You Didn't Keep Score?
It usually takes the Amish gravedigger three days to ready a grave. And there is no searching around for space in a family plot, no worries about hitting another coffin or placing one coffin on top of another. The Amish don’t have to buy a tombstone in advance to stake their claim near family members.
The Amish cemetery up the road from me seems to have begun back in the 1800s with husbands and wives buried next to each other. Then as families grew, and land became less available, the ordering changed. People began to be buried in chronological order. The members of the community did not have assigned plots. They just took whatever space was next. A husband may be buried in one row, his wife in another. A Yoder buried next to a Miller next to a Bontrager.
What a sensible idea. But what about Memorial Day decorations? Do families have to run around the cemetery decorating one grave, then another at a great distance away? No. There are no decorations, no flowers left on graves. Family members do not make visitations to burial grounds. The Amish believe that once you are gone, you are in the hands of God. Everyone should trust in the goodness of that transition.
The Amish have tombstones, but for the most part, they are small and humble. A large marker, a life of worldly achievement, anything that would set an individual apart from the community is considered prideful—a key Amish vice. The individual is not accentuated in their religion. Rather, it is the community that is stressed. An individual is part of a family that is simply part of the larger community. The individual is so de-emphasized, that it’s believed that anyone who stands out from the group through fame may very well disrupt the balance of the larger whole. This concept is hard on those who might be talented, say, in the arts, but it gets a lot of barns built.
In Buggy Land, cooperation is underscored—all the way to the grave. Yes, working together for the good of the group is a regular, expected part of rural life, Amish or English. Life in the country entails a lot of literal heavy lifting and neighbors are more dependent on each other. But I have seen how the Amish, who live a semi-communal existence, weave cooperation smoothly and tightly into their lives like the warp and weft of their rag rugs.
Once, after a tornado ripped through the area flattening outbuildings, I watched Amish men gather for a frolic. They picked through the debris, reusing anything they could salvage, then in three days, raised the beams on a new barn, hammering the last nail into the roof in satisfaction just before they all sat down together to a big dinner.
Once a month, I’ve seen neighborhood women gather and rotate from house to house for a work day. A team of six women might paint several rooms in the house, or wash and put up the storm windows, or cook or bake for an upcoming wedding.
Over and over again, I’ve seen families prepare to host Sunday services in their homes. The Amish have no church building, so the services rotate from farmstead to farmstead with each family hosting the event a couple of times a year. The preparations usually occur in a burst of energy the day before the event. One sibling might be painting the fence while another is mowing the lawn. The father may be cleaning out the machine shed while the mother is scouring the bathroom.
Cooperation and non-competitiveness, a hallmark of non-violent societies, carries right over into sports.
“Our headmistress would only let us play one other school in sports,” a Quaker friend who had attended a nearby Friends Schools had once told me, “And that was the Mennonite High School because they didn’t keep score.”
You didn’t keep score? I thought to myself. What kind of game is that? I’d been raised in an Irish Catholic Midwestern setting with two older brothers. We all jumped into competitive sports, enjoying the rough and tumble activity. We loved the fun of the match, the kind of enjoyment that was earned only by putting up a valiant struggle. Score sheets were treasured items. And most any game provided endless fascination—basketball, to volleyball, to carrom.
One summer night at the Buggy Land neighborhood picnic, the evening took a turn toward volleyball. The Old Order kids began stringing up a volleyball net, and suddenly, the Mennonite kids appeared with electric lights mounted on poles. I left the adults to their jokes and discussion of current events to join the game. I hadn’t played volleyball since my thirties when I found myself in the midst of very aggressive players, yelling, cursing, and shaming each other over lost points.
One, two, one, two, one two. The neighborhood kids—Old and New Order, Beachy and Mennonite--quickly divided up randomly selected teams. A six-year-old ended up on the same team as a young adult in his early twenties. One set of twins was separated, another set stood side-by-side waiting for the first serve.
With a steady, strong hand, the serve was launched, up and over the net. The opposite team connected with the ball, then deftly set it up for another team member to make the play back to the opposite side. No fists, nor grimaces, nor shouts were made. The ball landed on the the other court, but nothing that could be characterized as a slam. When a play was missed, no one seemed to mind, and usually the person who’d set up the ball took the blame. My bad.
No scores were announced, yet everyone seemed to know when to rotate. The players moved in unison, as if from muscle memory, instinctually knowing when to step up, step back, and finally come around to the other side of the net.
“She’s pretty good!” One of the girls said of me, and I felt as if I had arrived.
I had arrived long enough, anyway, to get a feel for what a non-competitive, non-violent culture felt like even in a competitive situation. And why do we value competitiveness so much, in the first place, I asked myself. Yes, it’s the basis of our capitalistic society, but where does that really get us? It allows us to have a higher standard of living than others. But how does this translate? Having a bigger, shinier car? Here I was living among people who didn’t even own cars. Their happiness level seemed equal or better than mine.
And now, when I drive my shiny car by the Amish cemetery on my way home from town, I think of those rows of small, solitary white tombstones. I mourn for the individuals we’ve lost throughout the years. I miss their presence, their many kindnesses, and the spark they brought to the neighborhood. But now I don’t dwell as much on the individuals. Rather, I see my neighbors as one big team, passing the final ball, one by one, with neither anger nor pride, back over the net.
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Elizabeth Cunningham
2 hrs ago
Hi, Mary. This is a comment for "You Didn't Keep Score?" though I seem to be at the St Brendan's comment site, which I also loved. "You Didn't Keep Score" is beautiful and moving, touched me to tears. Thank you!
Deba Leach
2 hrs ago
Just “swell,” this account and point of view. Thanks.