I wasn’t expecting it; perhaps I am naive.

Ever since I began writing about my new Amish neighbors a few weeks ago, I’ve been receiving messages urging me to “take another look” or “think about” my interest in and appreciation of these people.

“You probably don’t know that they torture and kill their animals, “one man wrote to me.

The messages have almost all been civil, although several people have suggested that my writing about the Amish has romanticized them, glorified them, overlooked their misogyny, cruelty to animals, and deprivation of rights.

The messages surprised me, although I think it is an important conversation to be having in America right now, and I welcome inadvertently inspiring it on my blog.

For some reason, it belongs here.

When you write a blog like this, you never know what is coming down that highway.

I will always write about animals, but I love writing about other things as well. It is good for my mind.

I appreciate anything that brings a new dimension to my writing and challenges me and others to think about what I am doing rather than live reflexively.

Today, I’m reproducing one message I got from J.C., and I appreciate both his honesty and civility.

I am also reprinting my response to him, which is, as usual, is longer than his post; I’ve added a few things to my original response.

(I also should disclose one thing in the interest of transparency.

The words the people who message me about the Amish remind me- almost to the word – of the words used against my Jewish forbears when they first came to America.

They heard them all the time, and I heard them at times with my own ears. It may have shaped my thinking about the Amish.

In the Orthodox Jewish world of my grandparents and relatives, women had few or no rights.

They couldn’t even pray on the same floor with men or show their own hair.  Few were permitted to work outside of the family, where they worked much harder than the men, day and night.

Animals were seen as foul and wasteful; there was no such thing as a pet.

Many of the patriarchs who ran these families refused to let their children pursue a broader education beyond their religion, or in the case of women, any education at all.

There was no access or discussion of birth control or sex, which was absolutely forbidden outside of marriage. That might have influenced my thinking.

I’ve heard these same words and descriptions also applied to Irish and Italian immigrants, Chinese and African immigrants. Our former President suggested that many Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals and gang members.)

America is – was – all about welcoming others and working to absorb them into our world.

That has always been and is painful, difficult, sometimes impossible. The Amish are different yet similar in some ways.

Christian nationalist Americans have been forever fighting to preserve their place in the world, from the Revolution to the Civil War to the new Republican Party.

My town has taught me much about being open-minded.

I live in the country, and hardly anyone around me is like me or shares all or even many of my values and beliefs. If I judged them for that or demanded that my values be theirs, I could spend the rest of my life talking to myself, and I’d deserve it.

As I am learning to do, I’ve read these messages about the Amish – there are quite a few now – more than once and have tried to open my mind to what people are telling me and asking me to do.

Our culture, both left and right,  no longer broadly accept cultures and citizens who are different, from politics to immigration.  Social media has become a Hellmouth.

Perhaps I am naive, or as some have suggested, just another oblivious creature of white privilege.

In a world of intolerance, I would like to learn to be tolerant.

Today, my chosen message – there were a dozen, at least –  to write about is from “J.C:”

Jon: It is easy for a man to “accept” this way of life or see it as evocative as a purer way of living. Women and children very truly have no rights in this society. No voice. No access to education or birth control. If you believe that conservative Christianity and republican politics have been destructive in our nation, then please take a closer look….”

J.C.’s message was concise, but it said a lot.

My response:

J.C. Thanks for your message and the civil and straightforward way in which you expressed it. I can assure you I am getting a “closer look” at the Amish culture almost every day, and I will try, as I always do, to be honest, and open about what I see.

I am not an idealistic child or young activist; I was a journalist, police reporter, and political writer for some years.

It is not a surprise for me that good people do bad things or that awful surprises are lurking behind closed doors. I can often sniff hypocrisy and deception.

I understand that the world can be a cruel and dangerous place, and I see myself as fairly immune to labels, propaganda, and dogma; I’ve heard so much of them, I am allergic.

In your message, you suggest that I am blind or naive in seeing the Amish way of life as “evocative” or “pure.”

You suggest I am confusing simplicity with bigotry and cruelty and a kind of religious despotism.

If you read my blog, you probably know I am not a great fan of contemporary conservative Christianity or Republican politics, your effort to link these two social movements with the Amish fell short for me.

