and into the yard, looking around and, I suspect, trying to imagine what it would be like to be Amish. There is something to be said for such moments when we are allowed a tiny glimpse into another kind of life and left to wonder just what kind of person we would be if instead of being born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota or Racine, Wisconsin, we had instead been born on a lovely little farm right outside of Harmony, Minnesota. It would mean a life without any of the luxuries and most of the comforts that we tend to take entirely for granted. But think of the beautiful simplicity.
That’s what I will be thinking about in these next few days as I disconnect from an array of familiar pleasures – but connect with some others that are so much more precious.
Pictured above: Again, this is not an Amish boy – but rather my young nephew Kaj, looking around this beautiful and simple Amish farm which we were visiting in order to buy a few things from this family’s small store.