In the summer of 2010, an Amish investment manager in Ohio filed for bankruptcy after losing $17 million placed in his trust by some 2,700 investors, almost all of whom were Amish.  Amish investors, upset that he had violated church teaching by filing for bankruptcy, petitioned the bankruptcy court to overturn the bankruptcy and permit them to pay the debt. “As a plain community,” they wrote to the judge, “we have historically believed that the Bible teaches us we are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth (Hebrew 11:13-14) and to treat our fellowmen with integrity and respect. We file no claims in court; we are responsible for paying our debts… – The Amish Way, Donald B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weider, Steven M. Nolt.

In the Amish world, this sense of honor and duty is called Gellassenheit,  or sometimes geh lessa, and is the deep taproot of the Amish way. In its briefest form, Gellassenheit is the Amish version of “let’s go, stop trying to figure it out, let it alone.”

Be honest, be humble, be simple, be obedient.

Today, Moise revealed to me what this means to him and his life on our ride to the bus station (I’m picking him up on Monday), and it was our deepest and most open talk. We are no longer strangers feeling our way with one another.

We are brothers, there is trust and honesty without penalty.

I asked Moise to tell me the story of his coming to be my neighbor and friend. I didn’t really know how he got here.

And he told me this story for the first time.  I was riveted. As a storyteller myself, I know a good story when I hear one. It was a tale of vision, courage, and fearlessness, of a man prepared to rearrange his life for his family.

Barbara, sitting in the back seat, was riveted. She said some parts of the story were new to her.

I was driving Moise and his wife Barbara to the Glens Falls, N.Y., bus station today, they were heading north to Canton, N.Y. for the bi-annual communion of the Amish church.

They were dressed in formal, striking, and different clothes than I have seen, they were the clothes and their children wear only to church. I have seen their children riding in wagons in these clothes singing as they rush by the farmhouse in their buggies.

On the way, Mosie asked me about being a book writer – how I was paid, how I earned a living, who read my books, how did they get them or learn of them. I haven’t yet tackled explaining how a blog works.

He has sat alongside me several times at my computer and read the stories I’ve written about him.

I insist he knows what I am writing, and he knows they go out to the world and are read by many thousands of people.

But the idea I can earn a living sitting on my behind in my study without plowing soil confounds him.

I think he suspects I’m selling sheep at the market or something to get by.

We’ll get there.

I don’t think he wants to know as much about my world as I do about his. He, like most Amish, fears the culture and technology of the “English” and the effect it will have on their children and way of life.

Moise is pleased by our early online searches for pie and donut boxes this week, we got them at a great price with free shipping, and they came overnight. I think more online searches with him are in my future.

He paid me back every penny for purchasing them this morning in cash. He also wanted to pay me for the time it took to order them, I declined.

Three years ago, Moise was living with his family up near the Canadian border, northernmost New York. The Amish community there was large, with about 300 families.

He reminded me that the Amish faith forbids jealousy or competition amongst one another or outsiders. He was concerned that the growing number of families was forcing families to compete with one another for survival.

That region of upstate New York  is sparsely populated; there just wasn’t room for everyone to be successful in their farms and work.  Moise was thinking ahead, as he goes.

And he would never compete with members of his church, or outsiders, for that matter. That feeling was Gelalssenheit.

So he decided to look for a place to go where he would not be competing with other businesses or other Amish and where his children would have the opportunity to buy their own farms or start their own businesses in a freer and more open way.

He set out on a great adventure into the unknown, to places he had never been and knew nothing about,  with no transportation of his own, and a trusted partner and companion.

I would find that terrifying, but Moise is confident and certain, I suspect faith has something to do with that assurance. When you believe God is guiding you, confidence is high.

Moise got on a bus one day with his brother-in-law Harvey, who now lives a few miles down the road from us, someone had suggested the struggling town of Hoosick  Falls, N.Y. as a possible destination, and so he and Harvey took the bus there.

They got off the bus at 7 p.m. on a chilly October night – they had no idea where they were going to sleep – and they ended up at a convenience store where a taxi driver encountered them and offered to take them to a Vermont motel.

I asked if he was afraid, and he said no, God was guiding them. (Let it, don’t try to figure it out.)

This was the first of a dozen such trips to Rensselaer County, to four or five counties in nearby Vermont. It’s a five-hour bus ride.

