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Transcript

Joy Marie Clarkson: Welcome to Another Life, a podcast of Plough magazine. This show explores the idea that another life is possible through conversations with guests about how to live more thoughtfully, hopefully, and faithfully. I’m your host, Joy Clarkson. Now you may be listening to this because you are a long-time reader and lover of Plough or because you used to listen to my podcast, Speaking with Joy, or have read some of my books or my sub stack. Or maybe you just clicked a link on the internet and here you are.

In whatever way you found another life, welcome. I’m delighted to have you here and listening. And I’m excited about the coming months and hopefully years of thinking together about another life. Today, I want to introduce you both to this podcast and to myself. I want to share the vision behind the title, Another Life and what you can expect in the episodes to come. But let’s begin with me. I’m Joy. I’m American, but I live and work in London and I’ve lived in the United Kingdom for nearly a decade now. I came here in my early twenties to study theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where I completed my doctorate and where I lived for many years on the sparkling coast of Scotland. And since I finished my doctorate, I primarily split my time between the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London, where I teach theology, and working as the books and culture editor at Plough Quarterly.

While I was in grad school, I hosted my own podcast called Speaking with Joy, where I explored religion, theology, culture, and ideas through chatting with many interesting guests along the way. As I mentioned, I’ve also written some books, the most recent of which is You Are a Tree, which is a book about the power of metaphor and the ways that we think and pray and live. I now live on the East side of London and I just moved here last year and so far I have loved it. But a story I like to tell about moving here is that last year I was at a wedding for a friend in Kensington and I told an older gentleman where I was planning on moving with my husband and he said to me, East London, that’s where the smoke from the chimneys blows. And I later learned that this comes from the old days when East London was home to the poor and the working classes.

But now that’s how I think of where I live. I live where the smoke from the chimneys blows. But East London has a rich history and a distinctive character, and I love it here. So when you listen to these episodes, you can imagine me sitting in my flat bundled up against the cold and probably having recently drunk either a shot of espresso or a cup of Yorkshire Gold tea. All of which is very true of me at this very moment. So, that is me, that’s Joy. Now let me try to share a little bit with you about what you can expect from this podcast and really what my hopes are for it. And to do that, I want to speak to you a little bit about its name, Another Life. Now, the name Another Life is borrowed from the tagline of Plough, which is the magazine that hosts this podcast and a magazine for which I am an editor. And in a few minutes, I’m going to share a conversation with you with the head editor of Plough, Peter Mommsen, about Plough and its history. But before I do that, I want to share with you what this idea, this idea of another life means to me and why I chose it as the title for this new podcast. We are living in troubling times. I think it’s fair to say that. We live in a time where there’s much to disturb our sense of hope and a good future, our sense of trust, both in our neighbors and in the institutions that are supposed to offer us security and guidance. The mood of the world around us is anxious and increasingly violent. And I think most of us find ourselves distracted, upset, and unsure of how to proceed. While different people can attribute these feelings to different causes, I think that feeling of discomfort is something that a lot of people share, that this sense that things are not quite right, that they’re not quite working. It’s been sort of strange to build a life, to spend my young adulthood in these circumstances. And I know that a lot of people share that feeling. And for me, in many ways, as the world has seemingly become more and more chaotic, I’ve sort of retreated from the more public aspects of the debates about what’s to be done and from the kind of daily call to denounce or advocate for things. So often for me, to chime in feels like, as Shakespeare puts it in his famous play, Macbeth, like just adding to the sound and fury signifying nothing. Sometimes for me, it feels like to enter the fray of responding to each day’s dread and horror felt like I was just supporting the status quo.

But I also have this feeling that something has to be done. I, and I think many other people, need to find ways to live well in the contingencies of our own time, and also to be able to find ways to speak about the world that we’re in, because it’s increasingly difficult to know how to speak, I think, in these times. So slowly, I am learning to find my own voice, and with this podcast, I want you to find yours as well.

And to me, this is where the idea of another life comes in. In a few minutes, you’ll learn that Plough was started over 100 years ago in Germany. And that was an interesting time to be in Germany, obviously. And that the Plough sought to respond to the most pressing issues of its own day. And I feel like what was often challenging in those times and is also challenging now can be a temptation to despair or just kind of inaction. The feeling that the tides are too strong and that there’s no use kind of resisting or articulating different ways of doing things. But when we look to the past, and when we look specifically to the past of Plough, we can see that many people have found ways to live up to the challenge of their own unprecedented times. That’s something that I feel has been said many times over the last ten years.

To live in better, more loving, more just, more courageous ways though, we have to begin with that conviction that another life is possible. We have to have in our minds that it’s possible to live in a different way or else we’ll never be able to begin living in that way. And to me, this belief that another life is possible has kind of two aspects to it, two important things. A development of our own interior and imaginative lives.

And the practice of new possibilities of ways of living. So we have to be able to imagine in our life, in our minds, that another life is possible. We have to be able to picture that. We have to be able to kind of run against the tide of our times by thinking creatively, thinking outside of the kind of boxes and rules that we’re given for what it looks like to live well. And then we have to kind of stretch the muscle of trying to live that in action with our families and our neighbors and our everyday habits. And those two things are what this podcast aims to do. I want together to learn to imagine that a life, another life is possible. And then I want to think about how we can live it. So here’s what that means practically for this podcast. Let’s take an example of loneliness. So let’s say that loneliness is a challenge that uniquely affects our own times for the podcast.

