I often think of the statue of Mary Dyer outside the Massachusetts state house in Boston.

Of course, it is a public statue of a important American woman who witnessed to religious liberty through word and action.

A worthy subject for public art and memory.

But there's more to the story.

Dyer was a Quaker. In the 1650s, as Puritan government in MA was being challenged on several fronts, Gov Endicott made saw Quakerism a threat to the political order and succeeded in making the religion of "the cursed sect of heretics" illegal in the colony.

MA denied entry to the colony to Quakers, forcing them to go back home (whether England or another colony) or face fines, torture, and prison.

Punishment increased if a Quaker entered MA Bay Colony multiple times.

Of course, the Quakers wouldn't have this. They felt compelled by their faith to preach the doctrine of the Inner Light - which terrified the Puritan establishment - and the freedom of conscience.

Mary Dyer was persistent in preaching what she believed to be true - and insisted on the right of women to preach! Puritan authorities never liked her doctrine or that a woman was proclaiming it. She was arrested, banished, arrested, banished, etc.

After her third arrest, the Puritans sentenced her to death. They executed her by hanging on June 1, 1660.

Three hundred years later, in 1959, her statue was erected at the MA State House, overlooking the site where they'd hanged her. The inscription reads:

"My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of truth."

In other words, the state put up a statue to one of its most innocent victims.

Not the theocratic overlords who murdered Mary Dyer.

And that's why I keep thinking of Mary Dyer's statue.

It is more than possible to re-remember history. To turn the narrative on its head, to say "our ancestors were wrong and those whom they victimized were right."

If you are ever in Boston, go and gaze at her face. There's a kind of contemplative courage radiating from the statue. There's a truthfulness alive in her witness still.

Mary Dyer will haunt you forever in all the right ways and for the right reasons.