He had no reservations, didn’t carry maps, couldn’t drive, and knew nothing about where he was going. They figured out how to get rides.

Despite so many trips, he and Harvey could not find what they wanted. In Vermont, the taxes were too high, the regulations too stiff, the land too expensive.

An English friend he knew in Canton suggested Washington County. He and Harvey got on the bus again – every trip took them to an unknown place and a search for a bed at night and food to eat.

it was the Hero Journey, Amish style.

Along the way, magical helpers appeared to drive him,  guide him and take him in. I would have been one of them if I had known he was there.

On one of these trips, he called a realtor who suggested that he take a look around Washington County, a farming community on the border with Vermont, and a bit to the North and an hour-and-half Southwest of Albany.

My county was just what he wanted.

The taxes were low, the landscape beautiful, the towns peaceful government small and unobtrusive, inspectors agreeable and not too aggressive, and the land (before the pandemic) was less expensive than any place he had been.

A lot of dairy farms had gone under, there was land available.

There were also enough people to purchase the things the family made and grew, and baked. There were a lot more customers in Washington County than in Canton, New York.

“What were you looking for?” I asked. He explained that local regulations often conflict with Amish beliefs regarding building permits and things like engineers, which many towns require when it comes to building a home, but which conflicts with Amish faith.

They build their own homes in their own way and are led by God and tradition, not engineers.

It’s often a conflict, he said, “but we keep at it until we work things out. It always works out.”.

“I didn’t want to be competing with local businesses,” Moise said, “I wanted to live in a community where the things we made were unique to us and not sold elsewhere. I don’t want to compete with anyone or drive anyone out of business.”

He wanted his children to have an opportunity to farm if they choose, or start their own milling or other business if they preferred.

A lot of Amish children were leaving the farms now because there wasn’t enough for them to do or sell.

He wanted his sons and his daughters to be able to farm if they wished. That was why he started on his search.

Several of his daughters had married and lived in Canton, he said, all of them are moving to this area. Two of them arrived to move onto their own farms last weekend.

More are coming.

I had this poignant image of this determined man and his brother and law wanding through the area by themselves, trusting in their faith to give them food and shelter and leading them to their new home.

It was an odyssey. “I never doubted that we would find what we wanted and needed to find.”

A realtor showed him the farm he now lives on, and he came back with Barbara and some friends, and they walked the land, studied the water, the soil, the trees, the tillable land,  the highway out in front. They discovered that the things they wished to do – farm, mill, sell sheds and lumber, were not sold anywhere in town.

They would not be challenging or competing with anyone living here.

He decided to make an offer (I didn’t ask for the details) and two weeks later, it was accepted.

The  Miller family and a dozen members of his community came back with him; they found a barn next door whose owner generously agreed to let them sleep there (it was heated) while they build the big barn that would house their tools and them until they could put up a structure secure enough to house his family.

It’s different with us, he said.

When we need help – building a barn, building a house, hospital bills, fire or accident – there is always enough support to pay for those costs or damage and make them right. “We are a community,” he said, “we buy no insurance.” But, he added, we always take care of each other.

In other words, they have the best possible insurance.

Barbara came down to the new farm to cook for the workers, so did several of his older children. They worked all through the winter – they bought the house in February.

Under county law, if a structure housed animals, it was exempt from building codes. So their first freezing months were shared with horses and carpenters from back home.

I told him I couldn’t believe I didn’t even know he was there until a couple of months ago when someone e-mailed me to tell me I had an Amish neighbor.

I told him our community was not as closely knit as his.

“I’m sorry I didn’t meet you in February,” he said, “it would have been a lot easier for us, and a lot of fun.” That is the closest thing he has ever said, suggesting how hard it was.

The Amish do not complain.

He said many local people came by and offered to help.

Moise and Barbara and their Amish friends worked every day through a cold and snowy winter, even the day we had a record three to four feet of snow.

“We just shoveled the snow out of the way and kept going,” he said.  He admitted building the barn rafters was challenging.  (Just accept it and let it go.)

It had to be bitter cold up on that windy hill in January and February. It was bad enough where we are.

Moise and I had perhaps the most intimate exchange yet in the car today, as we talked about when we first met up on the hill outside of his temporary barn/home. We just seem to get each other.

