#27: TAMING THE DRAGONS, Story 4 - Mary

I'm releasing Taming The Dragons, available in 2020—originally published by HarperCollins. This excerpt is from the Martyr section, illustrating that there is always redemption when the choice ot martyr ourselves is our own.
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MARY

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

- John 15:12, 13 (RSV)

The Puritans, fleeing religious persecution in England, came to the American colonies to preach religious freedom, yet in that “freedom” they committed unspeakable horrors against the Quakers. In a text we don’t often read in the study of our history, we come to words too shy to speak full truth:

"William Brend, though the oldest of the band of [Quaker] missionaries, was called to pass through the most cruel sufferings that were meted out in Boston to any prisoner. The tale is too awful to tell in detail, but the inhumanity can be judged from the fact that one incident in his round of torture consisted of one hundred and seventeen blows on his bare back with a tarred rope. He was found dying— “his body having turned cold” and “his flesh having rotted...” John Norton, however, was still stout in his remorseless attitude, saying of William Brend: “He endeavored to beat the gospel ordinances black and blue, and it was but just to beat him black and blue.”

Things deteriorated quickly in Boston. Quakers were fined in excess of £1,000, their were ears cut off, their children sold. Holes were bored through their tongues,they were imprisoned without food or heat, chained to logs, laid neck and heels in irons, publicly whipped, “H” for Heretic burnt into their hands. Their appeals to England were denied, their houses and land seized, atrocities culminating until, finally, in 1658, the clergy of the Massachusetts Colony executed a law that, after railing and abuse against the Quakers, stated:

“And the said person, being convicted to be of the sect of the Quakers, shall be sentenced to banishment, upon pain of death.”

The test wasn’t long in coming. In August of 1659 a Quaker minister by the name of Mary Dyer went to Boston to request a repeal. She was apprehended, tried, and banished upon pain of death. But the day she was released a colleague was apprehended and imprisoned. Mary Dyer turned right around and went back. This time, William Robinson and Marmeduke Stephenson joined her.

All three were brought before the General Court on October 19, 1659, and asked by the Governor why they had come. To request the repeal of the unrighteous law, Mary stated again, “in obedience to the call of the Lord.” With that “affrontive” reply, Governor Endicott chose to back his edict. “Hearken, you shall be led back to the place from whence you came and from thence to the place of execution,” he thundered, “to be hanged on the gallows till you are dead!”

“Take her away, Marshall!” screamed Endicott.

“Yea, joyfully,” said Mary, “shall I go.”

October 27, 1659, they were marched to the gallows. William, Marmeduke, Mary between them, held hands. “Are you not ashamed,” an official accosted Mary, “to walk thus between two young men?”

“No, this is to me the hour of the greatest joy I ever had in this world.”

The men were hung first, then Mary took her place, arms bound, now legs, now the handkerchief laid over her face, and finally now the noose about her neck. Suddenly, “Reprieve!”

Actually, the Court never intended to hang her. Governor John Winthrop of nearby Connecticut had pleaded on his knees before the Boston magistrates not to hang the Quakers. They let him have Mary, with this order written into the records:

It is ordered that the said Mary Dyer shall have liberty for forty-eight hours to depart out of this Jurisdiction, after which time, being found therein, she is to be forthwith executed. And it is further ordered that she shall be carried to the place of execution and there to stand upon the gallows with a rope about her neck until the Rest be executed; and then to return to the prison and remain as aforesaid.

But Mary Dyer refused to accept her life—so long as the law of death against her people remained. She returned for a third time in May to appear before the next General Court.

“Are you the same Mary Dyer that was here before?” Governor Endicott asked.

“I am the same.”

“You will own yourself a Quaker, will you not?”

“I own myself to be reproachfully so called.”

“This is no more than what thou saidst before. But now, it is to be executed.”

“I came in obedience to the will of God at your last General Court, desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death; and that same is my word now, and earnest request, although I told you that if you refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of His servants to witness against them.”

One more time marched to the gallows, one more time arms bound, now feet, now noose about her neck “We will not hang you,” said the authorities, “if you will promise to go home, back to Rhode Island.” I wonder what her thoughts might have been. No one knows, but we do know what she said.

“Nay, I cannot. In obedience to the will of the Lord God I came and in His will I abide faithful to death.”