That may mean that sometimes I talk to a sociologist about friendship and social isolation and what’s making so many people feel isolated and alone. Or I may discuss this with a novelist or a musician or a religious leader who are exploring or practicing this or finding ways to address this kind of issue in their own work. But addressing loneliness may also look like talking about holiday traditions and what it looks like to be a welcoming neighbor and what recipes one might use to do that. These are the kinds of conversations I want to have in this podcast. I want this podcast to be a place that refreshes your capacity to imagine what kinds of lives we can live. And then that gives you the courage to go out and do it. Now, often these conversations will be inspired by what’s going on in the quarterly magazine.

And so that’s something to know about Plough as we publish four magazines a year in daily online and print. But many of the conversations will be inspired by what’s going on in the quarterly. So on that note, and this episode specifically, this won’t always be the case, but I want to give you a deeper introduction to this magazine that sponsors the podcast and its vision and how I got involved. So now I’m excited to share two conversations with you.

One is an interview with Peter Mommsen, who is the editor-in-chief of Plough, and he’ll give us a little backstory into why the Plough was started, the community behind it, and what its vision was back then and today, and how we think about the magazine. And then Maureen and Jason Swinger, through whose friendship I came to be an editor and podcaster now for Plough. So I’m excited to dive in. Thank you for joining me. Let’s think about how another life is possible.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Hi, Peter. It’s great to have you on the show today. I am talking to you from Drizzly, London. It’s very kind of typically autumnal and gray today. But where are you speaking to us from?

Peter Mommsen: Well it’s great to be with you Joy. I’m speaking to you from the Hudson Valley in New York and more specifically the Fox Hill Bruderhof. It’s just up the Hudson River from New York City and it’s the Christian community that I live in and it’s also where the main Plough magazine offices are.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Wonderful. Has it gotten autumnal yet where you are or is it still feeling leftover this summer?

Peter Mommsen: You know the leaves are just beginning to yellow, but it still kind of feels like the full richness of summer and we’ll hang on to that as long as we can.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Hmm, yes. I’ll talk about this later when I talk with Maureen and Jay, but I’ve gotten to visit Fox Hill a few times, but I’ve never visited in autumn. but I’ve always kind of wanted to see Hudson Valley and the full flower of changing leaves.

Peter Mommsen: There is something about this part of the world, and of course I’m not objective because I grew up here, that I think has kind of got the best of the four seasons. And we have these beautiful deciduous woods. The community’s located in the midst of fields. I’m watching our cow herd out my window as I’m speaking to you, so it’s kind of very pastoral, just very beautiful.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Absolutely. OK, well, I wanted to have you on today to kind of give an introduction to what Plough is and the history behind it, which is fun because it actually allows me to ask you a few questions I don’t actually know the answer to. So I’m excited about that today. But let’s just begin with the very obvious thing, which is tell people your role at Plough and what that means for the magazine on a daily basis.

Peter Mommsen: I’m the editor-in-chief of Plough. We publish a magazine, of course, the print quarterly, and that’s where a lot of my effort goes. We also publish daily online, and we have a book line. And then there’s all the things that in our modern media world go along with that, the emails, this podcast the different ways of reaching out to our readers or potential readers. And so a lot of that happens right here in our main office. It’s a team of about twelve right here. And then we have other editors, you of course, and many others kind of scattered around the world, which is, I think, a huge strength because that keeps our vision a little wider. But it is also good to have a kind of core team that sees each other every day. And so those are the people I work with every day and it’s a lot of fun. I’ve been doing it about thirteen years this year.

Joy Marie Clarkson: OK, so Plough has been around, if I’m not incorrect, in one form or another for almost a century, or is it over a century at this point?

Peter Mommsen: Yeah, actually, over a century, 1920 is the founding date for our project under a different name.

Joy Marie Clarkson: 1920, OK, So take us back to 1920. What precipitated the founding of the Plough and what was the original name? I don’t actually know.

Peter Mommsen: 1920 and it’s in Germany. our founding editor, Eberhard Arnold was a Protestant theologian, very active in revival movements before World War I. And he was a publisher for a bunch of different Berlin based magazines and publishing houses during the course of World War I he became more disturbed by what he believed to be Christianity’s, or the Christian church’s complicity in the war. And in fact, in the injustices of the pre-war society.

After he was released from military service in the German military because of his health – he had tuberculosis – he took up chaplaincy to veterans and was just horrified to see the men and women coming back from the front. Not only their physical wounds, but their spiritual wounds. And that drove him to read the Gospels again and particularly the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5–7. And he came to feel that there is something at the heart of Christianity that actually answers the most urgent issues in contemporary culture. Right after the war, of course, there was a range of revolutions starting in Russia and then most of the European countries, including Germany.

A huge amount of ferment, a huge amount of disillusionment, a lot of anti-Christian critique and anti-capitalist critique and stirrings of some very dark nationalist and racist forces, particularly in German society. And so he became convinced that what Christians need to do is get back to the heart of our faith. And there we would find answers to these urgent questions and a big motivating part of his work was that you cannot divorce the spiritual life of a Christian inwardness he called it from engagement in the issues of living in community with other human beings and specifically living in Christian community and then from responsibility for the wider society. And so that was sort of the impetus that started. It was actually within the stream of religious socialism, which was a movement that had grown after the war. Pacifist, internationalist, it included figures like Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, people he was in touch with and didn’t always agree with, but were sort of comrades. The first name of the magazine was Neuwerk, German for new work, with a tagline, “the Christian in democracy.”

