WEBVTT

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So I'm just going to
conclude here with a piece.

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This is from a chapter of
my new book, Utopia Drive.

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It takes the form
of a road trip.

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I just take this road
trip beginning at--

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Fenton and I grew up down
the road from each other

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from a Trappist monastery
where Thomas Merton lived.

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And my road trip moves
to Gethsemane and then

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to a Shaker village and
to this place in Indiana

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called New Harmony.

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And it winds all the way
up and ends in Oneida,

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New York with a group
called the Perfectionists.

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So it starts with
the Shakers and it

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ends with the Perfectionists.

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And the Shakers believe
that, you know, no sex.

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It was just they were
completely chaste.

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And they were founded by a
woman named Mother Anne Lee.

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And the Perfectionists
believe, it

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was a Christian belief
like the Shakers,

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it was founded by
John Humphrey Noyes.

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And their belief
was that because we

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are sinless through Christ,
we can do whatever we want.

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So it's like, free love, people.

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So it was a free love community.

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So I was explaining this
to my wife and she said,

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so if a woman starts
the community,

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they don't have any sex.

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And if a man starts
the community,

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they have all the sex they want.

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I hadn't really thought about
it, but that's kind of the way

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it all panned out.

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So this is a piece.

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I just want to pick up on my
theme of the unroofed church.

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And I'll end with this.

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But this is I'm rolling
in to the town of New

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Harmony, Indiana.

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And the cheapest
place I found is

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a place called the
Old Rooming House,

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cheapest place I
could find to stay.

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"The old rooming house, which
shed its paint long ago,

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is the cheapest place
to stay in New Harmony.

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Ideal for artists and writers,
according to the website.

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And I find my own door
unlocked with a note

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from the proprietor,
Jim Stinson,

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compelling me to
make myself at home.

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The room is nautically themed,
with paintings and models

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of ships, shell lamps,
a porcelain Marlin,

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and a shelf of maritime books.

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An incongruous set of roller
skates sit by the door beside

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a sign that reads,
'to the lifeboats'.

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In the morning,

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I meet the loquacious
hotelier, Jim Stinson.

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He seems to be in his 60s
with untamed gray hair

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in the face of a man who has
spent a lot of time in the sun.

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He wears faded jeans and a
brown shirt that at some point

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had an unfortunate
encounter with bleach.

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Jim untangles a
couple of old bicycles

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from the Virginia
creeper that is indeed

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taking over one side of
the house, then says,

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if you don't mind
parking your male ego,

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we can go for a
ride on these bikes.

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He quickly pumps up the
tires of both bikes.

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Egos in check, we start
off swerving down the road.

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In 1814, the German
millennialist, George Rapp,

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bought 7,000 acres on this
bend of the Wabash River,

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and with 500 of
his followers built

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the town of New
Harmony on a five block

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by three block grid that
still defines the town today.

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On the corner across from the
bank stands the original house

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that George Rapp built
for his own large family.

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Like the Shakers, George
Rapp and his followers

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believe that the
fall of man occurred

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when the female
element of the divine

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was separated from
its male counterpart.

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Like the Shakers, the Rappites
practiced celibacy, confession

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of sin, and common
ownership of property

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as first advocated
in the book of Acts.

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And the Rappites were
every bit as industrious

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and as successful in
business as the Shakers.

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By the time George Rapp
sold New Harmony a decade

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after its founding to the
Scottish socialist Robert Owen,

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there stood over 150
buildings surrounded

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by a vineyard, orchards,
and a five acre garden.

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Today, descendants of Owen
still live in the original brick

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house that George Rapp
built for his family.

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It is surrounded by a tall brick
wall with green, wooden gates.

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When Jim and I ride
by, the front gate

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is open, something that
apparently surprises Jim.

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He quickly doubles back and
pulls up on the sidewalk.

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Two women, one older
than the other,

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are sitting on the front
porch near the gate.

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This is probably a real
violation of your space,

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Jim calls up to
them, but do you mind

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if we look at Gabriel's
footprint real quick?

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It's too faded to see now,
the older woman replies.

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Jim goes on.

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Could we have a look anyway?

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No, she says.

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And both women quickly
retreat indoors.

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What was that about?

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I ask.

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Jim explains there is
a slab of limestone

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behind the house that
looks to be embossed

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with two human footprints.

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In 1819, George Rapp claimed
that the archangel Gabriel had

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paid him a visit, and as
proof, left that footprint

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in the limestone.

