I hadn’t talked with Moise for a week or so, he was at his daughter’s farm building helping build a new home and dowsing for water.

He said they needed to find water for a well. He got two wires and held one in each hand. Suddenly, the wires pulled away from him so strongly he couldn’t press them together.

“That was it,” he said, the matter of factly, “it had to be water.” And the water was 12 feet below. Moise said by Tuesday his daughter will have an engine-free gravity system just like he does.

I tried to imagine dowsing for water for a house my daughter just bought.

Moise says he might become a dowser for other families. He thinks he’s got the body for it, and this way, he wouldn’t have to pay someone else.

Moise was pleased, this is the first time he has dowsed like that. “I think you have to have electricity in your body for it to work,” he said. I thought he was proud of himself, although he would never brag.

He says sadly that he still have to pay for an excavator, but one day he will figure out how to do his own excavation without a huge tractor. (The Amish do not buy big tractors or even small ones unless they are kerosene operated.)

I came over to get paid for the pie boxes and banana bread and zucchini tins I bought online. Barbara counted out the money – almost $300 –  mostly in ones.

Moise and I sat down in opposite rockers for our first lengthy dog in a week, which is a long time for us not to talk. It was nice, having some time to talk in the coziness of their kitchen, his children all around us busy with their chores.

Little Sarah sat down to listen to us talk. Barbara buzzed in and out.

She and Moise both thanked me for getting these supplies.

Moise was taking one of his 10-minute breaks in the kitchen, which remind me of NASCAR drivers pulling over for fuel change. There is no rest in it. He saw me through the window, we both shouted greetings to one another and he came in and sat down.

Barbara and the girls were sitting around a giant bowl filled with peaches. They were starting to can for the winter. They did this earlier in the week with apples.

Our friendship gets easier all the time. It no longer feels like a stranger visiting a different culture but like friends taking a few minutes to hang out. It’s nice.

Moise and I sat in rocking chairs across from one another, and I had the feeling he was happy to see me. I know I was happy to see me. One of his daughters brought him water.

Resting is not the same for him as for me or you. He sticks his head in a bucket of water, takes off his boots, changes socks, washes his hands, scrapes the mud off of his pants, checks the mail.

“Do you get some rest these days?” I ask – he does look exhausted. He always laughs, “I rest every night,” he says.

Moise asked me how I was and I told him about the sleep apnea test I’m having Wednesday. I told them I’d be in the hospital overnight, they listened carefully but said nothing. They did ask when I would be back.

Moise wants to know what’s happening, he doesn’t get deep into it.

We had a long talk about sleep. Moise goes to bed around 9:30 at night and gets up around five. He falls asleep the second his head hits the pillow and a rooster wakes him up. He never dreams, he says.

Then Moise asked me about the “Delta” thing his neighbors had been telling him about. One of them wanted the family to be vaccinated.

When Moise wants to know something about the outside world that he heard from people he talks to in town or people who come bye, he simply asks me about this “thing” he heard.

That is an invitation for me to tell him what he needs to know.

It is not an invitation for me to mother him or his family or tell them what to do. The Amish reject most science centuries ago, they depend on one another and their religious ideas to guide them.

For them, the key to a safe life is living a good and honest life,  and loving life, family, and God.

God will make up his own mind about their fate and safety and health. It doesn’t really matter what he does, it matters who he is.

Moise has never said a critical thing about Covid-19 vaccination politics – he knows I am vaccinated –  he had no idea how loud to-the-point-of-violent people who oppose vaccinations or any government role in health care.

He isn’t looking for dialogue or cable news discussion.

He just wants some facts. He was to know generally about what is happening in the outside world, especially if it might affect him or his family.

Otherwise, he doesn’t want to know too much about the lives of the “English. It’s a surface kind of awareness, it doesn’t sink into the heart or bones. The Amish trust in God is absolute and unshakeable.

Barbara heard this  “Delta variant” talk and came over and so did two of the girls, who had been ironing. Moise wanted to know what I knew about it and what I thought about it.

I remember reading how devastated Barbara was when two of her daughters were briefly kidnapped from their former home, and it reminds me how carefully she guards her emotions.

