No Ordinary Life (Among the Hutterites)

 Holly stood on the banks of the shallow river, clutching her book bag in one hand and her suitcase in the other. Even in the pitch black she could see that the water of the river had dried up enough so that she could walk over without getting the bottom of her jeans wet. She wished she could trade the colony for the world just as easily as she had traded her ankle length dress for the jeans that her friend Grace had given her, but as much as her heart longed to be a part of a world that she had only caught glimpses of, it was still stuck in the shelter of her Hutterite life, clinging to the fact that if she stayed her heart would find contentment eventually. But Holly knew that of she didn't at least try the regret would haunt her for the rest of her life, she knew that she could always come back home if her heart longed too.  Holly also knew that if she stepped across the river, her entire life would change. Her heart had already found peace with that, but Holly's heart was ...

When one thinks about radical Christian movements their mind usually goes to the Amish, Mennonites or Mormons, the latter of which Hutterites have absolutely no connection with. And in thinking about marriages in Christian subcultures they oftentimes think of polygamy and arranged marriages, both of which Hutterites don't condone. In a Hutterite marriage there is one man and one woman, and both have to be willing to marry the other in order for the marriage to be viewed as good in the eyes of God, so it can't be a one sided deal, and it can't be arranged or pressured into. So in other words we do marry for love and for life, as divorce is strictly prohibited in the church. But in order to understand how it works we should go back to when a couple first meets shall we ... So as the story goes guy meets girl, girl falls for guy, guy falls for girl ... well that's basically how it goes. They get to know each other, through courting and phone calls, because most couples com...