Chapters: How it began - The ninepatch and the faceless dolls - The journey begins - Testing the dream - Coming home - Going back - Harvest time - Lessons - The emerging ninepatch.
Summary
"Plain and Simple vividly recounts sojourns with two Amish families, visits during which Bender enters a world without television, telephone, electric light, or refrigerators; a world where clutter and hurry are replaced with inner quiet and calm ritual; a world where a sunny kitchen 'glows' and 'no distinction was made between the sacred and the everyday.' In nine interrelated chapters--as simple and elegant as a classic nine-patch Amish quilt--Bender shares the quiet power she found reflected in lives of joyful simplicity, humanity, and clarity. The fast-paced, opinionated, often frazzled Bender returns home and reworks her 'crazy-quilt' life, integrating the soul-soothing qualities she has observed in the Amish, and celebrating the patterns in the Amish, and celebrating the patterns formed by the distinctive 'patches' of her own life." [from the publisher]
