What could The Wordy Shipmates have to do with America today: Part 3

Unfortunatley, this is going to be the conclusion on the blogs about Sarah Vowell's book, The Wordy Shipmates. There is a big part in the book that I believe deserves it's own blog. The Puritans had gotten into a war called The Pequot War. It happened between 1634 and 1638, and it was a monstrosity. "The Pequot War is a pure war. And by pure I don't mean good. I mean it is a war straight up, a war set off by murder and vengeance and fueled by misunderstanding, jealousy, hatred, stupidity, racism, lust for power, lust for land, and most of all, greed, all of it headed toward a climax of slaughter." (pg. 166). There isn't a better way to put it.

The first thing that I noticed about this war is that the Dutch seemed to have started it. Backing up, it started out of trade. Everyone wants to make the most money out of trading, so they fight eachother over land and people to barter with. Now, you could say the Pequot had started the war for they killed the first people. But a war can't be one way. As soon as the Dutch retaliated by killing the principal sachem of the Pequot, the start of the violence had begun. The retaliation from the Dutch is why it makes sense that they started the War. The interesting thing about this statement is that this is all I truly remember about the Dutch. They started it, but they don't stick around through the war.

After, the Pequots decided to get their revenge. They killed another Dutch man, but the only problem was that he wasn't Dutch, he was English. This is where the Puritans get involved. Unfortunatley, the start of the war between the Puritans and the Pequots was stupid. The Pequots had murdered a man who was banished from the community, why should the Puritans care. Pride. They cared because of pride. Who cares that he wasn't allowed to step foot in the community again, he was still English and the Pequots should pay. That is ridiculus, but that is war. "The Pequot War is just that- a destructive tantrum brought on by an accumulation of aggravation." (pg. 172).

The Pequot War continues with little fights and fatalities along the way, until the English decided to end it. While the war was going on, the English had formed an alliance with two other tribes, the Mohegan and the Narragansett, who wanted the Pequot gone. Then, on May 25th, 1637, The three alliances made their way to the Mystic River. There was where a little community of Pequots were living in a fort. Capitan John Mason had his army ambush the Pequots and set fire to their home. Every Pequot (including women and children) was burned alive. This was pure evil. This wasn't how I would have imagined the Puritans in the begining of the book. The very seal that the Puritans adopted was a native american asking if the puritans could help them. Is this what the Puritans call helping?

To make matters worse, John Underhill, who fought in the war, uses the Bible to explain what they did. "When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man... there He hath no respect to persons, but harrows them and saws them and puts them to the sword and the most terrible death that may be." Even children? Yes. "Sometimes," Underhill continues, "the scripture declareth women and children must perish along with their parents." He concludes, "We had sufficient light from the word of God for out preceedings." (pg. 194). This is right up there with George W. Bush saying that we are invading Irag because they have weapons of mass destruction, and then finding none. This is just a huge "God told me to" type of thing, that is the reason the Enghlish told their fellow fighters that they had to kill innocents.

Finally, my last piece is about Thanksgiving. Kids love Thanksgiving. You get to eat lots of food, see your family, and get a break from school. Well, this isn't how Thanksgiving really was. It didn't happen once a year with the Puritans, it happened whenever the occasion called for a celebration. Celebrations are great for harvests and good things, but a celebration for slaughtering people, including innocents? We would never do that. That just goes to show how a tradition can change over time. I would like to say how the America today would never be as ruthless as killing innocent people, but if I did I would be lying.

What could The Wordy Shipmate have to do with America today: Part 2

Following from where we left off, this gets very emotional. On September 11th, 2001, the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists and the Twin Towers fell. This was the most significant tragedy in my life. Sarah Vowell also reflects on what she dealt with. She talks about what she would see and what she actually did. "When the local TV news announced that rescue workers sorting through the rubble in search of survivors were in need of toothpaste, half my block, having heard that there was finally something we could actually do besides worry and grieve, had already cleaned out the most popular name brands at the corner deli..." (pg. 52). Everyone during that tragedy was helping everyone else in their time of need. If the Puritans could have seen this they would of been proud. This is what I think the Puritans would be like, helping eachother out when necessary. This is what John Winthrop strived for with his speech A Model of Christian Charity. He told all of the puritans that were going to be in his community to help one another, and treat eachother with love and respect.