Mary Dyer died that day in Boston, May 21, 1660. A minister of the Gospel, she chose to sacrifice herself that others might live. That day the governor and clergymen rejoiced, but the people who had witnessed the brutality did not. A petition was sent to England. Because of Mary Dyer, who committed herself thrice to die that others might live, religious persecution was immediately and henceforth stopped. By edict of King Charles.

Today a bronze statue of Mary Dyer stands on Boston’s capitol grounds, within sight of the Commons where she was hung, a larger than life reminder to us all that there is always redemption in sacrifice—when the choice, once, twice, thrice, to give is ours.

#26: TAMING THE DRAGONS, Story 3 - Christine

I'm releasing Taming The Dragons, available in 2020--originally published by HarperCollins. This excerpt is from the Innocent section, Story 23.

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CHRISTINE

So now, since you have been made right in God’s sight by faith in His promises, we can have real peace with him because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

For because of our faith, He has brought us into His place of highest privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to actually becoming all that God has had in mind for us to be.

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to be patient.

And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady. Then, when that happens, we are able to hold our heads high no matter what happens and know that all is well, for we know how dearly God loves us, and we feel this warm love everywhere within us because God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.

- Romans 5:1-5

MY COUSINS WERE ALMOST HOME, pushing their bikes up the last of the hill. It was a winter evening early in the new year of 1974, and a slight drizzle hurried them along; Patty was thirteen, Christine eleven. Lights from the kitchen window could be seen through the trees. Nearly home.

A car driven by a young man blinded by the setting sun came suddenly gunning up over the ridge. Patty ran the half block home screaming. Uncle Stan, the town doctor, was paged. Christine had been in an accident.

Seventeen hundred miles away and a few days later, I came home late from work. A letter from my folks was in the mailbox. “I’m sorry to be the one to break the news,” my mother wrote, “but Christine was killed today while riding her bike home for supper.”

I let the letter fall to the floor, my eyes automatically sliding to the wall where I’d hung a small hooked rug Christine and I had made together a few summers before. It was all I had of my sweet little cousin. “Oh, Christine,” I wept, tears stinging the moment I buried my face into the dusty wool. I beat my fists against the rug and cried into her careful work. She was dead because—why? Such a needless, pointless death! I was inconsolable for days.

Then came a second letter from my mother. “Uncle Stan,” she wrote, “went into Christine’s room after everything was over and sat down at the new little table he’d gotten her for Christmas. Her Bible was open. She’d been reading it before going off to school that morning, and she’d underlined the first five verses of Romans 5.”

So now, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith in his promises, we can have real peace with him because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us…

Christine spoke from heaven. Evil receded.

....we are able to hold our heads high no matter what happens and know that all is well, for we know how dearly God loves us… (LV)

Evil slid back further, finally to vanish in the victory of God’s ultimate promise. We are not without hope, even though none of live in the Garden of Eden anymore.

#25: TAMING THE DRAGONS, STORY 2: Innocent--Lucy

I'm releasing Taming The Dragons, available in July--originally published by HarperCollins. This excerpt is from the Innocent section, Story 2.

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No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he also provides a way out so that you can stand up under it.

- I Corinthians 10:13 (NIV) 

SOMETIMES WE USE THIS VERSE to deny the power of evil, but by doing so we let evil reign. Interpreting the word “temptation" to mean circumstances or events, or crushing stress, rather than what it does mean—temptation to do wrong—we blind ourselves to people’s burdens too heavy to bear. Erroneously assured in our minds that God will not allow too much stress to accumulate in a neighbor’s life, we sit back and allow our neighbor to suffer more than he or she can withstand.

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the novel that sparked the Civil War by exposing the evils of slavery, Tom watches a Christian woman kill herself in despair.

Mr. Haley is the slave trader. At one spot along the Mississippi River, while taking his “gang” south to sell, he leaves the steamboat to bring aboard a slave woman chirruping happily to her ten-month-old baby. She tells Tom she's on her down to Louisville to be hired out to work in the same tavern as her husband. Haley interrupts; he's bought her and is selling her South.

So instead of going to live with her husband, she'll never see him again. At Louisville, the distraught Lucy tucks her sleeping baby into a corner and runs to the front rails of the boat in hope of catching a last glimpse of a husband she’ll never again see. While her back is turned, Haley sells her baby for forty-five dollars to a man who slips away unseen.