And they published bi-weekly initially as a magazine and then did a line of books and that evolved mostly into books but he continued to do magazines until the Nazi takeover of the country in 1933.

Joy Marie Clarkson: So how did we get the name Plough?

Peter Mommsen: Right, and how did we land up with the British spelling of plough, right? Which is interesting. I told of its beginning in Germany, of course something happened in Germany in 1933, which is the advent of National Socialism and the community and publishing house were raided by the SS within weeks of Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and came under increasing pressure in the subsequent years. Edward Arnold died in 1935 while trying to save his community.

And it became clear by 1936 that they would not be allowed to continue to exist in Germany. By that time, they’d already branched out to Liechtenstein and had bought a property in England in the Cotswolds and so they actually disassembled their printing press – at that point, we still printed our own things – and smuggled it out of Germany, got it into England so that when the Gestapo finally showed up in 1937 and forcibly dissolved the community and the publishing house, that printing press was already there in the Cotswolds, ready to get going. And they began publishing the quarterly [magazine] in 1938 from there. Of course, then had to give it an English name and they went back to Plough’s original mission statements from 1917 to 1920. And these still guide us in our work. One piece of that mission statement was about the Plough. The Ploughing of repentance. Our main task is to work for spiritual revolution and that which leads to metanoia, the fundamental transformation of heart and mind. And that’s where the word plough came from and we’ve stuck with it.

Joy Marie Clarkson: So Plough as a name has been around since 1938. Are those original documents that outline the vision for the now Plough, are they still available or do we still have them?

Peter Mommsen: Yes, absolutely. And we posted excerpts from them on the Plough website. If you go to the “About Us” section or just search for “mission” in the search bar. The complete documents are available on the complete compendium of Eberhard Arnold, the founding editor’s work at eberhardarnold.com. You can find all of his writings, but the pieces of them that we constantly go back to and are actually partially painted on the wall outside our main offices and are on our website. And I think they’re worth reading. A sentence or two:

We must get down to the deepest roots of Christianity and demonstrate that they are crucial to solving the urgent problems in contemporary culture. With breath of vision and energetic daring, our publishing house must steer its course right into the torrent of contemporary thought. Its work in fields that are apparently religiously neutral will lead to new relationships and open new doors. We must break with the cloistered isolation of Christian publishing in which only explicitly Christian books are promoted exclusively to Christian circles.

So those are things we keep on trying to do.

Joy Marie Clarkson: earlier this year, you sent those around and kind invited all of the editors to read them and to refresh and I don’t know, energize us for how relevant a lot of that vision statement of over a hundred years ago is in our own time, and it means that there is still a field to Plough, so to speak.

Peter Mommsen: So that is the sort of root of our original DNA as a magazine. Then we just (a long way forward) the magazine kind of went into abeyance in the early aughts and a bunch of us kind of revived it in 2014 with Sam [Hine] and Maureen Swinger and others. And so this has been a new incarnation but with the same impetus and reason for being.

Joy Marie Clarkson: one of the things that I found interesting about Plough is Eberhard Arnold was also the founder of the Bruderhof, which is the Christian community where you live. But it also works very ecumenically and even in some ways beyond ecumenically with people of goodwill who want to answer the present questions of our time. Could you share a little bit about the Bruderhof, the Christian community where you live?

Peter Mommsen: Sure. So the Bruderhof was founded in same year as the publishing house and by the same group of people. Eberhard and his wife, Emmy, her sister, Else, who was the first business director of what’s now Plough. And it’s a community in the Anabaptist tradition. So believing in the importance of voluntary decision for the life of Christ in a committed way of communal following of Christ and in economic sharing. we share all our goods in common and those who become members of the community take a lifelong vow of membership quite in the spirit of traditional monastic vows, but we have families. So that’s one distinction from traditional monasticism. Just on the ground, Fox Hill, for one example, is one of around twenty-five communities around the world: Europe, Australia, South America, North America, Asia. [Fox Hill is] around 300 people. We have a school. We have a few businesses that we run to earn our living. We have a farm, fairly self-sustaining. We do kind of put a big value on a link to nature and the land and hard work and all of that. And we have a lot of visitors and people coming through. And a big piece of our work too is networking with other Christians and with other organizations of goodwill.

One thing that living in community allows you to do, trying to live a life of simplicity, is that it frees up resources to help others. And that’s really important, both just directly in our neighborhood, but then around the world. Plough is one piece of that because that is one mission of the community.

That sort of ecumenical spirit runs right back to the beginning. He was pretty uninterested; Eberhard Arnold and the early editors were pretty uninterested in either denominational divides or for that matter divides between Christians and non-Christians. They just felt it wasn’t that interesting and that we have to have belief in the power of the Spirit that gives rise to the gospel, that God is at work in current events and our job is to pay attention to that.

Joy Marie Clarkson: So something we talk a lot about when we are having conversations about what to have in each issue is we kind of, we will say what makes it Plough. And I think that a big part of what would make something Plough or not Plough is this idea of “another life is possible.” And there’s the sense that we don’t just want pieces to be about think pieces or adding to the noise of the world, but that we want it to be centered around this idea that we’re trying to respond to the pressing issues of our day, not just in thought, but in action. As you said, the inwardness kind of being lived out. And I think that part of what makes Plough’s kind of ethos unique is that at its core, it is published out of Fox Hill in New York, rooted in a particular community. So that it’s not something that’s just abstract, but it’s kind of a part of the story that each one of us is trying to tell with our lives.

Would you say that captures something of the unique ethos that’s Plough?