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According to Jim, Rapp told his
followers, Gabriel spoke to me.

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And here's the proof.

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So you guys need
to all get in line.

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Robert Owen's son, the
geologist David Dale Owen,

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concluded years later
that the footprints were

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carved by indigenous people.

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And Rapp's own records
show he had hauled it

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by oxen from the bluffs
of the Mississippi

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River near St. Louis.

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Apparently, Rapp worried that
as the hard work of building New

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Harmony came to completion,
idle hands might soon

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do the devil's dealing.

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So in 1824, Rapp decided
to relocate his flock

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to Pennsylvania where they
built it all over again.

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This new community just
outside Pittsburgh, Rapp

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called Economy in reference
to the divine economy

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of communal sharing, the exact
phrase the Shakers had used.

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Rebuffed by Owens
progeny, we peddle over

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to a much more modern
structure, the roofless church

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built by the international
architect, Philip Johnson.

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The stark,
rectangular, brick wall

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that frames the church,
that is the church,

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owes something to the
less is more aesthetic

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of Johnson's mentor
Mies van der Rohe.

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The foundation of
the walls was cut

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from the same local limestone
in which Rapp claimed to have

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found Gabriel's footprint.

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The roofless church
was commissioned

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by Jane Owen, the wife
of Kenneth Dale Owen,

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and the inheritor of her
own father's oil fortune.

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When Owen first met Johnson--

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when Jane Owen first
met Johnson in the '50s,

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she decided that he had
quote, 'poetry in his soul'

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to carry out her vision
of a church in which,

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quote, 'only one roof
is wide enough, broad

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enough for all
worshipping humanity.

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There has to be the
sky as our roof.'

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Standing beside a small
grove of linden trees,

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a grove made sacred I might say
by its presence inside Philip

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Johnson's high brick walls,
I am beginning to feel

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a vague inner stirring myself.

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I tell Jim that I
think I might sit

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for a spell on one of the
stone benches beneath the trees

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and reflect on my
day in New Harmony.

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We shake hands and I
thank him for being

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such an excellent tour guide.

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Hey, no problem.

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In fact, if you want
to stay another night,

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I could knock $10 off the price.

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I plan to hit the road tonight
and get a jump on the long slog

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across Indiana.

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But Jim seems like he could
use the extra scratch.

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So I say, sure.

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When he leaves,
I'm the only person

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left in the roofless church.

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The first century Greek
author and architect Vitruvius

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in his treatise on
architecture wrote

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approvingly of hypaethral
temples, ones open to the air.

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Henry David Thoreau,
who knew his Greek,

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wrote that the mind itself
should be a hypaethral place,

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quote, 'consecrated to the
service of the gods' unquote.

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And he hoped that his first
book, A Week on the Concord

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and Merrimack Rivers, might be
a hypaethral text that does not

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smell of the study and library.

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Such a sentiment suggests
that we should rather

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think of the entire
world as what Thoreau

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called the poem of creation.

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Wendell Berry wrote
in a recent poem,

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there are no un-sacred spaces.

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There are only sacred spaces
and desecrated spaces.

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That is surely an expansive
view of the natural world, one

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that I happen to share.

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Yet we seem to need some
form of demarcation.

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In this case, Philip
Johnson's brick walls,

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to remind us of this idea.

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We are surrounded by too
many desecrated places.

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And in the age of
the cell phone,

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we are surrounded by too much
that we simply do not see.

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By framing the sky,
Johnson's walls

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have the effect of
calling the heavens down

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into this realm, the chthonic
world of linden trees

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and human beings.

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It seems to affirm,
to intensify,

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something Thomas
Merton once said.

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'Life is this simple.

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We are living in a world that
is absolutely transparent.

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And God is shining
through it all the time.'

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If we could only see it.

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Not every visitor
has been so sanguine

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about the roofless church.

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Take architecture
historian Charles Jencks

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who wrote that after
Johnson finally

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escaped the influence
of Mies van der Rohe,

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the rest of his work
was entirely camp,

00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:08.720 align:middle line:84%
a demonstration of his
impeccably perverse taste

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motivated by historic illusions.

00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:15.080 align:middle line:84%
Jencks goes on, 'Hence, the
entrance to the roofless church

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which recalls those of
so many Nazi villas.'

