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, Pietà 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 handwritten notes suggesting the next way of serving the dream of a new harmony in our world. But we need never lose communion with her heart and her vision. For she is a great ally. And her work with us is not finished.
The Reverend Dr. John Philip Newell, Edinburgh, Scotland, is internationally acclaimed for his work in the field of Celtic spirituality as a minister and peacemaker, and the author of more than fifteen books, including A New Harmony: The Spirit, the Earth, and the Human Soul.
Foreword
J. Pittman McGehee
I spent many an evening with Jane, both at her home in Houston and in New Harmony. I especially relish the memories of our times together in New Harmony. She invited me there to lecture, lead a retreat, or bless a new building. Inevitably we would settle into her den with refreshment and talk. She loved a story, and she told them well. Jane spoke of priests and poets, artists and archbishops, all people she had known. She shared her own spiritual journey and deep appreciation for the mystery, telling how she had experienced the transcendent in her ordinary life. She also spoke of her losses, disappointments, and moments of quiet desperation. Jane never tried to hide her humanity. At her funeral, I spoke about the word eccentric, meaning “out of the center.” Jane’s eccentricity was not strange or unattractive but authentic. Her authenticity brought appeal not only from powerful agents of change but also from humble partners in her efforts.
This is primarily a story of the evolution of her New Harmony mission. But more so, it is a story of how a woman served her purpose well and how the world benefited. New Harmony was her organizing principle. As this principle evolves, we will be introduced to artists, architects, theologians, ecclesiastical leaders, writers, and poets, all of whom added their presence to the soul of New Harmony. You will read about the history of that sacred space and be enlightened by poetry, literature, and myth. Jane weaves the tapestry of a life lived in service to a calling to bring beauty and meaning to a world needing both.
Although the memoir focuses primarily on New Harmony, Jane’s influence there was not exerted at the expense of her hometown. The University of Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the C. G. Jung Educational Center, Episcopal High School, and Christ Church Cathedral, among many others, benefited from her exuberant benevolence. I mention these to highlight the many seeds sown as Jane sought to satiate her curiosity for the novel and her longing for the divine. She lived the larger life. She did not bury her talents in the ground but spent them in service of meaning and purpose.
This reflective memoir shows the brightness of her touch and the depth of her search for the sacred in nature, creativity, literature, symbols, art, and even in suffering. Her life, though abundant, was not without illness, the darkness of loss, and the vicissitudes of the human predicament.
Jane Blaffer Owen was given much, and much was demanded from her.
She responded with a courageous and creative life. At the balance of her days, she had the fulfillment of all that she had given away. Jane often quoted Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded, and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
The Very Reverend J. Pittman McGehee, DD, is a Jungian analyst and director of Broadacres Center for spirituality and psychology; former dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, Texas.
Preface
Jane Blaffer Owen
May 1, 2010
Fiftieth Golden Anniversary Rededication
of the Roofless Church
The first half of life is biography,
where we allow our story to be written for us by others. . . .
The second half of life must be autobiography,
authored by the Self.
J. Pittman McGehee and Damon J. Thomas,
The Invisible Church: Finding Spirituality Where You Are
Extraordinary men and women brought their visions, scientific minds, talents, and, as with Robert Owen and William Maclure, their personal fortunes to New Harmony in 1826. Their likenesses adorn spaces in the national art galleries of England, Scotland, and Wales, the M. and M. Karolik Collection of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Washington’s Smithsonian Institution. In New Harmony, their portraits hang in the Working Men’s Institute and inside the historical houses that my husband, Kenneth Dale Owen, restored. Numerous biographies document their achievements and limitations.
Readers of history, however, shall not learn from these books, portraits, or bronze effigies the extent to which the undying dead of New Harmony have directed the course of my life and impacted the lives of fellow residents, some of them close friends and allies for over half a century. Today’s visitors, whatever their reasons for coming to New Harmony, enter a community of energetic and caring citizens who, consciously or not, inhabit the past, present, and future.
The powerful river that partly encircles this town of less than nine hundred people offers