Peter Mommsen: Yes, it absolutely does. that idea that another life is possible, I mean, that is a bit of a secular way of summarizing what I believe the gospel is about, that there is a way of being, living as a human being as God originally intended it, that Jesus shows us and that this is something that we actually do that is an integrated life where our job, our money, our passions, our way of being, and just our way of being with other people is pervaded by this other way, right? The early Christians often referred to the way of life, right? And that is a thing we can actually do. And that is really exciting it doesn’t require a lot except starting. And that kind of hope is one thing that we really try to express in the magazine – that I can do this, you can do this, we can do this. This way of life is there beckoning us.

Joy Marie Clarkson: I love that. So in this podcast, something I’m going to ask all of the guests is to think of one thing you do in your life, a practice or habits, or even we could expand a little bit to a work of art or work of music that helps you remember and live that idea that another life is possible. So you will be our maiden voyage in thinking of what is one thing that you do in your life that reminds you that this other life is possible and helps you answer that call.

Peter Mommsen: That is an interesting question and I was trying to think of something really interesting and exciting to tell you Joy, but I have something very boring, but it is going to tie into this idea of tying together inwardness and action, right? And so one major challenge, I think for most of us living in 2025 is that our minds are so easily hijacked by our phones, but also just by the business of life, right? I have three children, one in college, two in high school. You’re driving them to games. You’re figuring out their lives. You have your work. You have relationships that you need to tend to. There’s also, for me for instance, a community of 300 people to be an active participant in. And it’s very easy just to be hijacked by doing [that] or hijacked by whatever online discourse is going on. And since you work in media, you know, I have to pay attention to that. So for me, here’s my practice. It’s important to be quiet at the beginning of the day and my form of that is not some ascetic spiritual discipline, but it is not looking at my phone. First thing – wake up and taking my dog out into the woods and just being quiet and taking time to pray and not even to think about what I’m gonna do that day, but to know that there’s this, as Jesus tells us, without me you can do nothing and that really nothing I do this day is gonna really depend on me or my brilliant ideas, but on that, keeping that inner radio tuned to the right station. And so that’s one thing I’ve found really helpful. And when I don’t do it, I miss it and realize I might be getting off track in life.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Hmm. I try to have a similar practice and over the summer we just moved to London and we’ve had kind of a long period of job instability and knowing where we’re going to live. And so we’re finally settled in this place and I don’t have a garden with soil in it, but I have a little terrace where I finally got to plant things. I’ve wanted to have a garden for a long time. And so my version of that is I brew my cup of coffee and I go look at all my plants and I see how they’re doing.

And at the moment that involves a courgette as we call it in the UK or a zucchini that I accidentally let grow too long. And so now it has become a marrow. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but now it’s kind of exciting because it’s gotten so large that I’m kind of like, how large will it get before it grows? but yeah, I think, I think that is such an essential practice. To be quiet, I suppose, to me the verse that comes to mind is to be still and know that God is God before you do anything else. Also, is that dog the dog I met a few years ago, the little scrappy red one?

Peter Mommsen: Yeah, well this is his successor, breed, it’s a French Brittany bird dog called Ajax.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Ajax, what was Ajax’s progenitor or, that’s right. So is Hector, has Hector died?

Peter Mommsen: He was called Hector. And he was also a little fun. They’re both, they’re very high energy dogs. They love to run. They never have enough exercise. He’ll run for eight hours and not be tired. And I love that about him. You know, just bouncy. Not the kind of dog that lies and is a rug.

Joy Marie Clarkson: I love that too. Yes, it’s wonderful, which is a great compliment and maybe a fitting metaphor for the inwardness and the action. So as you’re enjoying inwardness, he is exuding the action running around the woods.

Peter Mommsen: he’s chasing deer and finding turkey and all kinds of fun things.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Excellent. Well, Peter, I’m absolutely sure that you will join us again on the podcast, but thank you for coming and giving a bit of a peek into the history and life of the Plough.

Peter Mommsen: Thank you. It’s been great talking to you, Joy, and I’m looking forward to where this podcast goes.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Me too.

[Break]

Joy Marie Clarkson: Maureen and Jay, it made me so happy to see both of your faces against the familiar backdrop of the wood, in the Plough offices, is that right?

Maureen Swinger: That’s right. It’s our conference room.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Yeah, well, it’s very good to see you guys today. Before we get chatting, I think it’ll be easy for us to chat about many things, Let’s start off with just a little bit of an introduction to yourselves, where you live, your children, and how you keep yourself busy at Fox Hill.

Maureen Swinger: Great! Hi Joy. We always look forward to a conversation with you, even if it’s across the Atlantic. name is Maureen Swinger. I live at the Fox Hill Bruderhof in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley with my husband Jason and our three kids Marlys, Hudson, and Aviana. And I get to work as an editor at Plough Publishing House, mostly for our magazine, Plough Quarterly, which is inspiring and intriguing on a daily basis. So I consider myself very lucky.

Jason Swinger: Hi Joy, very nice to see you today. My name is Jason. I work here at the Fox Hill community in our business, Community Playthings. And I work on the design team, where we design new products for children – for daycare centers and schools: toys, furniture, play equipment for playgrounds and indoors. So that’s my work and I love it.

