Story Circle Network

Austin Chapter
Reader's Guide

May 2007

Plain and Simple
Sue Bender

Modern-day career woman and homemaker Bender tells of the compulsion—for Amish dolls and quilts that seemed to evoke a simpler life—that took her from New York State to Iowa and Ohio, where she lived with sympathetic Amish families and began the journey of self-discovery here described.

(Some of these questions were revised from the Internet Chapter reading e-circle's discussion of this book in January, 2007...)

  1. "Is there another way to lead a good life?" (p. xii) Bender stepped totally outside her known lifestyle when living with the Amish and cast off much of what had shaped her and what was familiar. In what ways have you stepped off your path? What spoke to you about the lifestyle of the Amish and made you think, "I want that value in my life?"

  2. "Perhaps each of us has a starved place, and each of us knows deep down what we need to fill that place." (p. xii) What has been your "starved place"? What have you done to fill it? What journeys did you go on to do so?

  3. "How to fuse the disparate choices into one life? How to design a life with all the varied pieces—arrange and rearrange—and in the process create a feasible pattern to live by? I didn't have the answers for them, or for myself, but I thought the search for the answers was important." (p. 16-17) How have you designed a life of varied pieces into one whole cloth?

  4. "I had an obsession with the Amish. Plain and simple...I, who worked hard at being special, fell in love with a people who valued being ordinary." (p. xi) "Maybe one of these days I'll be able to give myself a gold star for being ordinary, and maybe one of these days I'll give myself a gold star for being extraordinary—for persisting. And maybe one day I won't need to have a star at all." (p. 131) Bender finds that giving up her need to have personal recognition and depending upon others was not a weakness, but was rather a source of strength. Has this been true for you? Why or why not? She states that "Deeper bonds meant creating obligations." (p. 120) What does that mean to you?

  5. For Sarah, an Amish woman, changing her apron from white to black was a rite of passage. (p. 106) Bender wondered, "When did I become an adult?" At what point in your life did you become a "grown-up?" What was the defining moment for this in your life?

  6. "What I had been looking for was the calm and focus I felt when I was with the Amish doing the dishes. It was a state of mind I was after...My addiction to activity had diverted me from looking inside...My task is to simplify and then go deeper, making a commitment to what remains...To care and polish what remains till it glows and comes alive from loving care." (p. 145) Does this resonate with you? How? Where have you searched to find this?
Plain and Simple is part one of a trilogy of books. Everyday Sacred is book two; Stretching Lessons is book three. Read more about Sue on her publisher's (Harper Collins) website.

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