The Ethan C. Lewin Podcast

As Mark Swiski was packing up his home and preparing to leave the community he once prayed to find, we sat down to unpack his life.A thread running through Mark’s life is his desire to give others what he wished he’d received growing up: as a father, giving his daughter the hugs he longed for as a kid; as a former professional baseball player, creating opportunities for the athletes he coached; and as an executive coach, bringing greater humanity into the corporate world.What Mark’s story reminds us is that progress isn’t always about breaking the cycle completely. It’s about doing the work to move it forward. Making mistakes, confronting your own ego and shortcomings, asking for help, making amends, and continuing to try even when your intentions and impact don’t perfectly align.Sometimes progress is simply moving the needle and leaving the next generation with a better place to start.Welcome to episode 68.Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring these episodes to life: Venmo. Thank you!I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School (my alma mater high school). Stay ConnectedContact: https://ethanclewin.com/

Saul Fisher has spent much of his life trying to understand why we are the way we are—and how paying closer attention might help us better understand and love both ourselves and one another.Born into a close-knit Jewish family and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Saul grew up sensitive, curious, and painfully aware that he was different. He struggled considerably in school, with reading, memory, math, and conventional ways of learning. But he could move.His father, a talented dancer, entertainer, and entrepreneur, gave Saul and his younger brother David the gifts of movement, rhythm, creativity, perseverance—and the tap shoes that would change their lives. Before long, the two Jewish boys from Newark were professional entertainers, performing Latin dance in hotels and nightclubs, traveling through the Catskills and Miami, and growing up in an adult world of musicians, dancers, and show business.More of that remarkable chapter can be read in Saul’s book, Tap Shoes & Mambo Rhythms, linked below.But Saul’s father was also a wound. His volatility and reactivity left Saul trying to understand not only his father, but himself—the ways people respond, the patterns families fall into, and how changing our own behavior can change a relationship. That curiosity eventually led him to psychology and a career spent helping children and families, including roughly 35 years working in the Bryn Athyn community. Now living with Parkinson’s, Saul has had to surrender some of the great loves that once defined his life, including tap dancing and birding. Yet he continues to pay attention to what is still here, and his philosophy remains consistent: follow your loves and see where they take you. Welcome to episode 67. Check Out:Shoes & Mambo Rhythms: Two Jewish Boys from Newark Find Themselves on a Latin Stage - Saul FisherDiscipline In the Context of Love – Scott Daum & Saul Fisher.mp4Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.Stay ConnectedContact: https://ethanclewin.com/A Note from MeI’m inspired by the stories people carry, the power of honest feedback, and the magic that happens when creative minds connect. If you’re a brand interested in partnering, let’s talk: LinkedIn.Thanks for being part of this journey—PEACE!