Joy Marie Clarkson: And you’re very good at it and it extends also, your skills extend also as we will talk about to beautiful playhouses and harps, but I won’t get ahead of myself. So, Maureen, what I was kind of dreaming for this first episode and trying to give a context for what we want the podcast to be and how it connects to Plough, I thought that I needed to have you to help me tell the story because you specifically, and then you and Jason were the first ones who kind of [welcomed me] into the Bruderhof and welcomed me and invited me to kind of do some work with Plough. So Maureen, I think it was 2018 when you first sent me an email. Do you remember what prompted you to send that email?

Maureen Swinger: I certainly do. I would have to give first credit to my good friend, Marianne Wright, who has also written for Plough. And she’s the editor of our title, The Gospel in George MacDonald. She had happened to stumble across one of your pieces online. I don’t remember which one, but she really liked what she saw. And she’d wondered if I’d ever heard of you. I hadn’t, but I always [appreciate] recommendations. We often swap favorite reads back and forth. She lives in Woodcrest community, half an hour away.

So I looked up your, I guess it was your pre-Substack website. I believe it’s offline now. At least I couldn’t retrace my footsteps, but I remember very clearly that I already loved the art you picked to accompany your essays. And the first one I read was about the necessity for whimsy in the workaday world. And the next one was something Tolkien-esque and it went on from there. Every word I read gave me a stronger sense of kindred spirit-ship, I guess after the first pass, I was convinced not only that you needed to write for Plough, but that we really needed you on the team. And that you and I would probably become great friends if we ever had the chance to meet.

Joy Marie Clarkson: And I think you were prescient on all those things because we did become good friends and I did end up writing. So I think it was maybe early 2019 that I wrote my first piece for Plough, which was on, I don’t know if you remember this, but it was on the blessed boredom. And it was about the importance of kind of allowing ourselves spaces and times where we are able to be bored so that we can pay closer attention to the world. I’m still quite proud of that piece. We wrote back and forth. I wrote one piece for Plough. And then I don’t really remember what prompted me to visit you in Fox Hill, but I remember that I was going to visit my brother in New York and, you know, I’d written this piece for Plough and we corresponded back and forth. So I traveled up on the train, I remember I’d never been to the Hudson Valley and I hopped on the train and I got off at, is it Beacon Hill? Is that where you get off the train stop?

Maureen Swinger: Yes it’s Beacon right across the river.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Beacon, yeah. And I waited and someone came and picked me up and they took me to Fox Hill and I got to spend just a really memorable and lovely day at Fox Hill and specifically with you and Jason. But you sent me this article that you had written, I think it was you who had written it, about the Tolkien-inspired playhouse in the woods.

Maureen Swinger: I think I was just, I was resonating with so much that you had written. And I thought, you know, just like a kid, like, Hey, we both like the color blue. We’re going to be friends kind of thing. I sent you the link to the story of our summer of our tree house. When our family worked on building the last homely house east of the sea, as we still like to refer to it, our kids had been inspired by their favorite Tolkien stories to build something up on the hillside, a place to play and chill. then Jason, as he does, plotted it all out in his head, all the architecture, and then went ahead and built it, right? Well, it just a really fun, fun project, kind of prefabbing it offsite and then, you know, building the platform and lifting it up and bolting it to these trees and then lifting all the wall panels up and assembling the whole thing. We got quite a few people to come help out. It was just a really fun time and now it just gets used by a lot of people. And so it’s a really nice destination for families to go and play for an afternoon.

The kindergarten group still goes up there for a whole afternoon and we’ll have a picnic up there. I can’t remember if on your first visit we sort of bumbled up the hillside together, but I know we’ve hung out there since for sure.

Joy Marie Clarkson: I couldn’t remember whether it was the first visit or maybe the next visit that we visited that, but it’s quite a vivid memory in my mind. It’s this beautiful playhouse. It’s like something, I don’t know, every child would love it. I would have adored it. It is both sturdy and beautiful and has kind of elvish script in the doors and it was beautiful. I know that the first time, I think this chronology is right in my memory. My memory is not very good. But that you were working on a different project with wood, let’s say, which is, I think it was, was it your daughter Marlys who wanted to play the harp?

Maureen Swinger: Yep, yeah, that’s right. She had fallen in love with the harp in fifth grade when a professional harpist came and played for our community and she was just – it was love at first sound. And even though we’d never had a harp here on the premises, she was really passionate for six months. She was just begging us. And we couldn’t figure out what to do because the cheapest of lever harps is what? $6,000. Yeah, five or six thousand. And we have pianos all over the place, so was trying to, I was kind of trying to convince her to play piano rather. She wouldn’t hear none of it. And then by chance we happened to go to a homeschooling conference on behalf of Plough and we could hear through the entire enormous conference center the sound of a harp coming from nine or ten aisles down. just filled this whole enormous very loud – gathering spot. So we followed the sound and met this wonderful Alexander Marini, a harp maker. He says there’s only forty harp makers left in America and he knows them all. He and his children were sitting there demonstrating the succession of absolutely stunning lever harps down to a small Davidic harp that David would have played for Saul, I suppose. And he reassured us that if Jason’s a carpenter, then he could follow the same blueprints that he, Mr. Marini, was working with and would most likely, if we were in touch with him and worked things out carefully, would come out the other end with a really beautiful functional harp.

Jason Swinger: Yeah, so I spent a lot of time talking to him and just figuring out which plants to get and what wood to use and the hardware to get and different materials. And we were in touch a lot by phone and email and ended up ordering the hardware kit and special kind of glue which keeps everything held together – the right kind of plywood for the soundboard and then we had the wood here, beautiful cherry up in our barn. So we planed that down and just followed everything to a T. The plans made sure the neck was reinforced properly.

