Tradition

I wouldn’t say that I am against tradition really.

 I am not a holiday person though.

I am an ordinary-day person.

I love my life and (with plenty of privilege at my disposal) I have fashioned it in a way that suits me. For almost all of my existence on this planet, I have enjoyed my own space, which is perhaps another way of saying my own states of rhythm, of organization, of undress. Holidays are at odds with this sumptuous, solitudinous, self-governance. They descend onto the world as declarations insisting that my home and my mood must shift overnight even if I was heretofore quite pleased with the way things were arranged.  I have never cared much for external insistence upon my life. I imagine, hereditarily speaking, I come by this hesitation to be ordered honestly.  

We happen to be in the midst of the liturgical season that I cherish most, and though a liturgical season might strictly be only holiday adjacent, it is certainly a keeping of tradition. Advent is not something that I celebrated as a young child in my Southern Baptist circles. Christmas was the only thing that mattered there—an insufferably bright time where gaudy lights on homes and businesses were somehow meant to remind everyone ever and always of the good news of Jesus Christ. But where, I wondered, was the acknowledgment that the world was in need of this testimony on account, as the hymn goes, of the

BLEAK

MIDWINTER

—all the misery that precedes and, in fact, surrounds glad tidings and great cheer?

I was 22 when I learned about Advent as I sat in a little flat on dark December evenings in a country called Kyrgyzstan halfway around the world from my so-called “real life”. I was reading a book called Girl Meets God by the estimable and lovely Lauren Winner a woman who has introduced me to many ancient and yet new to me ways of engaging faith. Advent, I found, was the shadowy corridor and the dim waiting room that mirrored the world I actually lived in—a Santa-less, seemingly saviorless place with cracks of light breaking through and giving birth to moments of wonder and her sister, hope.

I observed the season for the first time that year with my roommate Alana and our new friend Liora, who was staying with us for a couple of weeks while she found new lodging. We decided that I would offer an Advent lesson and Liora would give a Hannukah teaching each evening while we three were shut up together as snow fell to the ground night after night piling beneath our living room window. Or, perhaps we alternated evenings, or maybe it was once a week and not every single night. It’s been 18 years. The details escape me in a way the essence never has. We were young women mingling our traditions, new and old, in ways that kept us each warm when we were far from home. I’m sure some of the folks that raised us might have balked at our ramshackle approach. I believe our menorah was made of potatoes. Our candles were almost certainly the “wrong” colors.  But in the wisdom of our girlhood, we sensed this was as sacred and as silly as any other tradition.

And it wasn’t simply because this was some alternative slice of our lives. It was because we were allowed to bring our full selves and circumstances to that particular moment in our growth and development. Holidays come each year at the same time, but we are new people for each iteration. That year in Kyrgyzstan we were each holding on to and letting go of aspects of our religious identities. Two of us were mending broken hearts--yearning for boys who were leaving us behind. One of us was falling in love. We were all a year older than we’d ever been before for these celebrations and we decided to take a few weeks in December to look back and forward together.

Tradition can be a way of whispering,

“let us not forget to reset,”

“ to remember,”

“to retry.”

 Let’s make a date of it, in fact.” I love that impulse. But with too firm a grip, tradition can just as easily become a way of shouting,

 “stop wishing,”

 “stop imagining,”

“stop growing and becoming something new.”

 “We have already discovered and decided what is best for us all. The time for considering has come and gone, and so sorry Dear if you weren’t born or present, or free, or included when the decisions got made.”

I think we can abandon the latter approach while holding on to the former. Resurrection only occurs if we let something go. Then again something only lives on if we keep tending to it. It’s a tricky little dance, but with time and practice we get the hang of it.

A dear friend asked me recently why I have continued to hold on to my tradition of attending church long after letting go of some of the ideological ideas and practices that it burdened me with. It is a good question. One worth considering and considering again.

“I go for the lament,” I told him which is true. I happen to attend church at a place and with a people who mourn well—our prayers are often solemn. We have one for the days when there has been a mass shooting.We have one for Mother’s day—recognizing that some among us are motherless children and others of us are childless mothers. We repeat the same words over and over writing them on our spirits.

Until,

we learn or decide or wonder if there might be a new way to get at the same thing—one that takes in a different perspective or need. And if a new word or a new way is found to be more inclusive or relevant we might just change it up momentarily or for the duration. We are open to multiple futures, in light of remembering the past.

 I used to resent the holiday lights and decorations that takeover otherwise predictable neighborhood scenery as early as October—they seemed so demanding to me—

Give Thanks!

Be Merry!

Believe!

And of course, some of these embellishments truly are perversions disguised as reverence for family, community, or God. Traditions can become controlling, competitive, and distractions from what truly is. But they can also be swaddling, soothing, purveyors of joy and sobriety. Two things, can be true.   

Lately, I try to see all the holiday bells and whistles less as commands to the passerby and more as aspirations—offerings even—from the designer. Someone looked around at the darkness and declared, I can do something about this.

It won’t be the supernova, but it will be something.

It won’t be salvation but it might be a bit of reprieve.

I might not do it this way forever, but I have it in me to do it at least once more.

And that is a lovely way to be in the world.

Holiday or any day.