
The Wabash River in New Harmony, Indiana
The keelboat carrying French artist and naturalist Charles Alexander Lesueur and Scottish geologist William Maclure from Pennsylvania to Indiana in 1826 was referred to as The Boatload of Knowledge (a counter to the Ship of Fools?). They came to join the utopian community that existed in New Harmony in the early 1800s. I came to report on an art project—involving, in the first phase, the dismantling, rejiggering, burning of a 19th century barn by Juan Angel Chavez. In spirit, I also journeyed here in 1826.
I grab a cup of coffee and the newspaper (published in Evansville) at the inn. The front page refers to an inside story on a meth lab bust, the community calendar lists a tea party meeting and there is syndicated advice column by Billy Graham (born in 1918; I looked this up because I was convinced he was dead.) Red state stuff. In a letter to Graham, a woman describes how her "heart aches over a woman in my office who's constantly making bad decisions about her life" and how her efforts to befriend her were thwarted when "she found out I was a Christian and said not to talk with her about God." What can she do, she implores the aged evangelist, other than pray? In lieu of the daily crossword puzzle, DMV rejiggered and altered the response:
Praying for this woman is the most important thing you can do -- because only God can break through the hardness of her heart and open her eyes to her need of Him and only you can reach God.
Surely one of life's greatest puzzles is how we keep thinking we know what is best for everyone, including those who do not share our beliefs because we believe we are right and are more saintly than others -- although we ought to know better. Even when we've done them before, we keep going down the same road, hoping somehow that this time it will be different. But it never is -- because the consequences of our unwise or deluded actions never change. The Bible warns, "Even as he walks along the road, the fool lacks sense" (Ecclesiastes 10:3). Because, fools, by their very nature, lack sense. The troubador sings, "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes/You'd know what a drag it is to see you." (Bob Dylan, Positively 4th Street.)
Why is this? The reason is because you have a "disease" inside of you -- a "spiritual disease" also known as busybodyitis. And one of sin's greatest consequences is that it blinds us to our own sin. This is why the Bible warns not to be "hardened by sin's deceitfulness" (Hebrews 3:13). As Hank Williams said, "Why don't you mind your own business, cause if you mind your own business, you won't be minding mine."
After coffee, I take one of the inn's free bicycles and follow a trail that runs alongside Philip Johnson's Roofless Church down to the river.