And it worked out great. We haven’t replaced the strings yet. It’s been what, eight years? Seven, eight years? Seven years maybe. And it’s been beautiful. It holds its tune for a couple weeks, which is incredible. And it sounds absolutely gorgeous. So yeah, with a little luck … then he even said, he even said, you know, and he’s a professional harp maker, that some of his harps just don’t sound that great, but some do. He doesn’t know why, right? He follows the same template. He uses the same wood. Most of the time they’re just stunning and occasionally it just goes thunk. He, yeah, he couldn’t explain why. So we felt lucky that first round ours just really sings. And of course the project itself was such a family activity. Jay had the skills to put it all together, but the kids and especially Marlys were involved from the get-go with sanding and staining and tuning and it was so much fun. The kids definitely still remember it as a family effort. Yep, and Maureen painted the roses on the soundboard. 

Joy Marie Clarkson: How long did it take you to make the harp from that conference to when it was finished?

Maureen Swinger: It was about four months. So we did like a kind of a month of back and forth with him to make sure we got the right plans, the right materials. And then once we had everything, then it took us about three months to make it. you know, kind of puttering on the weekends or pretty much use our weekends to do the work.

took about around three months. It was ready by fall and then certainly in time to do all the Christmas carols which sound exquisite on a harp. I do remember Mr. Marini saying that I think there’s hundred and forty references in the Bible to the harp using the harp as an instrument of praise and he was so passionate about it that his family only used the harp for worship songs. He did not believe in secular music.

We have a little bit of a different position. We feel like it can definitely represent both genres, but it does do carols and hymns absolutely gorgeously. It just fills the whole house. And even when Marlys was pretty small, she was just learning “In the bleak mid-winter,” I think was her first one. And this is a towering harp. It’s called a Regency harp, the same sort of design as you would have seen in a drawing room in Jane Austen’s day, they haven’t changed that design very much. In fact, when we did tour Lyme Park in the Peak District later on, and a few years ago, actually we’ll be telling you more about that later, that was on our way to your wedding, there was one perfectly similar standing there as part of the natural furnishings of the room.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Now, so I thought something I would enjoy talking about is it seems to me like music and especially communal music is a fairly big part of life at the Bruderhof. Is that true?

Maureen Swinger: Yes, it’s definitely true. For sure, I think that would be a very true impression. In fact, visitors who attend our communal lunches are sometimes kind of startled by this chorus of four-part harmony that starts up with no warning and no books in sight as our way of saying grace. But definitely, right from the beginning of the Bruderhof movement, music has been a very central part, wouldn’t you say, Jay? Oh, yeah. I mean, every meal, every time we meet, you know – meetings on Sunday or during the week and the evenings we’re always singing a lot of songs. Sometimes our worship meetings are just getting together to sing and it may be hymns or songs of praise but it might also as well be songs about the natural world and the beauty of God’s creation. Sometimes humorous songs or songs that pertain celebrations or welcoming a new baby. I mean there’s dozens of songs for every occasion and some of that we can also credit to Jason’s grandmother Marlys Swinger who joined the community as a young wife in the ’50s and can you tell a little bit about her background because she was quite amazing.

Jason Swinger: Yeah, she was a music major and she got very into composing and arranging music and she wrote many songs that we still sing to this day. She put a lot of our founder, Eberhard’s poems to music and we still sing those at every wedding.

Maureen Swinger: And then she wrote a lot of kid’s songs, nature songs, funny songs, just all, whole manner of different music she put together that we’re still singing. It sort of celebrates the whole range of a shared life. And I should say that she teamed up with a fellow mother and teacher, Jane Tyson Clement, who poet. And I think they first discovered their teamwork when Jane scribbled down a poem to celebrate a friend’s wedding and ran downstairs to ask, more or less, if she would set it to music. And then the rest was history. I think they did hundreds of songs together, many songs together.

Joy Marie Clarkson: And there’s a … you have a song book, right? Does that have a lot of the songs that they wrote together in it?

Maureen Swinger: Yeah, we have many different songbooks for the different seasons. So yeah, most of the songbooks have some of their songs in them. For instance, our Christmas songbook is 300 some songs. So we really have to start not even the first day of Advent. We have a tradition that I absolutely love that we celebrate: the (two days ago), 100 days till Christmas. Actually our co-founder, Emmy Arnold, was born on Christmas Day and as a child she used to count down for 100 days till her birthday, and till Christmas Day and Christ’s birthday. So we kind of will frequently get together and have Christmas cookies and spiced cider and sing Christmas songs just as a reminder, a pre-Advent, Advent, that something good is coming, our expectations would start, and we can start singing all these absolutely gorgeous songs that we wouldn’t have time to fit in if it was just the week of the Christmas holidays.

Joy Marie Clarkson: I love that. That’s really prioritizing the amount of preparation for Christmas how many Christmas songs you can sing and kind of doing your liturgical calendar according to that. I have very fond memories the first time visited of, I think, for lunch, everyone singing. I remember being struck, as you were saying, Maureen, that it wasn’t just hymns. It was also kind of songs to enjoy and celebrate the natural world, which is the perfect thing to do where you’re in the beautiful Hudson Valley. And I also have very fond memories of coming up for the, sometimes there’s a writers’ retreat where there’s writers from, from Plough, but also from other publications and other podcasters and editors from all over the East coast, especially. And at the last one, Jay, wasn’t there, am I making this up? There was a jazz quartet. Did you play any jazz quartet? Did I make that up?

