Bradstreet & Balance

Anne Bradstreet particularly addresses one of the questions I asked during my reading: How did the Puritans integrate spiritual values with the demands of day-to-day life?  Must a Puritan renounce all things of the world?  On one hand, Bradstreet fights temptations to value too highly her worldly possessions and to pursue “fleshly” desires.  As she describes dramatically in “The Flesh and the Spirit,” the spirit should always win over the flesh in internal struggles.  On the other hand, she dearly loves many things in the earth, especially her family and her home.  
 

Her poetry shows that the divide between flesh and spirit is complex.  While she yearns for heaven and rejects the earth, she still cherishes her loved ones, her possessions, and her own health.  For instance, she writes passionate poems to her husband.  The balance lies in making God the priority, a balance achieved through continual self-examination.  One must ask: do I still love God more than all?  And, will I surrender willingly whatever he wishes to take away? 

The test, Bradstreet discovers, is whether she continues to praise God in times of loss.  She expresses palpable grief and real discouragement, yet she stirringly turns bad situations into professions of faith.  She sincerely ascribes to the Puritan belief that afflictions are a form of God’s love, to draw one closer to Him.  Affliction is the rod of a loving Father, wielded out of love and for her good.

What shall I render to my God
For all His bounty showed to me?
Even for His mercies in His rod,
Where pity most of all I see.

-“Deliverance from Another Sore Fit”