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It's a rather
startling statement,

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especially when you consider
that those gates, which

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are admittedly gaudy,
open on to a memorial

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garden for the theologian
Paul Tillich who Hitler fired

00:10:30.530 --> 00:10:33.050 align:middle line:84%
from his position at the
University of Frankfurt

00:10:33.050 --> 00:10:36.020 align:middle line:84%
for speaking out
against the Third Reich.

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Tillich fled to the
US in 1933 to teach

00:10:39.350 --> 00:10:41.930 align:middle line:84%
at the Union
Theological Seminary

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where Jane Owen was a student.

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In 1963, Tillich
came to New Harmony

00:10:48.350 --> 00:10:52.100 align:middle line:84%
to deliver an Easter sermon
at the roofless church.

00:10:52.100 --> 00:10:56.420 align:middle line:84%
Titled Estranged and
Reunited, The New Being,

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Tillich's message spoke
directly to Jane Owens'

00:10:59.510 --> 00:11:03.020 align:middle line:84%
ecumenical belief that only
the sky was wide enough

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to reconcile all religions.

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Jesus, after all,
was not a Christian.

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Tillich didn't come out and
say this, but he implied it.

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He was a wandering Jew who
experienced what Tillich

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called alternately, a new
creation, a new reality,

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and a new being.

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One's religion isn't
important, said Tillich.

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What's important
is to enter into

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that same transformative
religious state in which Jesus

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dwelled.

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The new creation, this is our
ultimate concern, said Tillich.

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This should be our infinite
passion, the infinite passion

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of every human being.

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What is it, this new state?

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A three-fold renewal
of reconciliation,

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reunion, resurrection.

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First, we must be reconciled
to God and to ourselves

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since at the core of our
innermost self is where

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we find the presence of God.

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Next, one must be
reunited with oneself.

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That is to say, one must
accept oneself wholly.

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One must have what Tillich
called in another context,

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the courage to be.

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The courage to be oneself.

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With that acceptance
comes the ability

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to accept divine
union with others.

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James Baldwin wrote
in The Fire Next Time

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that the reason so many
white Americans hated

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Black Americans was that in
reality, they hated themselves.

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And Martin Luther King Jr in
his letter from Birmingham Jail

00:12:36.950 --> 00:12:39.530 align:middle line:84%
quoted Tillich's
definition of sin

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as nothing more than separation,
our separation from God

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and from one another.

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Finally, said Tillich,
we must be resurrected

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from the old being of
separation and to the new being

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of wholeness.

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He rejected the literal
meaning of resurrection,

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the raising of the dead, for
the psychological manifestation

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of spiritual rebirth.

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Where there is a new
being, Tillich concluded,

00:13:05.060 --> 00:13:10.100 align:middle line:84%
there is resurrection, namely
the creation into eternity

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out of every moment of time.

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Which is to say,
resurrection happens now

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or it does not happen at all.

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The kingdom of God,
after all, stands right

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before us, made all the more
obvious by its delineation

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inside the frame of
the roofless church.

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I walked through the
objectionable gates

00:13:30.350 --> 00:13:33.020 align:middle line:84%
of the roofless church
and into Tillich's garden

00:13:33.020 --> 00:13:36.320 align:middle line:84%
where the theologian's
ashes were scattered.

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A short path winds through
a kind of mounted labyrinth

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planted only with
Norwegian spruce trees.

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Beside the trail sits a large
white stone embossed with this

00:13:47.180 --> 00:13:52.070 align:middle line:84%
Tillich sentence: 'Man and
nature belong together in there

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created glory, in their tragedy,
and in their separation.'

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I don't know the context in
which this sentence was written

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but I like the sentiment,
which I read to mean,

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we were not inexorably cast
out of the original garden,

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separate from nature.

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We can, as Tillich would
say, be resurrected back

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in the unity with
the natural world.

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Certainly, the
Enlightenment idea

00:14:18.980 --> 00:14:21.170 align:middle line:84%
that man stands above
nature has caused

00:14:21.170 --> 00:14:24.410 align:middle line:84%
much of the environmental
havoc in my home state,

00:14:24.410 --> 00:14:27.710 align:middle line:84%
the blasting apart of mountains,
because we have figured out

00:14:27.710 --> 00:14:30.260 align:middle line:84%
how to blast them
apart but have not

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figured out a reason, perhaps
even a religious reason,

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not to.

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Our tragedy is our
perception that we are

00:14:39.140 --> 00:14:41.510 align:middle line:90%
divided from God and nature.

00:14:41.510 --> 00:14:46.340 align:middle line:84%
Our salvation is the
realization that we are not."

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Thank you.

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