New Harmony, Indiana. Jane Blaffer Owen

life, crucifixion, and resurrection. Legend tells us that Bernard accented his rhetoric with tattered pieces of his cloak, scattering them among the multitudes who had come to hear this charismatic saint. Inevitably, only a few shared St. Bernard’s zeal. The vast majority who joined this disastrous crusade went for plunder.

      Similarly, Chuang Tzu, the Taoist sage who lived in the fourth and third centuries BC, understood the paradox: “When justice and benevolence are in the air, a few people are really concerned with the good of others, but the majority are aware that this is a good thing, ripe for exploitation. They take advantage of the situation. For them, benevolence and justice are traps to catch birds. Thus benevolence and justice rapidly come to be associated with fraud and hypocrisy.”³

      Apart from the educators, scientists, artists, and teachers, many of those who followed Owen and Maclure to New Harmony came for free meals and board. Summital thinking can prevent highly placed individuals, even saints, from reading the thoughts and intentions of those in the valley below.

      In 1988, Historic New Harmony received permission and funding from the State of Indiana to remove the unremarkable 1913 school with its cluster of tacked-on buildings and to create in its place what is now known as Church Park. Many of us considered this an act of redemption. Others, especially those who had been taught there, thought it a desecration. Some townspeople considered ways the outdated school building could be given new life, but they did not prevail. No one regrets, however, the present-day one-story, handicap-accessible, energy-saving replacement school on twelve acres of traffic-free land southeast of town made possible by the Lilly Endowment (21 on area map).

      Church Park was dedicated April 18, 1997. Townspeople and visitors can now enter through a brick and limestone arch that replicates the original Harmonist portal. The fragile Door of Promise, which for so many years received the touch of the hands of pious Harmonists and New Harmony’s schoolchildren, is safely stored. Well-trimmed hedges recall the cruciform shape of the brick Harmonist church; they reach out from a central circle into empty space, thirsty for the Fountain of Commitment, which I gave in memory of my husband. Water flows from the sculpture of interlocking bronze and glass circles by Don Gummer.

      Fountain of Commitment in Church Park.

      Photograph by Darryl D. Jones, October 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Don Gummer, © 2001, cast bronze, 77 × 32 × 26 inches.