P U BL ISHE R
WHO WE ARE... From 2007 to 2012 we, the Millers, adopted our first three children, a preschooler on the autism spectrum and two babies with Down syndrome. We published our first issue of Plain Values in 2012 to highlight biblical ministries, share the beauty of adoption, and to cultivate anchored community. In 2018 we welcomed our fourth child in a surprise adoption, this time a baby with Mosaic Down syndrome. We homeschool our family and enjoy working together to grow and raise food on our twelve acre homestead.
Marlin Miller SA L E S A DV ISO R
Matt Yoder SA L E S A DV ISO R
Aaron Stutzman SA L E S A DV ISO R
Chris Conant Q UA L IT Y A SSU RA N C E / BO O K K EEP I NG
WHAT WE BELIEVE... Our values are plain values, steeped in the rich traditions of yesterday. We enjoy the simple things in life. Gathering eggs from the coop, getting our hands in the dirt to grow food, and cooking meals from scratch. Sometimes we sit around a fire and share life. We strive to walk humbly to strengthen authentic relationships with our families and neighbors. And, yes, we have taken a fresh pie to a front porch and surprised a friend… we didn’t even text them before! We just stopped by, walked up the steps, and knocked on the door! Just the way our grandparents used to do on a Sunday evening. They called it living in community. We seek to serve our neighbors. Plain Values began with a prayer, hoping to play a small role in connecting a child with Down syndrome to his or her forever family. We have checked that box more than twenty times—and counting—and we will not stop until the orphanages are empty! We will rest in Heaven!
Sabrina Schlabach P RO DU C T IO N M A N AG E R
Isaac Hershberger M U LT I- M E DIA P RO DU C T IO N
Seth Yoder O F F IC E M A N AG E R /C U STO M ER S ERVI C E
Jan Schlabach JU N E A D C LO SE
May 9, 2023 WR IT E R – CO N F E SSIO N S O F A ST EWAR D
Joel Salatin
HOW YOU CAN HELP...
WR IT E R – RO OTS + WIN GS
Join us as we pursue a more authentic life. By subscribing to Plain Values, a portion of each subscription goes directly to Room to Bloom, our non-profit that supports adoption and children with special needs around the world.
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Jerry D. Miller & Ivan Keim
JOIN US FOR PORCH TIME! Every third Friday from 1:00pm – 4:00pm
Stop by, enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, sit on the porch, and visit for a while. We'd love to get to know you! We're located in the heart of Winesburg, Ohio—just down the street from the church.
WR IT E R – HO M E ST E A D L IV IN G
Melissa K. Norris WR IT E RS – T HE HE A L IN G L A N D
Shawn & Beth Dougherty WR IT E R – T HE WIDOWS PAT H
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Sabrina Schlabach CO N T R IBU T IN G P HOTO G RA PH ERS Millpond Photography Landon Troyer Photography Ashley Rivers Photography
Plain Values is published monthly by Plain Target Marketing, LLC. Please contact us with any questions. A DDR E SS
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www.plainvalues.com PLAIN VALUES
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contents
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May 2023 // Issue 119 THE REDEMPTION ISSUE
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CONFESSIONS OF A STEWARD Land Redemption: Idol or Idyllic?
ROOTS + WINGS Cancel Culture
COLUMN BY: JOEL SALATIN
COLUMN BY: RORY FEEK
Romans chapter 1 clearly warns against worshiping creation, but is viewing our land as something more than dirt and rocks idolatry? I suggest not.
"What if, instead of being a 'cancel culture,' we were a 'redemption culture,' where we are quick to forgive and believe in the hope of tomorrow."
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HOMESTEAD LIVING Clover the Cow
THE HEALING LAND Teresa's Pasture
COLUMN BY: MELISSA K. NORRIS
COLUMN BY: SHAWN & BETH DOUGHERTY
When Clover died, Melissa wasn’t sure why God had brought her into their lives only to have her exit what felt so prematurely. But, believe it or not, God redeemed this story for good.
Teresa was young, only thirty-eight, when we learned that she was ill. The diagnosis was not hopeful, but there was little fuss.
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ON THE COVER Shawn and Beth Dougherty, heralds of the One Cow Revolution. photo © Landon Troyer Photography
Room to Bloom Report One Minute with Marlin Pure Gift of God
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THE GRANDFATHER EFFECT Part Three – Cracks
THE ROUNDTABLE Amish Insights on: Forgiveness
WORDS BY: BRIAN DAHLEN
COLUMN BY: JERRY D. MILLER & IVAN KEIM
This month, we continue our multi-part series with Brian Dahlen as he examines some of the events leading up to the destruction of his family's relationship with his Grandpa Tom.
Forgiveness is an instrumental part in restoring our relationships. This month, Ivan and Jerry answer the question: "How do you practice forgiveness in your community?"
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THE WIDOWS PATH Everyone Needs Some Mothering
HONEST CONVERSATIONS WITH WENDY Untethered
COLUMN BY: FERREE HARDY
COLUMN BY: WENDY CUNNINGHAM
Man or woman, married or not, we can all mother someone; that means we’re supporting, encouraging, and helping them know that they matter... that they’ve not been forgotten.
"I don’t want my desires to get in the way of what God might want to do through my obedience. I trust that He would only have me give something up to make space for something better."