Harriet Beecher Stowe pounces on the Northern reader for turning a blind eye to such evil. “The trader,” she wrote, “had arrived at that stage of Christian…perfection which has been recommended by some preachers…of the north…in which he had completely overcome every humane weakness and prejudice. His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and mine could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation. The wild look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast upon him might have disturbed one less practiced; but he was used to it. He had seen that same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my friend.…”

Tom tries to comfort Lucy, to tell her of a caring Jesus. But, says Stowe, “the ear was deaf with anguish.”

“O! what shall I do?” Lucy moans in the black of night. “O Lord! O good Lord, do help me!” At midnight Tom awakes, feels a stir of air, then a brush past his shoulder. In the silence of the night he hears the splash. When he looks, Lucy’s place on the deck is empty.

Today we don’t have slavery. We have refugees fleeing for their lives, children kidnapped from their parents at the border and housed in concentration camps. We have a whole new working poor in the world’s wealthiest country. We have sexual discrimination, gender bias, and whole cities where crime, violence, and despair are as common as safety, peace, and hope are to white, middle-class Americans.

But like the Northerners of 1852, and like Haley the slave trader, we’ve grown so used to the face of evil “out there, down there” that the anguish no longer means anything. Evil runs rampant, and people—even Christians like Lucy—kill themselves (or go crazy, or get sick, or live emotionally paralyzed lives) from the despair of it all.

Sometimes the burden is too great to bear, and like the Northerners we can’t rest in religious triteness because for others “the ear is deaf with anguish.” We need to wake up because NONE OF US LIVE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN ANYMORE.

#24: TAMING THE DRAGONS STORY 1: Innocent--Mary

I'm releasing Taming The Dragons for online sales, available in July--originally published by HarperCollinsSanFrancisco. The book has 8 sections. In each, I introduce a specific choice women have when facing conflict, tell nine stories of women who made that choice, and then conclude with further information about what it means to be an Orphan, Pilgrim, Martyr, and Wizard. 

This excerpt is from the Innocent section, Story 1

MARY'S Story

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your habitation,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
For He give His angels charge of you to guard you
in all your ways.
On their bands they will bear you up,
lest you will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Because he cleaves to me in love,

I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because be knows my name.

- Psalm 91:9-14 (RSV)

“I AWOKE e shortly after midnight, and within minutes I’d been shot and my house burglarized. My life turned completely upside down.”

Mary was asleep in bed with her three-and-a-half-year-old son when an intruder broke into her home through a bathroom window. Her husband was working the night shift as an airplane pilot. “Because of a previous burglary attempt,” she reported, “I’d been praying for the ability to quickly discern good from evil.” In God’s answer to prayer, she awoke the night of April 15, 1989, sensing something amiss. She called 911 only moments before the intruder forced his way through her bedroom door and shot her in the face. She remembers feeling strangely detached and overwhelmed as she folded to the floor. “I kept talking in a soft voice, saying, ‘Please go away. Please go away.’”

Mary, a member of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington, didn’t live in the Garden of Eden, and for her, evil invaded the safety of even her own home. “I felt the struggle between good and evil,” she told me. “But as I lay there, watching the pool of blood grow larger and larger, I felt like God was dealing with that person, not me.” The paramedics arrived and her son, awake by now, said, “You better get a Band-Aid. My mommy has an owie on her head.” Hearing his voice, Mary wondered if she’d live to see him again. “Even so,” she said, “I felt really calm. I felt God was with me.”

Evil lurks and even strikes, yet there is a bigger truth. God is with us. In the midst of Mary’s trouble, God answered. He was there. He gave her peace. And he himself dealt with the evil raging all around. So while the Psalmist may sing “no evil shall befall you,” two stanzas down he also sings, “when he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble.”

Mary had been praying for discernment between good and evil, and before evil could strike, she woke in time to call for help. In the days that followed, the police, medics, and hospital staff, who seldom see victims survive a gunshot wound to the head, were astounded. A miracle unfolded before their eyes, for Mary lived.

And because she lived we know God is still with us, even though we don’t live in the Garden of Eden anymore.

#23 - When the Someone Else Takes Over

I SOMETIMES LIVE in a small community of SE Alaska. I used to come up here for work; now I come for friendship and the solidarity of divergent people. Polarized politics, different work ethics, varied lifestyles, religious disparities, over-the-top personalities. These things don't matter between us. The greater good prevails. And it’s the perfect place for a woman whose mother has early stages of dementia.