I don’t believe in purity when it comes to humans. What the Amish seek is simplicity, and that is something very different. Purity is for saints and Gods, not humans.

I sense no appetite for power, domination, or political adventurism in the Amish; they have strong ideas about life.

They do not proselytize, send believers to Congress, lobby or lie, convert people or advocate for their ideas in the wider world, push their cause on cable news.

They are fiercely devoted to the life and many of the gentler beliefs of Jesus Christ, especially his pleas to love one’s neighbors, forgive others’ sins,  and help the needy.

In my mind, those things clearly distinguish them from the two movements you mentioned and set them apart.

I take your concern about Amish women to heart. I don’t know many of them well, although I hope to. I have no sense that these women are frightened, held prisoner, or denied the rights that are important to them.

I might be deaf or blind, but your descriptions of them as voiceless and helpless prisoners do not match what I see. The few I’ve met are as tough as they are gentle.

The Amish mothers and daughters I’ve met are quick to laugh and smile,  loving to their children, and seem to enthusiastically embrace the primary values of the Amish that I know of  – God and family.

They are open to strangers, welcome visitors, are healthy, clean, conversational. They act like people with no secrets to keep and nothing to hide. I feel accepted by them when I appear.

These traits don’t square with people denied any rights or access to information and lived as virtual prisoners.

It is not, in my mind, for me to tell them that their chosen life is false and cruel and repugnant. Or that their way of life calls out for strangers to investigate and consider.

It’s not my right or ambition to judge them or impose my values on them.

The decisions about how to live are choices that only these women can make for themselves.  It’s not my place to tell them how to live. The women I have met are freer and happier – and much healthier than many of the women I grew up around me in Providence, R.I.

I see that they love their children and their community with great passion. These are people who would do anything for each other.

I can’t speak for all the Amish; I only know a very few, not very well.

But I want to be honest with you.

I am not looking to judging them; they are my neighbors, which is important to me.  The idea of loving one’s neighbor was considered so important in ancient times that it was made into a commandment.

I don’t live by the Bible, but I do very much value the importance of being a good neighbor. Living in the country for nearly 20 years has taught me that if nothing else.

There are countless people in the world and the country, and in my town who live in ways I could not live and don’t wish to live.

I don’t need a “closer look” at them; that feels creepy to me; what the Amish are and choose to be is quite evident – they are very open – and I have enjoyed meeting these young men and women and hope to continue to get to know them.

The first wave of messages warning me about the Amish and pleading with me to take another or closer look had to with the widespread belief, actively advanced some in the animal rights movement, that they are cruel to animals.

Specifically, they are accused of running puppy mills and are cruel to their horses.

None of the families I have met are selling puppies, and their horses – this is something I am familiar with – are healthy and well sheltered, fed, and cared for.

These strong and hard-working animals are not considered pets, but they are greatly valued, as they are the family’s primary connection to work and the outside world.

I can assure you, J.C., that I have a heart of coal when analyzing people.

I am good and experienced at it. But I am not a combatant in the culture wars and do not need to tell other people how to live and feel.

Everyone I’ve ever met is different from me, and me from them.  The sweetest moments in my life had come from the unconditional love and acceptance others have shown me.

As a miserable and traumatized child, I remember walking in desperation into a Quaker Meeting when I was 14 and sitting frightened and confused in the silence. Something led me there; I was looking for help.

I could hardly have been more different than the people sitting around me in their silent contemplation.

When the meeting was over,  I got up to flee. Every person in the room came over to welcome me, thanked me for coming, invited me to return, and asked me if there was anything I needed.

There was, and they helped me greatly, and for years. I joined that meeting and call myself Quaker still. I am not as good as them, but I am better than I would have been without them.

That is the kind of person I want to be, even though I am not the kind of person who can always be what I want to be.

J.C., you strike me as thoughtful and smart, so I hope you stick around. But if it’s uncomfortable, you might want to start your own blog, maybe. I’d encourage you to listen more and judge less. But that’s up to you.

I cherish meeting people who are different from me; that is the glory of life.  So I’m not going to investigate my neighbors or judge them for being different from me.