The Puritan Reading/outside reading...Crystal Cyr

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I went on a weekend road trip to Boston. On the way we explored a town called Mystic, Connecticut. It is a quaint New England port town. I took my Landscapes of the Sacred book, hoping to get some journal entries done while on our trip. In Lane's book I noticed a chapter called, "The Puritan Reading." It contained much about the landscapes of New England. The part of the chapter I found most fascinating and saw definite remnants of still today was, "The Ordering of Towns." It was a very early model for town planning (Lane). The plan detailed the different zones in a quintessential New England town. The focal point or axis mundi of the town was the church or meetinghouse, where the townsfolk gathered to worship. "The ordering of Towns," goes on to detail the six circles of the town starting with the church as the first, or the center of the bullseye. The sixth, and final sphere is the, "swamps and rubbish waste grounds."

I found it interesting, as Christine and I traveled through New England, that this pattern may still be observed in many of the New England towns. Mystic was no different. The town is built with a large white church in the center and has swampy woodland areas on the outskirts of town. Boston is the same too. Although it is a large city, you can still see the church spires rising from the center of the city as you approach it. Even the towns directly outside of Boston, such as Medford,looked like they had once been smaller towns, as they also had churches and bustling shops in the center.

When comparing the New England landscape to where I grew up, in Indiana, I found it to be quite different. Nowadays the downtown areas that contain the old churches are disappearing. Fort Wayne, Indiana is a good example of this. Most of the people live on the outskirts of the city, in the suburbs. This has created a sort of doughnut effect. You can still see the spires of the churches in the center of town, however, the people no longer live near the churches. The downtown area is not a bustling center of business as it is in the New England towns. Is this a sign that people are not only physically moving away from the church, but also mentally and spiritually? Church attendance has definitely declined since the inception of the Mid-Western town. People do not seem to have a high regard for the center or axis mundi of the town any more. The townspeople have built on and moved to the,"swamps," which were initially intended for the purpose of, "providing the surrounding disorder within which the town would find its identity." How will the people find order and identity, when the outskirts of town have been harnessed, manicured, drained of what was once a mystical, untamed wilderness? Is this part of the scientific revolution? Perhaps, since people no longer believe in the mystical, they also do not hold the center in high esteem. It is a frightening thought that people have used science and progress to conquer the wilderness and what was once considered mythical. Is the wilderness outside of town being conquered by suburban life a sign that people are moving away from God and the church, which seemed to be at the focal point of many small towns pre-World War II? I am definitely interested in examining this question further.