June 1…And summer begins.  June 1st has always marked the beginning of summer to me, I suppose it was because school was out for sure by this date and it was warm enough to sleep outside and go hiking and exploring in the mountains.  Is it the same for you?  Probably close.

I went in search of some interesting news that happened on June 1 from years ago and about all I found was war, murders, plane wrecks and assorted other ill stuff…sure there were some good things that happened as well, but they were overshadowed by the other things.

One thing that I read about was quite interesting to me and you might find it interesting as well.  In 1660 a woman was hanged for believing in God!

I thought America was brought to be, in part at least,  because people were tired of being pushed and forced to believe in God in only one or two ways and if they didn’t they got persecuted.

And so I was pretty much taken back to find out that in Massachusetts this woman named Mary Dyer was hanged for believing in the Quaker religion and way of life.  Apparently Massachusetts had passed a law forbidding Quakers from living in that state and those that were there were doing so underground.

There was such a movement in place that made the Quakers look like some sort of demons.  People made up all sorts of things about them and said them so often that others started to believe what they were being told.  In the 1630’s Mary Dyers bore a deformed stillborn child, she and her family held a private burial..a normal thing to do at the time.

Just a short time before this birth, the Dyers and another family of Quakers were banished from the state forever and when the governor learned about the burial, he had the body exhumed.  A large crowd was gathered around as the governor spoke about what he was seeing:  My source “www.wikipedia.org”;

“it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape’s; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp; two of them were above one inch long, the other two shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward; all over the breast and back full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback [i.e., a skate or ray], the navel and all the belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be, and the back and hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons.”

Now can you believe a man of such a high caliber saying these things to get people to believe the Quakers were such awful people such as not even human?

Of course because of the banishment from Massachusetts she and her family left, but her strong conviction just would not leave her and she created her own crusade to have the law banishing Quakers be removed from the books.  Against the law, she reentered the state and started her crusade and was immediately captured up and sentenced to die unless she repented…which she refused to do.

At the gallows, she was given one more chance to repent and when she refused they pulled the chair out from under her feet…that happened on June 1, 1660.

The one thing that made the Quakers different than the other religions in that area and time was that they believed that God could converse with individual people and His word did not have to be filtered down to them through another person like a clergy man.

How far have we come since then?  That was in the 1600’s.

—————-

So the beginning of summer also means weeds, harvesting and fishing!  I’m all for the last of that!  Today is a weed day for me.  It’s also a harvesting day…the strawberrys are coming on!  What about fishing?  I’m ready!

Bears Butt

June 1, 2013