New Harmony, Indiana

Jane Blaffer Owen

Description

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For nearly seven decades, Jane Blaffer Owen was the driving force behind the restoration and revitalization of the town of New Harmony, Indiana. In this delightful memoir, Blaffer Owen describes the transformational effect the town had on her life. An oil heiress from Houston, she met and married Kenneth Dale Owen, great-great-grandson of Robert Owen, founder of a communal society in New Harmony. When she visited the then dilapidated town with her husband in 1941, it was love at first sight, and the story of her life and the life of the town became intertwined. Her engaging account of her journey to renew the town provides glimpses into New Harmony's past and all of its citizens—scientists, educators, and naturalists—whose influence spread far beyond the town limits. And there are fascinating stories of the artists, architects, and theologians who became part of Blaffer Owen's life at New Harmony, where, she says, "My roots could sink deeply and spread."

Foreword John Philip Newell
Foreword J. Pittman McGehee
Preface Jane Blaffer Owen
Acknowledgments Jane Blaffer Owen
Historical Note Connie A. Weinzapfel
From Spoken to Written Words Nancy Mangum McCaslin
1. Twin Vows
2. Indian Mound
3. The Sixth Generation
4. Harmonist House
5. Harmonist Church and School
6. Acquiring the Granary and Mansion
7. May Day Fête
8. Lipchitz
9. Enter Paul Tillich
10. Polio Epidemic
11. Sir George MacLeod
12. Iona
13. Assy
14. Kilbinger House
15. Poet's House and Beyond
16. Violets Down the Lane
17. Enter Philip Johnson
18. Cornerstone Dedication
19. May Day Dedication of the Roofless Church and Barrett-Gate House
20. Tillich Visits Houston
21. MacLeod's Dedication of the Lipchitz Gate
22. Estranged and Reunited: The New Being
23. The Undying Dead
24. Paul Tillich Park
25. Paul Tillich Commemorative Service
26. Open Windows
27. Tumbling Walls
28. Glass House
29. Orchard House
30. Rapp-Maclure-Owen House Restoration
31. Art and Carol's Garden
Epilogue
Editor's Note
Afterwords:
Life Was To Celebrate Anne Dale Owen
Through a Child's Eyes Jane Dale Owen
Biography Jane Blaffer Owen and Kenneth Dale Owen
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Charities
• Historical
• HISTORY
• Lettres et linguistique
• Mensajería instantánea
• Biography
• Charitable organization
• History of the Americas
• United States
• Autobiography
• KS
• IL
• ND
• IN
• NE
• OH
• MN
• SD
• MO
• MI

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016638
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

NEW HARMONY
INDIANA

We are a river of time, and it keeps on flowing.
JANE BLAFFER OWEN
APRIL 18, 1915-JUNE 21, 2010
NEW HARMONY INDIANA
Like a River Not a Lake A Memoir

JANE BLAFFER OWEN
AFTERWORDS BY
Anne Dale Owen and Jane Dale Owen
EDITED BY
Nancy Mangum McCaslin
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone]
Fax [phone]
2015 by The Jane Blaffer Owen Management Trust
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in China
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01624-9 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01663-8 (e-book)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
FRONTIS: Jane Blaffer, Portrait 3 , 1936. Vera Prasilova Scott took many photographs of the Blaffer family. Her originals are now archived in the Vera Prasilova Scott portraiture collection, MS 497, Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, TX, Rice University.
Courtesy of Rice University. Blaffer-Owen family photograph.
PAGE III : Fish above the Lab 1988 John Hubbard. Courtesy of John Hubbard.
ENDPAPERS : Area Map and Town Map 2013 Kenneth A. Schuette.
Dedicated to THE TOWNSPEOPLE OF NEW HARMONY- PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE .
I will never leave this house of light, I will never leave this blessed town for here I have found my love and here I will stay for the rest of my life. If this world turns into a sea of trouble I will brave the waves and steer my mind s ship to the safe shore of love.
If you are a seeker looking for profit, go on and may God be with you, but I am not willing to exchange my truth, I have found the heart and will never leave this house of light.
-Jalaludin Mohamad Rumi, Thirteenth-century Sufi mystic, from Rumi Hidden Music .
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Azima Melita Kolin and Maryam Mafi, translators, (2001).
Contents
John Philip Newell
FOREWORD
J. Pittman McGehee
FOREWORD
Jane Blaffer Owen
PREFACE
Jane Blaffer Owen
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Connie A. Weinzapfel
HISTORICAL NOTE
Nancy Mangum McCaslin
FROM SPOKEN TO WRITTEN WORDS
1
Twin Vows
2
Indian Mound
3
The Sixth Generation
4
Harmonist House
5
Harmonist Church and School
6
Acquiring the Granary and Mansion
7
May Day F te
8
Lipchitz
9
Enter Paul Tillich
10
Polio Epidemic
11
Sir George MacLeod
12
Iona
13
Assy
14
Kilbinger House
15
Poet s House and Beyond
16
Violets Down the Lane
17
Enter Philip Johnson
18
Cornerstone Dedication
19
May Day Dedication of the Roofless Church and Barrett-Gate House
20
Tillich Visits Houston
21
MacLeod s Dedication of the Lipchitz Gate
22
Estranged and Reunited: The New Being
23
The Undying Dead
24
Paul Tillich Park
25
Paul Tillich Commemorative Service
26
Open Windows
27
Tumbling Walls
28
Glass House
29
Orchard House
30
Rapp-Maclure-Owen House Restoration
31
Art and Carol s Garden

