Until last July Darrel Buschkoetter had never flown in an airplane nor had he ever seen an ocean. He has spent his whole life, some forty years, on a farm in Nebraska where he and his wife are raising their three daughters.

Darrel’s wife Juanita was the main focus of a six-and-one-half hour documentary shown nationwide on public television’s “Frontline” last September. Written, produced, and directed by David Sutherland of Newton, “The Farmer’s Wife” proved engrossing at least to this viewer. For that reason I was delighted to meet Juanita and Darrel this week when they came to the Boston area for further showings of the television film.

“The Farmer’s Wife” details the struggles that this couple have had to make to preserve their way of life. Finances have been difficult for them as they work a 1,100-acre farm and attempt to hold their marriage together in the face of many threats.

Darrel Buschkoetter struck me as a person of quiet charm with a strong sense of himself. At the same time, he showed himself open to the new experiences which his tour of the East Coast is bringing to him and his family.

Of the three children I met only Whitney, the youngest. When I asked this seven-year-old what she liked best about the trip she answered “The Children’s Museum.” The oldest daughter, Audrey reads constantly, her father reports, and dreams about coming to college at Harvard.

When I asked Darrel about spirituality he replied with great conviction, making clear that it holds a high place in his life. Without prayer and religious devotion, he is sure that Juanita and he could never have surmounted their crisis and stayed together. In fact he wonders aloud how couples without the support of a strong spiritual life ever manage to stay married.

He and his family take part in Mass at their Catholic parish each Sunday. The three girls go to parochial school and religious practice is part of their daily life, with grace before meals a prominent feature of it.

When Darrel thinks about God he knows himself to be in contact with someone who is entirely good and completely well disposed toward him. To Darrel God is “really kind, a really good leader if you just follow in the right direction.”

He regards God as a father but he also finds that God is “sometimes more of a mother.” Darrel says that he could always talk more easily to his mother than his father, so that supports his personal theology.

Juanita, for her part, also prays regularly. She spoke beautifully about the experience. It added to the value of what she said that Juanita disavowed any special virtue as a religious person. “Sometimes I don’t know that I am a good Catholic,” she says.

She adds disarmingly: “I’ve heard that faith is what you have when you have nothing else left to turn to.”

I came away from this enjoyable and refreshing encounter with the Buschkoetter family rejoicing that their family and mine are not so different spiritually. We share the same basic faith, they in a rural setting, we among highly urbanized surroundings.

The Buschkoetters’ current experience of urban America has changed their ideas about their own country. Until recently they expected to find in big cities much evidence of crime and other social ills. But instead they have seen people in Washington, New York, and Boston, among other places, who have proven to share some of their own values.

Despite the benefits that have come to them as a result of  the film, they realize that life on the farm will probably continue to pose difficulties. Darrel told me that prices are currently the lowest they have been in forty years and that is putting pressure on farmers. They may have to face other crises such as those revealed in the film.

But they show a quiet confidence in God and in one another that  gives ground for hope. The widespread public attention they have received will fade with time but the benefits of their contact with the rest of America will presumably make a difference for them in the future.

I recommend seeing “The Farmer’s Wife” if it is shown again. It is a beautiful film, both in the views it offers of the Nebraskan rural landscape and also of one family’s life with all of its ups and downs.

Richard Griffin