Chris Barber is an ordained New Church priest, religion teacher at the Academy of the New Church, and President of the Swedenborg Foundation. He has dedicated much of his life to studying Emanuel Swedenborg—not just his theology, but the man behind it.Chris helps bring consciousness to the remarkably human story of the man whose writings inspired the New Church—from an ambitious scientist wrestling with ego to a life increasingly oriented toward humility and the spiritual. In many ways, Swedenborg’s story is our story: the lifelong movement from the natural toward the spiritual.Those same ideas run through Chris’s own story. Once an atheist who thought religious people were deluded, he now wonders what his younger self would make of the priest he became: “Would you hate to see the man you’ve become?” We explore his deliberate effort to fairly represent and hold progressive thought and doctrinal faith in conversation with one another—and wrestle honestly with both, the importance of meeting people where they are, as they are, and a faith that leaves room for uncertainty.Because ultimately, Chris can’t prove Swedenborg saw what he said he saw. His answer is much simpler: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Try it. Live it. See what it produces.Chris's Show Notes:We covered a lot of ground in this conversation! I wanted to provide a few clarifications to a few things I said from memory, along with some titles for listeners who would like to explore the media we referenced.A Few ClarificationsRe: Swedenborg's flying machine. I described his design as unpublished. Although the original drawing remained in manuscript during his lifetime, Swedenborg did publish a written proposal in his scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus, in 1716.Re: Jesper Svedberg and the Swedish Bible. I conflated some of Jesper's résumé. He was an important contributor to a Bible project in the 1690s and advocated a new translation from the original languages. The Bible I briefly referenced that was published in 1703, however, was a revision of the earlier Swedish Bible.To Learn More about Swedenborg and the New Church:Swedenborg Foundation’s Guide to the Theological Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/OD_NCEGuide.pdf)Scribe of Heaven, Swedenborg’s Life, Work, and Impact (edited by Rose, Shotwell, and Bertucci, 2005) (https://swedenborg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NCE_ScribeofHeaven.pdf)Selections of Media Referenced in this Episode:The Houseleek on the Roof: The 1874–1876 Diary of Anna Keyser Baker, a Philadelphia Swedenborgian. (transcribed, edited, annotated, and appended by me, 2026) (https://www.brooklinebooks.com/9781955041683/the-houseleek-on-the-roof/)Marguerite Beck Block’s The New Church in the New World: A Study of Swedenborgianism in America. (1932; new edition for which I contributed new introduction and epilogue, 2024) (https://bookshop.swedenborg.com/products/the-new-church-in-the-new-world-swedenborgianism/)Coleman Glenn’s A Little Light: Poems (2024) (https://www.amazon.com/Little-Light-Poems-Coleman-Glenn-ebook/dp/B0DJ1K9N42)General Church Outreach’s YouTube (@NewChurchVideo) series Big Spiritual Questions (2020, 2021, 2023)What Dreams May Come. (Film, 1998). I also recommend the book of the same name, on which the film is based, by Richard Matheson (1978)Raymond A. Moody Jr.’s Life After Life. (1975)Martha S. Rosenthal’s Human Sexuality: From Cells to Society. (2012)Grant Schnarr’s You Can Believe! An Introduction to The New Christianity. (2006)Emanuel Swedenborg’s 1743-1744 Journal of Dreams. I like the one with commentary by Wilson Van Dusen. (1986)DisclaimerChristopher Augustus Barber appears in this interview solely in his personal capacity, not as an official representative of any institution or organization with which he is affiliated. The views expressed are his own and should not be attributed to those institutions or organizations.

Barbara d’Amato has spent nearly 50 years welcoming babies into the world—many of them from my hometown of Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. She had already delivered roughly 6,000 babies by the time she closed her private practice in 2018, and one colleague estimates her lifetime total may now be closer to 10,000.Barbara’s path to midwifery began with a traumatic first birth—one that included a doctor telling her, “Don’t get your hopes up, we’re gonna lose him,” followed by eight hours not knowing whether her son would survive. Following that experience, Barbara left determined to make birth better for other women.Years later, after witnessing a completely undisturbed home birth, Barbara saw what birth could be and has spent nearly half a century since trying to preserve its humanity, dignity, and power while keeping mothers and babies safe. Only later in her career would she realize that, in helping other women, she had also been trying to heal from her own experience.At 75, Barbara reflects on that journey and opens a conversation about informed consent, childbirth education, and making women aware of the choices available to them in birth. Her story and experience are far too rich to summarize here—from raising five children and blending a family of eleven, to 24 grandchildren, to nearly five decades of continuing to work with women—the meaning at the heart of midwifery.This is the first of what I hope will be many conversations with Barbara. Welcome to episode 65.Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.Stay ConnectedContact: https://ethanclewin.com/

Many know Lori Odhner as the voice behind the songs that shaped their childhood, filling generations of church services and bedtime routines. Underneath that is a discipline she's practiced even longer: paying attention to the person in front of her.In this conversation, Lori traces that listening thread from her father's example, through raising nine children, her marriage to John, a daily marriage column written for over a decade, and a lifetime of quilting, songwriting, and quiet caregiving.She talks candidly about growing up with a mother who struggled with bipolar disorder, and how watching that struggle, echoed years later in raising her autistic son, Ben, taught her that suffering isn't a mistake. It's often the very thing that grows compassion in us.That same conviction reshaped her marriage counseling work. She once believed it meant teaching people the formula for a good relationship: learn this, and you'll know how to do it. Instead, she found it was something else entirely: vulnerability, not judging your partner, and not trying to change them.Ultimately, Lori makes a case for a different kind of giving: we don't always need to fix someone's problem. What's always important is simply being present. It's about seeking out the sweetness hiding in almost everyone you pass, if you're willing to peel back the foil.Check Out:Marriage Moats: 101 Thoughts to Inspire and Protect Your Marriage by Lori Odhnerhttps://caringformarriage.org/blog/Elevate the ExperienceHelp bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.