We were concerned my family might think we hadn’t told the truth to the screenwriters. We also worried that some of the changes might put the Amish in too kind of a light, perpetuating the warm and fuzzy stereotypes portraying them as unfailingly righteous.
But eventually we grudgingly accepted Beth’s explanation that the movie would be an entertainment vehicle, not a documentary. And we recognized that the name-altered script, which focused on the love story in the context of “independence versus convention,” offered a lot of advantages, most notably protecting, at least for the moment, my parents’ identities.
It was also Beth’s belief that the movie would not tread lightly on the Amish, but instead provide “an interesting way to look at a simpler life and realize that that’s not perfect, either.’’
That would put This Side of Heaven a notch ahead of another Amish film, Harvest of Fire, a 1996 TV movie about barn burnings that starred Patty Duke Astin and was filmed in Kalona. Some of the portrayals of Amish life in that movie were simply laughable.
Whatever the outcome of This Side of Heaven, the Amish will probably dismiss it as nothing more than English fancy, much the way they dismissed Harvest of Fire. The Amish have a decidedly jaded view of film and TV, believing neither can be believed, that shows are made up to sway people in one direction or another, and that there is an evil attached to all of them.
The antenna on the roof is the devil’s tail, they say, and the TV in the living room is his tongue.
This ominous tone was conveyed in a letter my father wrote:
Irene, I so wish that movie would be stopped, which you probably could, right? Wilbur’s neighbor said, “There’s a black person in every movie and this time it will be your Dad.” I’m not acquainted how these go, but if this is true, I just want to keep apologizing and ask to be forgiven.
I’m reasonably certain the word “black” means a “bad” person and does not refer to race, although many Amish do hold deep prejudices against blacks and discourage any kind of interracial contact.
“Ever seen a sparrow with a robin?” they’ll ask. “Ever seen a bluebird with a cardinal? Well, if animals are smart enough to be with their own kind, humans should be, too.”
It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for equality.
Nineteen
Still praying that some way, somehow, the family may be united again, for this is hard to go on.
—LETTER FROM MOM
The best part about all the media attention was not our fifteen minutes of fame. It was the people who, through familiarity with my story, came to terms—or at least tried to—with crises in their lives.
There was the attractive middle-aged woman who came to a book signing and told how she had been harangued by family members her entire life because she had been born out of wedlock. She had been constantly reminded that she was a mistake.
I listened, which is all people really want anyway. Then I tried to help her in my own small way. In the only way I knew how.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “God doesn’t make mistakes, and he made you, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can’t be a mistake.”
Tears of joy filled her eyes and the years of torment washed down her face.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” I said. And I smiled.
There were letters, too. From all over the country. Not only from X-Amish but from English people who’d struggled with their faith to make a go of it in this life. Some of them had even read Ottie’s book.
One woman wrote:
Reading your husband’s book reminded me of what I went through when I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was one for seven years and when I tried to leave, it was very stressful. They also keep to themselves and tell members not to mix with the world, not even family members who are not JW.
When I left, my ex-husband found out where I was living, even though I was hiding. Then he and an elder came and talked to me, trying to get me to see the error of my ways. But I wouldn’t go back.
I had it easier than the X-Amish because I didn’t have a van load crying and pleading. But it was bad enough. After that, I had a twitch in my eye for several months because I thought God was going to destroy me because Armageddon was going to be here surely any minute now.
Religion and spirituality are not necessarily the same thing. And now I’m happy and free. I bet you are too!
A husband and wife wrote:
Some time ago your story was featured in a Nashville paper, and my husband and I read it with interest. Maybe it caught our interest more so because of our past experiences, as we also grew up in a very conservative church where a lot of emphasis was placed on being ‘separated’ from the world. . . .
The day came, however, when we felt that we were in bondage and we longed for liberty. Our bondage was the prison house of sin, self, and self-righteousness, wherein Satan had taken us captive. God was so good. In his word he showed us that there is deliverance, freedom, victory if we come to him with all our heart, confessing and forsaking our sin, giving our life completely in his control, believing that Jesus died for such repentant sinners, and through his blood he will set us free. . . .
I love you and want you to have a heart-happiness that is real and lasting. . . .
A twenty-three-year-old woman wrote:
I left the Old Order Mennonite faith a little over three years ago. The question you said you asked yourself—“Am I going to hell?”—is still a question I ask myself every day. It’s so hard to get past those feelings of guilt and condemnation that were instilled in us from an early age. I am very angry and upset that my parents put me through that kind of mental hell. . . .
I am so glad to see you were able to go on, be strong and be an encouragement to others that need deliverance from a life of bondage by man and not a life of living for God. . . .
