tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4582751663390398171.post6745119989419645820..comments2023-11-03T17:20:18.270-07:00Comments on William & Mary Dyer: Mary Dyer, the motherChristy K Robinsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05988458745832012138noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4582751663390398171.post-68724020366852917942016-05-06T16:13:35.177-07:002016-05-06T16:13:35.177-07:00When we judge people from past centuries, we do so...When we judge people from past centuries, we do so from a place where we've forgotten--or never knew--in what context the historical figures made their decisions. They lived in a hyper-religious culture, and we'd probably judge most of them as fanatics. They thought a comet foretold wars and plagues, and we know that comets are icy dust orbiting our sun. They thought a deformed infant was God's judgment on a heretical mother, but we know the infant may have had a stroke in utero, or there was lead poisoning from their pewter or glazed crockery. They thought if a woman concentrated her sight or thought on the father's features, her baby would be born resembling its father, but we know it's DNA that determines appearance. Mary, and hundreds of thousands of Puritans, Anglicans, and Quakers who came to New England in the Great Migration, left their parents and siblings, and sometimes their children, to migrate to the American wilderness and start over. Thousands of them returned to England when the Civil Wars began there, and they stayed. Others went home for visits, and that may have been Mary's purpose--though I hypothesize that it was about clearing her and Anne Hutchinson's names of the infamy of monster births, and probably to investigate for herself the many religious sects that sprang up in the 1640s and 1650s. Christy K Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05988458745832012138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4582751663390398171.post-28320977951400815512016-05-06T13:33:43.487-07:002016-05-06T13:33:43.487-07:00This provides a little more food for thought, if n...This provides a little more food for thought, if not a full understanding, of how Mary Dyer might have been able to detach herself from her family to take up the cause of martyrdom. Sometimes, the same people who decry her abandonment of her family to become a martyr, venerate Saint Perpetua, who brought grief and persecution upon her aging father and husband and probably death upon her unweaned child in becoming a martyr. - Terry CollinsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4582751663390398171.post-17014401864416209782014-05-11T07:36:35.065-07:002014-05-11T07:36:35.065-07:00Wonderful history. Awesome writing. Sort of simili...Wonderful history. Awesome writing. Sort of similiar to today's exchange students. <br /><br />CindyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com