The next part in this blog has help from a man named Mario Cuomo. He speaks to Ronald Reagan, telling him to not look only for the city on a hill, but in the citites that aren't on that hill. "He points out that the country is in "the worst recession since 1932," and that the two-hundred-billion-dollar federal budget deficit is the "largest in the history of the universe." He blurts, "We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it." He channels Winthrop and defines a proper government as "the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings." (pg. 62). Wow, that was a long quote, but I believe that it is all relevant. What Cuomo describes America of doing was what the Puritans didn't want happening. He then went on to say excatly what Winthrop said with his speech. He talks about the "body" when he mentions the whole. The begining half was when all the body parts weren't working together, instead of the ending half. Which would you want? If we kept our body parts from working together, where would we end up? We should try instead to bond together, and work as a whole. This way we can be less guilty about our actions.

Tune in next time for, What could The Wordy Shipmates have to do with America today: Part 3,

The conclusion to a three part blog

What could The Wordy Shipmates have to do with America today: Part 1

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell is a witty account of the puritans immigrating into New England after leaving their homes in jolly old England. This blog is going to have more than one post and will be labled as parts 1, 2, 3, 4, ect. The whole point of this is to talk about the pieces in Vowell's book that, even though they happened in the 1600's, they can relate to the 2000's.

Let me start by saying that the puritans were some of our ancestors, Vowell, on page 57, actually calls them " our medieval people." Since we evolved from them, we still keep some of the same ways of life. A big thing that stayed from the puritans is religion. Although we do have lots of people that still worship God in America, one way we have changed is that he isn't the only one. We have many people that worship other gods or no god at all. This wouldn't have been allowed back in the 1630's. I have something to say about religion. It caused the puritans to leave their home, as well as cause many wars through out all of time, especially now in the 21st century. Religion can be great, but it can be awful. Religion can be a gateway to power for some people. Power hungry individuals can take control of religion. Like Vowell points out in her book, Henry VIII made a separated church so he could be free of the Pope and get divorced from his wife. This is also the thing going on with today. Religion isn't just about you and your God anymore. With the climbing rate of divorce, people have been defying the sanctimony of marriage. Refering back to the power hungry, religion is causing wars over in the Middle East. Think back to the Crusades that was over religion and the Church. Religion can be a beautiful thing if worshiped correctly, but if it is misused, it can create monstrosities.

For these blogs I have decided to take it in an organized way. I am just going to go through the book in order, and whatever I feel needs to be talked about, I'll say something. After getting through with religion (which for puritans is BIG), there was something partially funny. Vowell started making references to what she called "the sitcom puritans." She talked about how sitcoms made episodes about puritan life and used a tone of what she calls "Boy, people used to be so stupid." She talks about an episde of Bewitched when the main character brings a pen into the Salem Witch Trials and they want to execute her, "Check out those barbarian idiots with their cockamamie farce of a legal system, locking people up for fishy reasons and putting their criminals to death. Good thing Americans put and end to all that nonsense long ago." (pg. 20). That statement hit me. Of course we still do that (which I believe was her point), that's excatly what we are doing now with all of the "terrorists" that we confiscate.

Another thing that was brought up was when Vowell talks about Calvinism (the category the puritans fall into), "... Max Weber to coin the term "Protestant work ethic" to describe the Puritans' legacy of rolled-up sleeves." (pg. 44). It is true that puritans were hard workers. You can say the same about America, and then you can't. You can say the same about America because some people in this country will work their hands to the bone, yet you also have the lazy people who would rather sleep than work. Personally, in Vermont, I have seen examples of both of these. This is the issue with all of the healthcare topics going around. Healthcare sounds great for everyone, but for the people who don't work, where does that money come from? The people who are working their hardest would have to pay taxes so the people who don't do anything all day get their "free" healthcare. It would just be easier if everyone work their hardest, what John Winthrop wanted.