The woman went on to say she had recently wedded an English man, and that she had put off marrying him because she was worried about the complications it would cause with her family. I couldn’t help but think about my own situation.
One of the more heart-wrenching letters came from a forty-one-year-old Tennessee woman who’d recently left the Amish. She had never been married and possessed only an eighth-grade education, but she was valiantly trying to better herself.
She wrote:
I’m not a good educated writer but I hope you can understand my writing. I enjoy do [sic] the G.E.D. schooling. I learn a lot. I have come a long way since I start [sic] going to the adult education classes. Lots of the English people around here attend the classes. The classes are given in a.m. and p.m. twice a week. I mostly study at home. I go to class when I need teachers [sic] help.
That one made me just a little bit angry.
Here we were at the dawn of the twenty-first century and we still had people in dire need of education, in desperate searches for healthy balances in their lives.
For these people, the clock had, at least for a time, continued to march on without them. National unemployment was on the verge of reaching a thirty-year low, John Glenn had just returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery, and Doctors Without Borders had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping the world’s sick, injured, and impoverished.
Yet right in our own backyards, we had people being smothered by tradition, doctrine and bias.
What was wrong with us? I wondered. How was it that we had arrived at this point in the road?
That we could help some of these people was great solace, and some, upon hearing our story, arrived at our door seeking assistance. We didn’t go looking for them, mind you. We merely made ourselves available.
And we went right to work when an Old Order Amish couple and their eight children came calling. They lived in squalor in a tin-roofed, two-room house on an English farm in Kentucky. The father made three dollars an
hour (never more than eight thousand dollars a year) working the land, which isn’t anywhere near enough to support a family that large. Worse, he had gotten himself in some kind of trouble with the Amish. They had punished him for using electricity in the home; had unplugged a freezer, spoiling all the family’s food, and had wrongly accused him of drinking alcohol.
When we first encountered the family, we were horrified at their living conditions. They slept on mattresses on the floor, or sometimes on the very floor itself. Their clothes were so soiled that even several washings could not remove the stench, and the children were covered with lice.
To help them leave the Amish, we knew we’d have to find accommodations in another state. So, Ottie called one of the subjects of True Stories of the X-Amish who now ran a metal fabrication plant in Alabama, and the man graciously bought the family a mobile home and hired the father on at the factory for eleven dollars an hour.
That was several years ago, and the family is adjusting well. One of the girls even became homecoming queen.
Twenty
If you should die now, where would you spend eternity? One of Satan’s famous tools of this day is to mix world with religion. He wants you to believe that as long as you pray to God, you may live and do as you wish.
—LETTER FROM WILBUR
When we weren’t tied up with screenwriters, book signings, and the like, Ottie and I would spend time at home watching television, gardening, baking, entertaining friends, visiting his family, going out to eat, or sightseeing.
Our little white Maltese, Fluffy, also kept us on our toes, demanding attention—and giving it back tenfold—incessantly. Sometimes, we’d also work on getting our parakeet, Peaches, to retreat from his silence by playing bird songs for him on the CD player.
I would be frequently reminded of our journey by my crystal swans in the living-room curio cabinet, and by the Kentucky Old Order Amish, who would steer their buggies by our house on Old Dixie Road to glimpse the now-famous renegade couple.
Occasionally, I would get out my blue velvet Amish hymn book to sing a song or two, including my favorite, “I Need No Mansion Here Below.’’
I would also remember lighter moments, like how Ottie used to tease the Iowa Amish with word games—when he wasn’t frustrating them with serious debate.
One game went like this:
Say shop three times.
Shop. Shop. Shop.
Now say it five times.
Shop. Shop. Shop. Shop. Shop.
Now say it three times quickly.
Shop, shop, shop.
Now say it once slowly.
S—h—o—p.
What do you do when you come to a green light?
Stop.
So fixated were they with the word “shop” that they were determined not to say it and would mistakenly reply “stop.” It worked every time.
In my spare moments at home, I also began reading scriptures in the Bible I had never paid much attention to growing up. Scriptures the Amish choose to ignore. Scriptures that don’t coincide with their traditional thinking about such things as going to war, focusing on works, and salvation.
1 John 3:16 addresses the war issue with this passage: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
There is a similar message in Jeremiah 48:10: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.”
On the matter of grace and works, Ephesians 2:8–9 clearly spells out the importance of grace: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves. It is a gift from God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
And regarding the Amish belief that salvation isn’t assured believers, 1 John 5:11–12 leaves no doubt: “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”
My entrance into the modern world had not only accorded me the benefits of convenience, it had given me the freedom to read the Bible as it should be read. To understand the full breadth of its teachings.
I have not absorbed all of it yet, not completely. And there are still some biblical issues that conflict with my desire to keep an open mind.