I’ll call the mother Sally. She’s my friend. We see each other at morning coffee and sometimes senior lunch. The other day at lunch I had my phone out, texting back and forth with someone else over when I might stop by afterward. It sat between Sally and I. But when I went to get up, it was gone. “Hey, anyone seen my phone?"

I’d been warned. Once Sally tried to take a whole stack of menus from the Sweet Tooth. One day I watched her try to tuck a spoon from the Smoothies shop into her pocket book. Another time, she picked up a plastic cup. “You can leave that here,” her daughter said when she came to pick Sally up, no big deal, just taking it from her hand and putting it back on the table. I can’t imagine what life would be like for Sally in the Lower 48. Would someone try to have her arrested?

Up here, though, she’s safe. Her daughter, I’ll call her Nora, can drop Sally off and go to work, and let the rest of us manage the complexities for a bit.

But what was I to do about my phone?

The first step was to confirm where it was.

“Does anyone have a phone I can use to ring myself?” I asked the group.

No one.

I went into the kitchen. “Renata? Do you have your phone?”

“I do.”

“Can you call me? I think my phone’s in Sally’s pocket.”

“Ahh…” A knowing look came into her eye.

My phone answered from where I thought it would. Deb and Wilma and I pretended to try and track the sound. I was hoping Sally would figure it out; she didn’t have a clue. Finally Deb said, “Sally! It’s in your pocket!”

Puzzled, Sally put in her hand and pulled out my phone. She was flummoxed. I put my arm around her. We all laughed and gave her a smile, but Sally began to get agitated and walked about, retreating into herself. I finally had to get her and bring her back to the table. “Sit ye doon,” I said, bringing out a poor imitation of my mother's favorite Scottish idiom. We bantered back and forth. She calmed down. Then she leaned toward me and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

I thought my heart would break.

We live hard lives, but I can’t imagine a harder one than that of dementia. My mother died of it. I've see it in others. It’s a cruel disease that steals us from ourselves and we find other peoples' phones in our pockets. But where I sometimes live, there is an eclectic collection of people who help bring Sally back to herself whenever she's confronted with that "dark someone else" who is determined to take over. And sadly someday will.

#22--Barbie Doll & Missing Body Parts

After breast cancer and mangled attempts at reconstruction, I was looking a bit like Birch Bay Drive (where I used to live) after a vicious storm took the road out. My friend Judy was a buoy during the storm, keeping my head above water. But she wasn't a lot of help when the tide went out and it was time to face the damage. No one was. And I wasn't about to take my clothes off just to show folks exactly what we're dealing with here.

Here's the truth, and trust me. I am throw-up-to-look-at ugly. My body is nothing Michelangelo would ever sculpt, or DaVinci paint. Lying through my teeth in front of a mirror with daily "affirmations" contrary to reality is less than helpful, a useless escape into some fantasy land I refuse to enter. Truth? I don't recognize the mangled body I've been left, all torn apart, disconnecting me from myself. What was this stuff from my neck down? Where did I go? Judy and all my other friends had no idea how to help me. But one of my doctors assured me many women feel exactly like this.

Look at it this way, she told me. As we age, time slowly allows us to adjust to a different body. One gray hair at a time, one more wrinkle. A pain in the hip. A kink in the knee. But when we undergo radical removal of body parts, our minds can't process the all-at-once shock. It's a defense mechanism in order to function in the horror. "It takes women, on average, a year or more to begin feeling connected to themselves. "Give yourself time," she said. "It'll happen."

And so I accepted the ugliness and my disconnect.

The other day at breakfast in Skagway, AK, Ken-with-the-blue-coat started talking about when--once upon a time, a long time ago--he was in charge of showing the Red Onion strippers what he was learning at a terrorist class over at the firehall. I butted in and tut-tutted, "My-my-my, but aren't you the regular little Ken doll!"

Doug leaned over and whispered something about a Barbie doll, and my friend Judy, across the table, gave me a look and burst out laughing. "Yea, Brenda a Barbie doll, all right! Barbie with missing body parts, you mean!"

The image of a Barbie with her breasts cut off struck me so funny I guffawed. That set Judy off. Egged on, I cracked up, the guys beside us clueless as to what was so freaking hilarious. "Bet you never thought you'd see the day," wheezed Judy, "when you'd laugh about this!"

"No I did not! Ha-ha," I laughed, giving her a high five. Another high-five.

And just like that, I found my way through the rubble to the other side. My head connected to my body.

Devastation yes, but with friends, finally, a way through the rubble.