I have a personal sort of relationship to Mary Dyer. The above famous statue of her was created by Sylvia Shaw Judson, a member of the meeting I grew up in. A small 2 foot high study that Sylvia had made sat in the entry way to my Meeting. When I went to Earlham College there was 1 of 3 bigger than life size sculptures of Mary outside the Meeting house - allowing me to get a picture of myself in her lap. When I look in her face I see Mary Stickney, a member of my Meeting who was the model for the sculpture. A few years later while in Boston I had this picture taken with Mary. The third and last statute of Mary is at Quaker Center in Philadelphia. So it has always felt like I had a personal appreciation for Mary for her courage and as the most famous Quaker martyr in our history.
For those not familiar with the story of Mary Dyer. Mary was a convinced friend in Puritan Massachusetts during colonial times. Massachusetts forbade any form of worship but Puritanism, but Mary and many Friends continued to meet for worship. Eventually she and William Robinson and Maraduke Stephenson were sentenced to die by hanging for persisting in this practice. On the gallows the governor stayed her execution and ordered her banished while hanging her two companions. Mary, feeling still under the command of the leading returned to worship in Boston and to her most likely death. She was again sentenced to hang and this time did. This story is well known to most Quakers (and even most American's who paid attention in HS US history class.)
Part of why it is so well known is the amazing quotes from Mary. She is widely quoted as saying to the marshalls who came to take her to the gallows: "Yea, and joyfully I go. My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in comparison with the lives and liberty of the Truth and Servants of the living God for which in the Bowels of Love and Meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless with wicked Hands have you put two of them to Death, which makes me to feel that the Mercies of the Wicked is cruelty; I rather chuse to Dye than to live, as from you, as Guilty of their Innocent Blood."
This of course is what always grabbed me about Mary, the joy in her faithfulness, the calm in the face of her own death, the witness to a truth greater than her own life, and a groundedness in the power of God to cause her to go in this spirit to join God. In fact, I recently heard a Quaker who went to see this statue on the Boston commons, ran into other tourists who were the descendants of Edward Wanton, one of the marshalls who was from their account (and history's) was so moved and awe struck by the power of the palpable spirit present in Mary at her death that he was lead to explore Quakerism and eventually himself become a Friend.
So I must confess that until this month the only thoughts I have had about Mary were admiration for her courage and powerful life of the spirit. I had a similar reaction to stories about Tom Fox, the modern day Quaker who was traveling with Christian Peacemakers in Iraq with two companions and was kidnapped by Al-Queda and eventually beheaded. Tom was a peacemaker acting on a leading for peace in the middle east. He was also deeply loved in his yearly meeting and especially among the Young Friends for whom he had served as a Friendly Adult Presense for a decade. While horrified, like most people, by the fact that he was beheaded, and deeply saddened by what seemed like the misguidedness of killing what was in reality one who came to help. I felt primarily proud of the way this Quaker had lived his life. Later, I came to know some of those who grieved deeply for him and did think about the unintended fall out of one faithfully following a leading.
I have in the past looked more seriously at this "underside" of a leading in the case of Norman Morrison who self-immolated himself at age 31 underneath Robert McNarma's office window in 1965 in protest of all the loss of innocent life in Vietnam. This caused quite a stir at the time in national media because while people had started getting use to Buddhist monk's immolating themselves in protest of the war, no American had before or after. I was too young to be aware of his death at the time, but Quakerism was still talking about it when I was old enough to understand. Norman was a Quaker; there had been no clearness committee. Was this an act of witness or an act of suicide? But most troubling to me, always, was that Norman had the youngest of his three children, Emily a toddler with him, who he had at the last moments passed off to someone before lighting himself on fire. As a therapist I can only be horrified at the trauma that surely had to create for his youngest even as she was too small to fully understand the event, and the pain that I instinctively understand was caused to a widow and her three small children. His wife Anne refused to speak publicly about it for years, not wanting to diminish the witness that he paid for with his very life, but eventually writing a book about it that revealed her deeply conflicted feelings about it and the pain and loss that she lived with. As a therapist I cannot help but notice the similarities to suicide completers who are wrapped in their pain to the point that they cannot consider the impact and pain caused to their family and friends left behind.
I have always been a big fan of leadings and looked at them as gifts from God and important missions to be carried out in the world. However, recently when my 18 year old daughter has been called to a series of civil disobedience actions that if gone text book would involve nothing more than an arrest, but if gone wrong could involve serious physical injury if not death....I began to notice the underside of leadings. There is no promise that God makes that we will be safe, or even alive. If we are content, as Mary was, to go to our death in God's arm than there is that blessing, but there is no certain protection. Somehow as I have realized this something has gone a bit upside down in me regarding leadings and the admiration of faithfulness.
Suddenly I have asked myself "what about Mary Dyer's husband?" I knew Mary was married, but it is with surprise that I realize I had never considered what did he go through? how did he feel? In the two more contemporary cases mentioned above, I have given it some thought because of hearing Friends who knew the individuals talk of the pain of the families. In Tom's case I still felt it was faithfulness, in Norman's I have more questioned whether mental illness wore the cloak of leading? So I was moved to do some research about Mary's husband. William himself was not recorded as a Friend. I learned that the first time she was sentenced to hang he wrote the Governor begging for her life, and it is widely believed that this is indeed why she was spared. He did indeed write the gov. the second time as well, but this time his request was not granted. Interestingly, in the second letter to the govenor he said of his wife's actions "it is a kind of madness". Which has left me to wonder: martyr or crazy person? Two sides of the same coin? Simply a point of perspective? It is after all often said that the line between spirituality and madness is a thin line. Emotion and spirituality dwell in the same part of the brain.
As my daughter said: "but the families are not given the same leading" Thus I am left to wonder why we never talk about William, Mary Dyer's husband....and how do we as Friends given adequate attention and support to the loved one's of those who are lead into dangers way. Among early Friends when one was called to ministry outside of their community, in confirming the leading the Meeting was agreeing to provide support to their family: to come bale the hay and watch the children, etc. Meetings gathered funds for suffering for those who were arrested for worshipping in the manner of Friends. But what support could possibly be have extended to a martyr's husband that could mend his wounds?
However, the reason Mary is so famous in American history is that it widely believed that it was the two forks of those who had come to the colonies to escape religious persecution in their countries of origin, and then the playing out of this same persecution against other American in the Massachusetts colonies, against Mary and her 2 Quaker companions, that lead the founding fathers to include freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights of the American Constitution. So it is not a hard argument to make that the Mary was lead to an act that would change history for the protection of thousands over centuries to come. Something to take joy in indeed and a rich accomplishment of a lifetime. Maybe it does take a certain kind of madness to over come the survival instinct and to make one's entire life's meaning about a certain witness?