Tune in next time for, What could the Wordy Shipmates have to do with America today: Part 2

Let's get together and feel all right- the Winthrop way

John Winthrop made the most important speech of his life on board the Arbella, in 1630. He and the rest of the puritans that were on that ship were traveling to New England to start anew. They didn't like the way religion was being abused, and decided to build their own community where they could keep their religion "in check." At the moment, no one had listened to Winthrop's speech. Now, hundreds of years later, scholars look back and figure out that what he was saying was powerful. It was decided that people should listen to what he had to say. Winthrop had great advice on keeping the community together and making sure nothing would dismantle what they came to New England to build. Acting like a scholar, there are a couple of pieces in his speech that I want to discuss.

Withrops first piece in the speech was to tell the people that there should be a balance in life between the social standings, "...some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission." (pg. 1). Hearing someone speak like that would cause the listener to believe that Withrop wasn't the nicest person. Those words sound cruel, as if some people are just meant to be working for someone. I on the other hand, believe that Withrop didn't mean it like that at all. He believed that if there were people in different social classes, then everyone might get along better for they would all need each other. "Thirdly, that every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection." (pg. 2). Winthrop spoke for awhile on different things that a person could do to act more brotherly to someone. He talked about giving whatever was needed to someone while also keeping the respect of that person if they could pay back the loan. "He who shutteth his ears from hearing the cry of the poor, he shall cry and shall not be heard." (pg. 5). Winthrop wanted everyone to be in need of each other and to share as one, so that they would be closer. If they were close then they would never break apart, causing the goal that they were trying to reach to become unattainable. Is that so wrong to ask?

A second point that Withrop wanted people to listen to was an analogy about the Church of Christ acting as one body. "The several parts of his body considered a part before they were united, were as disproportionate and as much disordering as so many contrary qualities or elements, but when Christ comes, and by his spirit and love knits all these parts to himself and each to other, it is become the most perfect and best proportioned body in the world (Eph. 4:15-16)." (pg. 5). What Winthrop is saying as how I interpret it, is that first, you get a whole bunch of different people (the limbs) together. Next, you figure out that if you put all of the people togther is makes a community (the body). Now, the body is a little disfigured and doesn't look right. But, if you get Christ into the body then he adds the soul. This ties every piece of the body together, and makes it whole and perfect. He also goes on to speak about sharing the emotions between people, which is what a body would do. This is a great analogy that Winthrop puts together. That is exactly what we need to do with our economic and climate change crisises. We all need to band together as one body, and figure it out. If people are in for themselves instead of the whole, then nothing will be fixed.

Thirdly, Whithrop makes a great show about how Love is the main ingredient of survival for these puritans. He believes that love is in you from the day you are born and that you should express it. He states that love is both inward and outward which is ingenius. You have to love your brother, but first you need to love yourself. This makes sense. People who are going into therapy sessions today are learning this. If you don't love or appreciate yourself you won't do the same for someone else. Winthrop states in his section on love that, "It never gives, but it always recieves with advantage." (pg. 7). You cannot just have someone's love, you have to earn it.

Finally, there is Winthrop's most famous part of his speech, the picture of his communtiy being as a "city upon a hill". This picture was used by more than one preseident in talking about America. " For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of the people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world." (pg. 10). This quote can be interpreted in different ways. The first way is saying how Withrop has a brillant way of expressing what he wants his community to be like. He wants a "perfect" city in which everyone does great things so God looks down on them and is proud. This is a good goal to strive for. The other way it can be interpreted is that the second half of the quote could be seen as a threat. It isn't an unrealistic threat, since Winthrop truly believes that this is what will happen if they fail, and putting it into the speech will hopefully make any dreamers imagining an easy life snap out of it. This isn't easy. It's going to take hard work and people need to be ready for it. They are trying something new and if they fail, life is over.

It is sad to know that no one listened to Withrop's speech. His wisdom over these points above can be related to any time period. If people take this advice and try to follow what he said the world might become a better place. If it spread wide and strong enough there could be no more violence, and everyone could just get along. Winthrop wanted his community to band together in unity, love eachother, worship God, and feel great about doing all of it. In his speech, John Winthrop could of put it the way Bob Marley did, "Let's get togther and feel all right."