Another Life Is Possible

Two years ago I began work on a book to mark the Bruderhof ’s hundredth anniversary this year. I’d long been interested in the idea of vocation – why and how does a person become convinced of a lifelong calling, with the self-sacrifice and self-surrender that this requires? For the Bruderhof centenary, then, my editors and I decided not to focus on the community’s century of history, but rather to tell the vocation stories of the men and women who had joined it. We ambitiously agreed on one hundred stories for one hundred years. I immediately began interviewing my fellow Bruderhof members, asking them to tell why they had chosen this way of life in full Christian community and getting them to share insights gleaned along the way. At the same time I accompanied the British photojournalist Danny Burrows, traveling to ten communities on three continents to capture what our life together looks like. The following four stories are excerpted from the resulting book of one hundred stories and Danny’s stunning photographs, titled Another Life Is Possible: Insights from 100 Years of Life Together .