Jason Swinger: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, five – a quintet. Yeah, we were there playing that one evening, the first evening that everyone was here. Yeah, we get together, like we’re from three different communities. So it’s not like we get together a lot, but I would say like six to eight times a year we get together to play. And we just love it. We absolutely love it.

Joy Marie Clarkson: And you guys are amazing.

Maureen Swinger: So we all kind of practice individually and we sort of send around our song list of the ones we’d like to do and what key they’re in. then when we get together, it’s usually pretty easy to put it together because we’ve all done our individual work on it. It’s so much fun. And it’ll just come together for a wedding or an anniversary or a reception or for no other reason, right? Then they need to get together and play.

Joy Marie Clarkson: And the pleasure of you guys playing together is very kind of palpable. the music is both technically good, but also just energetic and fun. Yeah.

Jason Swinger: Yeah, absolutely – love it. Yeah, that was a bit of a … I guess I would call it a Covid project for me was learning piano. I started in 2020 learning keyboard I was really inspired mainly about jazz, but just about improvising, you know, whatever kind of music I could process.

Joy Marie Clarkson: What kind of [instrument] do you play?

Jason Swinger: That’s a good question. So yeah, I started playing clarinet in second grade. So that was kind of the one I was really inspired to play at a very early age. So I studied in that and you know, all the way through school. And then I kind of picked up a bunch of other instruments along the way. Guitar, a little bit of banjo, tuba because most of my family played brass instruments. I picked up tuba, saxophone, drums, bass and then well I didn’t really get into a lot of the string instruments although cello is still sort of on my bucket list I don’t think I’m quite done learning instruments because piano I just started five years ago so I think I’m still gonna try some more instruments out – I’ve tried most of the instruments out just to see which ones I didn’t really want.…

Joy Marie Clarkson: Maybe it’d be easier to ask you what you don’t play.

Jason Swinger: I didn’t want to play oboe. Sorry oboe players. Violin seemed pretty tedious. But I do want to play cello. I think that would be fun. And harp, we forgot to mention just because when Marlys learned, his fingers were itching. Yeah, harp I just kind of play pretty simple folk-type music.

Joy Marie Clarkson: I like that you mentioned oboe because part of the reason I wanted to have you on specifically is that again, when we were thinking through the podcast, I had these big dreams for what I wanted for music. so I said, do you think Jay would be willing to record something? And the reason I say it’s funny that you said oboe is that one of the songs we considered and that you did record something for New World Symphony, which of course opens with the very oboe solo. But I think we’re going to [end up with] “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.” Is that what the actual tune is called? The traditional tune?

Maureen Swinger: I think it’s “Scarborough Fair.” “Scarborough Fair,” and would you be able to tell us why (I loved your description when we were discussing this) as to why you were drawn so much to that tune as an expression of Plough and another life is possible and music in general.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Yeah, I would love to tell you that. Yeah, so I had this kind of, talked over different ideas and then I just had this of sudden download of I know exactly the song I want and exactly the reason that I want to have it. So, the idea, of course, behind this podcast is another life is possible.

So when I was thinking about that, it came to my mind that the piece of music I really wanted was “Scarborough Fair.” And the reason for that was partially because of the kind of history of how the song was used by one of my favorite musical artists or rather musical duos, Simon and Garfunkel. I love Simon and Garfunkel. They’re favorites of mine. My mom taught me to drive by we’d go on drives and she would put on either James Taylor or Simon and Garfunkel and we’d practice my driving. I know we’d practice my driving back on country roads and so the way that they used it in their song which I think is titled “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.” Is [that] they have the kind of traditional folk tune which is “Scarborough Fair” and that traditional folk tune and the kind of lyrics itself, describe someone kind of communicating a message to their, we shall say ex-lover or their ex, you know, whoever. And the idea behind it is that they’re giving them these impossible tasks that if they can fulfill the impossible tasks, then that person will be their true love they say things like, tell them to, knit me a shirt with no seam or tell me to find a sea with no shore, things like that. So it’s these kind of impossible tasks. And if they can accomplish the impossible task, then they can once again be united and be together. So that’s the kind of traditional folk tune. But the way that I think is so interesting that that Simon and Garfunkel used it is that they had that folk tune and then in counterpoint behind it, they had this kind of protest song about the Vietnam War. it was about this wastefulness of violence and the wastefulness of the loss of life in war. And it was released at the time when the kind of protests against the war were at their height. And to me, the message behind it is that in the world that we live in, the pursuit of peace, the resistance of war, is this kind of impossible task. Do you know what I mean? It is, it can feel like it’s impossible to mount up over the kind of impulse towards violence, the impulse towards getting ourselves into our little corners and finding enemies who we feel need to be crushed. It can feel like that is the impossible task that is set for us.

Maureen Swinger: I just love that you mentioned that. I remember as a child listening to that song over and over to parse out the words, the poetry behind the song I was familiar with, the old ballad. I was so struck by the lines that generals order their soldiers to kill and to fight for a cause they’ve long ago forgotten. that line, along with our own stance and my grandparents’ stance on courageous pacifism, had a lot to do with my own decision to live for peace.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Those are some of the most articulate words, because like you were saying, when you listen to the recording, it can be hard to piece out the kind of counterpoint behind it. But those ones, those words always stuck with me as well. And the by having that protest song behind the impossible task to me, it’s this kind of picture that living another life, living a different way, living for peace living for love and kindness and truthfulness and can feel like an impossible task. But it’s the impossible task that we must always live for. And in some way it is not impossible. It is possible so long as we continue to try to do it. So that’s my very long rambling monologue about why I wanted this specific piece. And the protest song is copyrighted, but “Scarborough Fair” is not. Now, Jay, It’s a difficult tune to play on harp, isn’t it?