I know her as a warm and loving mother and wife, and a kind friend to me, but there are depths to her that I doubt I will ever see. Moise has spoken with me more intensely about the kidnappings, but only once. It was an awful experience for them, and as I get to know them, the wounds sometimes reveal themselves.

Several of the Millers neighbors have been e-mailing me for a couple of weeks about it, they wanted me to talk to Moise and urge that the family get vaccinated. There is a feeling among some people that I can change Moise’s mind about things, and that is not so. Only God can do that.

I was prepared for this “Delta” talk.

I saved a Mayo Clinic description of the Delta Variant out loud, I saw everyone in the room had stopped work – this rarely happens – so they could heart it. I told Moise about the messages, and I told them that I tell these people that I am not the family’s mother or father, or priest.

I do not tell them what to do or how to live.

I did say that this time, children were at greater risk and were getting sick, and in some cases dying. States and local governments were asking people to wear masks, and soon, I thought, so would businesses and companies.

Moise said he has no problems wearing masks. He said the Amish go to doctors and they go to hospitals. “But,” he said, “I don’t have much trust in  vaccines.”

An understatement, I would guess.

I know the Amish are free to get vaccinated if they wish, in general, the Amish church is very wary about vaccines. “I look at it this way,” said Moise, “I will die when my time comes.”

What he didn’t say was that he will die when God is ready for him to die. The Amish believe that if they are humble and good, then God will take care of them. If they are neither humble nor good, then God will punish them, they will not be invited to heaven.

In the English world religions, there are few consequences for sin, arrogance, cruelty, or dishonestly. In the Amish world, the consequences are severe and eternal. Being good is not just a sermon, but a way of life, a command to be obeyed.

Perhaps that is the only way to get people to do it.

The family has no plans to get vaccinated. They will wear masks as ordered. They appreciated my telling them about it.  They didn’t ask any questions.

They also asked about the weather in the Northwest and Southwest, the floods, and fires, and awful heat.

We all agreed we are lucky to live where we live. Moise drank some water and stood up, “I’ve got a new toy,” he said “a dirt scraper, and I’m building a road from the barn to the house.

We walked over to the barn.  Moise got behind the two big draft horses and pulled the scraper along the ground. I could see it was hard holding the scraper in place as it pushed dirt over rocks and some roots to get the road flattened along the barn.

He wants trucks and wagons to get in there.

Moise was proud of his big red scraper, a plow-like thing with a flat base. Even the big horses were straining as they pushed the dirt up up to the big carriage horses and widened and flattened the path to the barn.

I could see his back, which was so painful a few weeks ago that he couldn’t stand up, is better. His rotator cuff pain had also eased. He said he went to see a chiropractor, which he and Barbara do often.

“My two passions are dirt and water,” he said, coming over to take a breath and talked me, he was beaming over the bright red dirt scraper.

I love seeing how much he loves this work, shoveling, and shoveling, pushing, and digging. It was all coming together.

When Moise is working and I am there, we fall into a pattern together, a kind of rhythm. He works for 15 minutes, and I stand by and watch. Then he comes over to me and just talks, resting a bit and talking to me about his plans for five or ten minutes.

There is a gentleness to his conversations with me, a thoughtfulness. I always feel appreciated, and I think he does also. We are just easy with each other, is about the only way I know to describe it. He won’t brag, but he is pleased to have his work seen.

He wants me to see what he has done. I want to see it.

I  missed him last week, it wasn’t a big deal, but I felt it. I don’t miss too many people.

Moise always wants to know what’s going on with me, and I with him, but we don’t push too deeply.  Work is never far from his consciousness, it is a holy thing for him.

He’s beginning to get ready to work on his new home, concrete and window frames have already arrived. The winter, he said, will be mostly taken up on repairs done in the new workshop he’s building and on finishing the work on his new home, which he hopes is finished by the end of November.

I’ll be betting on October, although there is no one there to bet with.

As I said goodbye and left, four of the younger children came rushing over to me to “high-five” me, something they love to do now, along with thumb wrestling. My thumb is sore, I lost twice today.

“See you, Johnnie,” he said, shouting out to me to visit him next week working on his daughter’s house. “Good luck Wednesday.”