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One Minute with Marlin
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RECENTLY, I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to attend an event featuring a visual artist I have come to appreciate
realized you cannot have redemption without brokenness and suffering. Jesus himself chose to walk that road,
very much. Makoto Fujimura shared of kintsugi, a 15thcentury practice of mending broken tea bowls with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold. He held in his hands a kintsugi bowl, one more beautiful, more valuable, precisely because of the imperfections. The event was held the week before Easter and Mako highlighted Jesus’ wounds still with Him today. He will return victoriously, but with scars from His time with us a few thousand years ago. As my friends and I drove home that evening, we discussed our many thoughts and feelings, and one caught me square. Gabe said he is struck by the fact that life, beauty, and redemption are interspersed with suffering— and quickly added his wish of it not having to be that way. I have sat in those ashes since that conversation and
bringing redemption out of suffering, and we simply get to follow those footsteps inside our daily experience. The Lord takes the broken fragments of our lives and rebuilds them into exquisite examples of His sovereignty. It never ceases to amaze me. As always, may you find joy in the simple things. //
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MARLIN MILLER publisher, always looking for more friends
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PLAIN VALUES MAY 2023
Confessions of a Steward WORDS BY:
JOEL SALATIN
Land Redemption Idol or Idyllic? REDEMPTION PERMEATES THE BIBLE as the ultimate healing of the human problem. But like many theological concepts, God offers practical object lessons to physicalize spiritually heady principles. Obviously, the kinsman redeemer concept epitomized by the Boaz-Ruth relationship is one stellar example. Boaz, an older bachelor, redeems Ruth’s legacy and brings this young widow directly into the lineage of David and the Messiah. How cool is that? At its core, redemption is about restoration. In the human experience, it’s restoring all that was lost from Eden’s eternal state. As such, the Biblical redemption story is intricately woven with Creation, Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem, and new earth. To dismiss the physical earth as a visible, visceral object lesson of spiritual restoration cheapens the human privilege and responsibility toward the land.
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Too often, the Christian community dismisses visceral land responsibility with the notion that “we’re just pilgrims passing through” and “it’s all going to burn up someday anyway.” Of course, Romans chapter 1 clearly warns against worshiping creation, but is viewing our land as something more than dirt and rocks idolatry? I suggest not. If one physical thing responds dramatically to stewardship, it’s the soil and the land. It can be abused to barrenness, or it can be redeemed into abundance. The story of human civilization and agriculture specifically follows a pattern of abuse, not redemption. Perhaps no place on earth demonstrates this as dramatically as the land of Israel. I recently spent a week there visiting farmers and encouraging them. The ministry HaYovel (Jubilee) hosted and
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photo by Millpond Photography
"Is viewing our land as something more than dirt and rocks idolatry? I suggest not."
coordinated the visit, and I spent the entire time in Judea and Samaria, where 80 percent of the Bible took place. The anti-Jewish world calls this area the West Bank, which is a way to refuse to acknowledge it’s a part of Israel and is really owned by Jordan. The contrast between that land today and what it was during Biblical times is quite profound. It’s been fought over for thousands of years. When you realize that during King David’s time, the land had bears and lions and enough trees to lose armies and hang Absalom, could any place on earth be more indicative of abuse and exploitation? Mile after mile has not a tree on it. Several feet of topsoil has eroded, leaving nothing but a jumble of rocks. Walking is extremely difficult due to the wheelbarrow-sized rocks and truck-sized boulders. As I stood with farmers looking out on their acreages, I found myself completely intimidated by the barrenness. And yet these farmers, coming back into these lands to fulfill the Genesis 12 Abrahamic covenant, see themselves as restoring God’s control and fulfilling prophecies about blooming deserts and new abundance. Avri Ron, an early farmer once the lands were restored to Israeli control after the 1967 Six Days’ War, told me that, “A man who does not believe in miracles is not realistic.” He recited numerous miracles he’s witnessed restoring his own farm. “The soil is to the farmer like a bride to a groom,” he said, pointing out that the root etymology of “man” and “land” are the same. “Every mountain is my wife and my life. When you come to the land like you come to your wife, it will respond to you. You love her; she loves you back.” Describing the 2,000-year Jewish vacancy in the land after Rome conquered Jerusalem in 70 A.D., Avri said: “When the man goes away, his wife
wears widow clothes. Now the man has come back, and the land is wearing her marriage clothes. Even when you’re 99 you still plant trees because 1,000 years from now couples will come and eat and kiss under the tree you planted.” Yes, as Avri spoke, big tears rolled down my cheeks. If this kind of language doesn’t light the fire of your heart, your wood is wet. In Western society, we don’t talk like this. Is this idolatry? No, it’s a deep love for what God made. He is building soil and bringing back production where rocks prevail. Let’s push the envelope a bit further and listen to some Native American talk. How about Sitting Bull, Sioux chief in 1875: “Yet hear me, friends! We have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our forefathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possession is a disease in them... They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season,
and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is sacrilege.” These are not the words of a Christian (to our knowledge), but they certainly speak of a different ethic than what was exhibited by protestant Americans. William Apes, a Pequot Indian, became a Christian at age 15 and eventually became a Methodist minister and eulogized controversial King Philip in 1836: “How inhuman it was in those wretches to come into a country where nature shone in beauty, spreading her wings over the vast continent, sheltering beneath her shades those natural sons of an Almighty Being, that shone in grandeur and lustre like stars of the first magnitude in the heavenly world; whose virtues far surpassed their more enlightened foes, notwithstanding their pretended zeal for religion and virtue. How they could go to work to enslave a free people, and call it religion, is beyond the power of my imagination, and outstrips the revelation of God’s word. Oh, thou pretended hypocritical Christian, whoever thou art, to say it was the design of God, that we should murder and slay one another because we have the power.” PLAIN VALUES
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