Jason Swinger: I mean it’s not too bad. It’s, yeah I don’t have a pedal harp and it’s got some accidentals in it but I found that I could just, my harp is a lever harp so I can make those accidentals possible by flipping up the lever to sharpen the note and I actually discovered that on that song I can leave the lever up because I don’t hit the note at any other point during the song which is very helpful. So I thought it was going to be tricky, but when I actually tried it, I realized I was not hitting that note that needed to be made into an accidental. And so I can just leave that lever up and I think we’ll be good to go.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Well, the recording you sent me sounds great. And maybe that’s a good little metaphor for the task we think is impossible may not be impossible. so when you all hear the music know that it is also, I don’t actually know the answer to this question. Is it on the harp that you made for Marlys?

Jason Swinger: Yeah, for sure. Yep.

Joy Marie Clarkson: So when you all listen to the opening music for this podcast, think of my long elaborate reasoning for why I wanted the music, but also, and more importantly, remember that it is Jason playing it on the harp that he made himself so that he and Marlys could learn the harp together.

Now, I want to mention a few other memories before drawing our conversation to a close, But one of my most happy memories of our friendship together was that you both came to my wedding. when I was getting married.

We decided to get married in Scotland where my husband was living at the time. And I thought, it’d just be wonderful to have Maureen and Jason there. So I’m going to send an invitation. But I didn’t assume that you would come just because it’s a long way. But then to my delight, you guys came. And you made a little bit of a trip out of it, didn’t you?

Maureen Swinger: We certainly did. It’s still certainly a high point for me. From childhood on, I dreamed of coming to Scotland. So thank you again, Joy, for making that excuse for your wonderful wedding, which we’ll never forget. But I loved everything about the beauty of the landscape that I could see from at least photos – the gorgeous and often tragic ballads that in our household because we loved all manner of folk music and I would just given anything to get up in the wilds in the heather and we did manage to do that. We had a wonderful tea with you in St. Andrews two days before your wedding and met your brother Joel which was fantastic and connected: on Jay and Joel to talk music for a couple years probably without running out of subjects.

Yeah, and we have a couple communities in England and my brother lives at one of them so we were there for a week and it was really good to see everyone over there so yeah it was an amazing couple [of] weeks we were over there. And then his [Jason’s] brother Curt and his wife Margaret who are very dear friends of ours and also were boarding parents for our daughter Marlys the semester that she went to the academy in Kent. They drove us all the way up the East Coast.

Jason and Curt, just laughing and catching up. They hadn’t seen each other in years. All the way up. And Margaret, who’s a historian and a literature buff, sharing that joy with me and Marlys in the up past the Yorkshire Dales and celebrated James Harriot and through Scotland to St. Andrews and appreciated the history there of the ruins of the cathedral and the castle. You, I think, gave us tips, places to see. And then we even, on the day before your wedding, we went to Loch Lomond following the song. We went out on a boat, heard the song in our heads, sang the song on the water. And then we went just as far into the highlands as it’s possible to get in one day, which is not terribly far, but exquisitely beautiful. And then cut east to the Birks of Aberfeldy, through the woodlands with the birks on either side and found the life-size statue of Robert Burns sitting on a bench and honoring another poem. So we joined him there for a bit. So all in all, just the most incredibly memorable trip and then the high point being able to celebrate your marriage and witness your promises and the joy of your life beginning together.

Joy Marie Clarkson And we’re so thankful that you could come and be a part of a small part of that. It just meant so much to both of us that you came and I’m still very sentimental about looking through the pictures we have from the wedding and getting to see that you all were there. And I often remember you all and remember the Bruderhof in general in our daily life because you brought with you some gifts from various people, including I think it was Clare Stober made the mugs, right?

Maureen Swinger: Yes, yes she did.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Yes, so she made these beautiful kind of green clay mugs that we use if not every day, every few days. They are in rotation. And then you all also very generously chimed in and bought us a KitchenAid, which I use all the time. So every time I use it, I think of my friends in the Hudson Valley. And I think of how wonderful and mysterious it is that you can have these really profound friendships that shape the course of your life pretty much just because someone one day sends you an email.

Maureen Swinger: It is a mystery and it’s a delight. And I do remember the mugs, I remember your wonderful mother, Sally, using them as an analogy with your family’s heirloom silver teapot, I think. And she spoke so eloquently about pouring life into cups that can be shared with others. I think that was at the bridal party. And then I also do remember that the KitchenAid was on behalf of all of Plough, because we could certainly imagine you cooking up large batches of delicious breads and cookies to share with the folks that would come to your door. So that was one sort of Bruderhoffish present. one it was a delight to be able to share.

Joy Marie Clarkson: Yes, well, is very Bruderhoffish present. I do, I think of my friends the Bruderhof every time I use it. And I think I’ll actually use it more now that it’s autumn, because I’ve been feeling the pull to make like pumpkin bread and apple muffins and things like that with lots of spices and warmth as it gets more drizzly and autumnal.

Maureen Swinger: You make me hungry.

Joy Marie Clarkson: We could talk for much longer, but thank you all so much for joining me. And thank you, Maureen, for sending me that first email and Jay for making my dreams for the impossible task of the accidentals of “Scarborough Fair” come true.