“We are so different,” I said, “but I felt I had known you all of my life.” He nodded and looked at me. According to my rearview mirror, Barbara, who had been silent, was beaming from the back seat.

I was moved, as always, by his honesty and his faith.

“I felt the same way,” he said about me.

I think that’s as sappy as we are going to get, but it was beautiful for me. All my squawking about men friends and here was one who dropped in out of the sky, and was, on the surface, as similar to me as a creature from outer space.

I’ll be working on that for a while.

I think we both say what we mean and mean what we say. I think we both strive to be good; I think he’s worked harder and longer at it than I have. I am older than he is, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Maria is right; we are both ambitious and driven. We both work like fiends; we both never quit.

Moise’s story about his search for a new home was epic, right out of the settling of the American West. I imagine a lot of those families were just like my new neighbors.

We talked easily the whole way; when we got to Glens Falls, we did our ritual no-I-won’t take- any- money-driving-you struggle.

He offered me $10 for the ride. I couldn’t help ribbing him.

“What $10, Eli offered me $20 just last week!” He kept pushing the money at me, and I kept saying no, and finally, I just told him to get out of the car and take his $10 with him.

I’ll tell him Monday (Maria’s suggestion) that when I pick him up that he can give me a pie for each ride.

He’ll go for that. When I drive him, part of the process is that I call a taxi up north and arrange for him to be picked up at the bus station five hours away.

The Amish getting the ride gives me the number, but he can’t dial or speak directly to the taxi company. This one was called the “Amish Taxi Service,” and they knew the drill.

I made the arrangements, we said goodbye, and he walked to join the dozen or so Amish men and women gathered by the bus station entrance. I saw his brother Harvey, his co-explorer, on the search for a new home.

Harvey will manage the construction of the Miller home towards the end of this year. Eli said he is summoning 100 Amish workers to build a new barn for the horses this summer.

“Harvey,” I yelled, “I would have given you a ride. Why didn’t you ask?” I saw Harvey yesterday when I dropped some books off for his children.

“I wasn’t sure how many people you were driving. I should have spoken more plainly, but I wasn’t sure you had enough room.” Next time we agreed to speak more plainly.

I like Harvey a lot. Like Moise, he is bright, has a keen sense of humor, and has already sold more wooden garden beds in our town that have been sold in a decade.

It was, for me, another lesson in Gelassenheit.

“Etched into Amish consciousness,” writes Kraybill in his book, “Gelassenheit penetrates Amish life from body language to social organization, from personal speech to ethnic symbolism. How one smiles, laughs, shakes hands,  removes one’s hat, and drives one’s horse signal Gelassenheit or its absence. A boisterous laugh and a quick retort betray a cocky spirit.”

Fancy or attention-grabbing clothes or jewels signal a celebration of the individual spirit rather than a yielding to the community.”

Moise told me he wanted his children to love their family and faith as much as they loved themselves. Then, he said they were free to live their own lives if they wished.

He has big plans for tomorrow – sheep and goats, a huge pasture in need of fencing, a new house, a new barn, ideas for Christmas. Moise never stops thinking and planning.

More Gelassenheit, the key to understanding Amish culture. It is a German word for “submission,” a belief that includes simplicity, humility, thrift, obedience, and accepting the will of higher authority, especially Jesus Christ.

The Amish idea is humility, in marked contrast to the modern Western idea of personal fulfillment. I could not survive as an Amish worshipper, but I can’t help but admire them.

As Moise got out of the car, I told him I had a confession to make. I said I looked up yesterday leaving his farm and saw an image so beautiful it made me want to cry sitting out on the highway.

It was of him on a windswept hill with three of his children, two daughters and a son, the wind howling across the fields, planting onions, one by painful one.

It said everything about the power of family, the meaning of community.

I said it was one of the most beautiful photos I had ever taken, and I wanted him to see it, even though it included shots of his children (no faces) in silhouette.

He smiled, “don’t worry about it,” he said, “I’d take a print if you want to make one. I’ll pay you for it.”

“Good Lord,” I said, “here we go again.” But I was grateful to Moise. I will honor the wish of the Amish not to have their faces shown distinctly on photographs, but I wanted him to say it was all right.

He understands what taking photographs means to me.