Rumspringa

I was reading in the paper yesterday, that the Amish population is doubling, due to bigger family size - they're spreading out incredibly successfully.

I can see the appeal of living an Amish life - the simplicity, the honest work, the farming, the baking, not so much the constricting and repressive religious aspect, but the spirituality, yes.

Michael Longley's poem An Amish Rug is one of my favourites.

As if a one-room schoolhouse were all we knew

And our clothes were black, our underclothes black,

Marriage a horse and buggy going to church

And the children silhouettes in a snowy field,

I bring you this patchwork like a smallholding

Where I served as the hired boy behind a harrow,

Its threads the colour of cantaloupe and cherry

Securing hay bales, corn cobs, tobacco leaves.

You may hang it on the wall, a cathedral window,

Or lay it out on the floor beside our bed

So that whenever we undress for sleep or love

We shall step over it as over a flowerbed.

He says about it:

When I was in Lancaster County in the 1980's, I bought an Amish rug as a gift for my wife. I wrote a poem about it some time later, a love poem which is in a way almost religious. There is something devout about making anything well. The Amish rug maker who pieced together our rug out of rags all those years ago now lights up our lives every day. He really has created for us a cathedral window.

And if you'll excuse the further digression, I love how Longley empathises with the rug maker, blends his experience with his own, and the sanctity of the Amish marriage with his own love for his wife. Such romance in this marriage poem. The rug becomes a flower bed, a symbol of fertility, the continued blossoming of their relationship. His insistence on the speaker as human, humorous, as real rather than caricature or stereotype is masterful as well.

But! Back to my point. The article discussed the concept of 'Rumspringa', which I think basically means room to run - and also refers to adolescence, and how one explanation for the growth of the population is that teens who decide they don't want to adopt the lifestyle and faith of the group are cut off from the community and their families. So they stay.

I'd like to talk about this a little more. I saw a programme on Rumspringa a few years ago. Initially I thought, great. The Amish don't baptise their babies - they let their teenagers have this period where they go out of their communities and live as any modern teens do -they drink, they do drugs, they listen to modern music, they get to drive cars and doubtless sleep around. Then they get to come home and decide whether they want to stay Amish or go out in to the world, having seen it for real.

I thought, how balanced. An informed choice. Except, it's not that clear cut. If they do decide to go out into the world, they can't come back. They can come home, but no one will talk to them, they're dead to the community. Fair enough, you might say, how else would the the Amish ways survive - you can't really live that lifestyle if your 19 year old's in college, and is bringing girls home to listen to rock and have a shag in their bedroom, while you're getting up at four to bake bread or milk cows or pray.

But when I looked at it closer, I saw one major flaw. The teenagers are sent out into the world, after their cloistered childhood, without any familial support. They're thrown out there, without protection - it's not a realistic view of a modern teenager's life. I think that adolescence is a time for experiment and testing of boundaries, but for me, what's important about it is that there's a safety net. You find your feet, but you have parents, family, a support network behind you, to reign you back in. Role models. The Amish kids are thrown out there into a wonderland of pointlessness they have no preparation for - sure the drink and drugs and partying and driving are fun, but it's a pretty nihilistic experience all on your own, and so far removed from everything you grew up with. Some of the kids on the programme got pretty messed up, dealing, getting in trouble, struggling terribly with their choice of stay or go.

And I felt the attitude of the Amish community was 'see, see what happens, our way is so much better'. But it wasn't a balanced view, it wasn't the experience of the average teen who balances dating and partying with household chores and exams, with their parents leading the way, being a safe target to rebel against. Of course it's going to be negative if you're just thrown out there - so the kid who got in trouble had a lot of issues giving up his life in the world, but felt like he had to come home, he needed the guidance. Less clear cut was the girl who loved her family, but wanted to go to college, she wanted to be a social worker. So she had to choose between that and her family and community. It was really sad.

I think there's a message here about how we need to treat our teenagers and keep them safe and coming home to us. Enough freedom, but always with unconditional strength and support from us in the background so they don't freefall. We are the bungee chord!