EPILOGUE

EDITOR S NOTE
Anne Dale Owen
AFTERWORD : Life Was to Celebrate
Jane Dale Owen
AFTERWORD : Through a Child s Eyes

BIOGRAPHY

NOTES

TOWN MAP LEGEND

INDEX
Foreword
John Philip Newell
JANE BLAFFER OWEN ranks among the most beautiful and wise women the modern world has known. I met her over ten years ago. She was already in her mid-eighties. And I fell in love with her immediately, as have countless other men and women of every age and stage. Yes, she was beautiful physically as well as intellectually and emotionally. But it was the way she embodied vision that drew most of us to her. And we who love her have come from many, many disciplines, ranging from art and culture to science and religion.
Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, said that the Spirit is a coniunctio oppositorum , a conjoining of what has been considered opposite: heaven and earth, spirit and matter, the feminine and the masculine, East and West, the night and the day, the unconscious and the conscious, the head and the heart, spirituality and sexuality, our individual stories and the one story, the story of the Universe. Jane Owen lived among us as a messenger of Spirit. She was forever weaving together what has been torn apart.
Close to the heart of her vision is the Roofless Church of New Harmony. It has four defining walls but truly no roof. It is to me one of the most prophetic sites of prayer in the Western world. Over fifty years ago, well in advance of the earth-awareness of today, Jane Owen saw that our sacred sites must not be cut off from the temple of the earth. Our places of prayer must not represent separateness from the other species and the other people of the world. The Roofless Church stands as an abiding testimony to this vision. The primary context of religion, and indeed of life itself, must be the great and living cathedral of earth, sea, and sky. If we are to be whole, we must come back into relationship with Creation.

Jane Blaffer Owen with John Philip Newell.
Photograph by Alison Erazmus, 2010 .
On May 1, 2010, we rededicated the Roofless Church on the fiftieth anniversary of its consecration. It was as if Jane Owen, who died the next month at the age of ninety-five, was determined to celebrate its jubilee, such was the significance of the church to her vision. 1 The next day, in studying photographs of the celebration, I pointed out to her that she had been gazing around quite a bit during the procession, to which she replied, I was just counting the number of people. Jane Owen was forever passionate about continuing the vision.
At the heart of the Roofless Church is her most cherished work of art Descent of the Holy Spirit ( Notre Dame de Liesse ) by Jacques Lipchitz. 2 The sculpture is of the Spirit, in the shape of a dove, descending on an abstract divine feminine form that is opening to give birth. At one level Lipchitz is pointing to the story of Jesus, who was conceived by the Spirit in the womb of Mary. But at another level Lipchitz is pointing to the story of the Universe. Everything that has being has been conceived by the Spirit in the womb of the Universe. In other words, everything is sacred. This is the vision that guided Jane Owen to commit herself to reweaving the strands of life-between nations, between cultures, between religions, between any of the so-called opposites that have tragically separated us in our lives and world.
She knew the sacredness and the beauty of life. But never did she forget the brokenness and pain of life. At the other end of the Roofless Church is another sculpture, Piet by Stephen De Staebler. It is a primitive, naked, feminine form. In her sides and feet are the nail marks of crucifixion. And her breast is split open to reveal the head of her crucified son emerging from within her. When our child suffers or when one we love is in agony, we experience their suffering not from afar but as coming from deep within us. Jane Owen knew such suffering in her family and life. She also knew, as De Staebler s sculpture so powerfully communicates, that if there is to be real healing in our world, we must know the brokenness of other nations, other species, other families as part of our own brokenness. Jane s countenance was beautiful. Yet it was a countenance that showed also deep sorrow with the brokenness of the world.
One of the last things she said to me was that New Harmony saved her. Was I mishearing her? Many have said, and many will continue to say, that Jane Blaffer Owen saved New Harmony. Certainly this is part of the story. But Jane Owen was disclosing to me another truth, a more hidden part of the story. New Harmony saved her because she found in this town and in its people the object of her love. That is why she called it her second marriage. She knew that it was only because she faithfully gave herself in love to New Harmony that she truly found herself. Such is the way of love. It is in giving our heart to the well-being of the other that we most truly become well ourselves.
Jane Owen would often say that the great ones in our lives who have died are like allies on the other side of death. And maybe, she would say, just maybe, they can do more for us on the other side than they did on this side. I agree. And I believe that Jane Owen is one of these great ones. We will never again see her picking peonies to give to New Harmony residents and visitors alike. We will never again hear her laughter at table as she works her magic of bringing different people and disciplines together. We will never again receive one of her many