They came in wagons all morning, 13 families, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children, in their white shirts and special bonnets and brushed horses, some from more than 20 miles away, to consecrate Moise Miller’s new barn, just two days old.

By the time the service started around 9:30 this morning, 20 horses were securely stabled in beautiful and roomy new stalls, each with grain and hay and water sent through a system of new chutes and troughs.

When the services began, each of the church members was sitting on benches brought in by horses all last week.

This is the spiritual life, I think, or one side of it.

In my mind, spiritual life is more than anything else, a life. It’s not just something to be studied on Sunday, if it is to be real, it has to be lived.

For the Amish, today in Moise’s spanking new church, God is present all of the time, there is no life apart from him.

Today, his church – the Amish district within 25 miles of the farm – worshipped in this new barn, after he worked day and night to ready the stalls, clean the floors, set out the prayer benches.

Spiritual life can exist outside of a man’s nature, but it lives inside of him (or her) in the realm of the angels.

The Amish seek to live by Jesus Christ’s sermons on the mount. I think of this quote from Christ when I think of the new barn: “Therefore, whoever hearth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will like him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”  – Matthew 7:24:27.

This building was built upon many rocks.

To me, spiritual life is about empathy, honor, and the willingness to see the truth in ourselves, rather than listen to the voices of others.

It means sharing community and concern for the poor and the vulnerable.  It means doing good for others.

When I stood in the barn yesterday, I felt at times that I am living in a world of heretics masquerading as faithful.  I am not a Christian, but I pay attention to where the spirit of Christ really lives. It lives very strongly among the Amish.

One day perhaps, I’ll believe in the devil, so many people seem false, could anything else make this happen?

Say what you want, the Amish live their faith, they don’t just talk it.

Moise’s barn is not an agricultural project, it is a spiritual affirmation, a small miracle of love and connection. Moise lives as a spiritual man, everything he does is in the honor and search for his God.

Thomas Merton wrote that laziness and cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of spiritual life. Hard work and courage are the reason this barn exists.  That, and love of thy neighbor, as the Bible commands.

The spiritual life, wrote Merton, is the life of the whole person as much as it is the life of anyone church or religion.

Most of us flirt with the spiritual life in the hope of salvation or healing, Moise lives the spiritual life in homage to his idea of Jesus Christ. Everything he says or does is in that spirit and means to be faithful to it.

There is no guarantee of redemption, no blessing that will promise a path to heaven. He will have to work for that until the very end.

We seekers are left with faults we cannot conquer and with no guarantee of victory.

But the faithful never give up, they never fear to try. They never quit.

That’s at the heart of Moise’s incredibly brave decision to uproot his family two years ago and his life behind and move to Cambridge, N.Y., where there was nothing waiting for him but hard work and faith.

This resonates with me in a special way. In a different way, I did the same thing. I know what it feels like to leave everything you know behind and set out on the hero journey. We can each call it different things, but we both know it is the same thing, done in differing ways.

Moise told me yesterday he never doubted for a moment that his vision was true and that this strange place was the place for him to build a new life with his family.

The barn is the strongest possible sign that his vision was correct. The first time he stepped off a bus with his brother-in-law Jacob on that cold winter night without knowing a soul or having a place to eat or sleep was, he said, the greatest moment of his life.

A glorious day, he said, he was never afraid. I guess that comes with believing in God. I can’t imagine doing it.

Two years later, the barn sings his song.

(Above, the church benches. They move from farm to farm every other Sunday, every Amish family hosts Sunday services in turn.)

Today, the Amish community Moise founded in my county is coming together to worship on the upper floor of the barn. It is a church if any structure ever was.

The church benches have all been brought in, the area swept, the wooden chips cleaned up.

Moise’s daughters and wife Barbara have also been working day and night to prepare meals for everyone coming to celebrate the farm and praise God for making it happen.

Last night, Moise proudly gave me another tour of the barn, showing me the various shutes and slides for bringing water, feed, and hay to the horses on the ground floor, all of whom are moving into the barn today.

The Amish have been building farms for centuries, their environmental and practical experience is on display.

(The grain system in Moise’s barn, this is where it comes down to be scooped up from above and fed to the horses.)

The upper floor of the barn, where the hay will be stories has a beautiful, cathedral-like quality to it, as I sit here writing on my computer, I can hear the singing from Moise’s barn down the road and through the woods as the end of the service.

The carriages are heading home, the men and women singing, all dressed in their special clothes for worship.

It gave me chills. The spirit lives in that barn and raise their voices to their God. The barn has a lot of feeling, once inside. Moise glows with pride, although he will never compliment himself out loud.

As stirring as it was to see those men climbing up on that roof was the long and hard work the daughters and wives put into making everyone comfortable, to cooking, baking, cleaning carrying, and coming together to make their quilts in honor of the raising.

I’m finishing a piece about what I learned from the barn raising. I’ll share one thing now: the spiritual life is about empathy and honor, and facing the truth about yourself in a world full of voices telling you what you are, what you should be, what you should do.

Moise and I share one thing.

We will never submit to that, the dark side of our technological society. We will never let other voices define who we are and what we should do.

I wish him every blessing and good luck as his barn is christened in such a beautiful and meaningful way. If he is not permitted to praise himself, I can say without hesitating that I saw what it took to make this barn and I am proud of him.