The whole concept of dinosaurs living sixty-five million years ago, for instance, seems incongruous.
The Bible, which only goes back six thousand years, mentions dragons but not dinosaurs. So how is it that archaeologists find the bones of dinosaurs but not the bones of dragons?
Moreover, the Amish are convinced history only goes back eight thousand years. How, then, can people be sure the bones they’re finding are millions of years old? And how can they be sure they’re putting the right appearances on the skeletons?
This all came to a head one day in our living room when Ottie and I met with Rick Farrant, my coauthor, his wife, Susie, and their young daughter, Amber. I think Rick started the debate by mentioning Chicago’s exhibit of the world’s largest Tyrannosaur, and the rest of us joined in.
“They say some of these dinosaurs are sixty-five million years old,” I said. “Who measured this? By whose measurements were these made? What proof have they got?”
“Well, I know you didn’t learn this in school, but scientists have this thing called carbon dating,” Rick said. “And through carbon dating, they are able to determine how old bones are.”
“But how do they know they’re putting the right appearance on this so-called dinosaur?” I said. “The only thing they’ve got is the bones. What if you find a dog carcass and put a cat covering on it? They could do that, couldn’t they?”
“They could,” Rick said. “But scientists, while not 100 percent sure, have many techniques for determining what a dinosaur might have looked like.’’
Rick then raised this question: “How do you know that the words you read in the Bible are the exact words passed down through the centuries?”
“Oh, don’t go there!” Ottie bellowed.
“I’m not trying to shake your faith,” Rick said, looking at me.
“And you won’t!” I fired back.
We all had a good laugh, and I acknowledged that little nuances had likely been altered in the numerous translations of the Bible, but that the general messages had been left intact.
Ottie, in my support I suppose, then mentioned that some Amish don’t believe man has been on the moon—that man could have faked it on television, just as they do with movies. Maybe, he offered, it’s not so unusual for some people to think man faked the dinosaurs, too.
For some reason, that reminded me of an Amish man who thought all the waters from the Great Flood were deposited in space, hence the blue skies. If man had truly gone into space, this person reasoned, the rocket would have penetrated the water and caused another flood.
I don’t believe that for a minute, and I’m positive man has been in space. But this dinosaur thing—well, that’s a whole different matter. Among other things, it seems to challenge God’s handiwork and support the theory of evolution. God created man, plants, animals, sky, water, everything in seven short days. He didn’t need sixty-five million years. In fact, one could presume from reading the Bible that there’s no such thing as a span of time that long.
“But what if,” Ottie said, “God’s sense of time is quite different from ours? A day is man’s creation. It may have been one day to man and quite another to God.
“So, at the time of creation, maybe there was no time. Because God is infinite. So to God, there is no time.’’
“But I don’t believe,” I said, “that God had to depend on evolution to take thousands and thousands and thousands of years to make a little bird.”
“Did God tell you he made everything?” Ottie asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did God tell you how he made it?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t h
e have used evolution, then, to do it?”
“Yeah, he could have. But he didn’t have to. I don’t know whether he did or not.”
“But couldn’t he have used evolution?’’ Ottie persisted. “Because the Bible doesn’t say how he did it. It just says that he did it. So he could have said, ‘I’m going to create all these animals, but I’m going to do it in such a way that everything works itself into the perfect state that I want. So we have creatures crawling from the oceans to the land, then walking, then dinosaurs and lizards and flying reptiles, and little horses that become regular horses, and then there’s man.”
This was a concept I hadn’t thought of before. A very strange, uncomfortable notion.
But as difficult as it was to fathom, I knew I must consider it—for the sake of keeping that great virtue called an open mind.
“Well,” I said, “I’m not going to be like the Amish and say there weren’t dinosaurs, because there might have been.”
Emphasis on the might, that is.
Later in the day, the subject was revisited when we drove south to Meshack Creek in Monroe County. We stopped where a narrow country road ended at water’s edge and got out to inspect long, deep grooves in the creek’s hard-rock bottom. The marks were several feet apart and ran diagonally against the current from one side of the creek to the other. Wagon wheel tracks, Ottie speculated. The vestiges of a route heavily traveled more than a century ago.
As we pondered his theory and imagined lines of settlers crossing the languid creek thicket to thicket, Rick discovered a veritable gold mine of fossils in the rocks along the creek’s banks. In short order, we were all bending over trying to outdo each other in finding the best specimens.
“You realize,” Rick said, “that some of these fossils could be as old as 400 to 500 million years. Before the dinosaurs.”
I looked at him and nodded, not wanting to get into another protracted conversation. But more to the point, I was so fascinated by these curious little forms that I wanted to collect as many as I could, as fast as I could. There must have been fossils in Iowa, but I can’t say that I ever noticed them.
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