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Tuesday, August 02, 2005
tradition, tradition
We're at the point with the planning and preparation for our mostly-annual beach vacation where I'm starting to mentally tally the number of hours of enjoyment will be required to offset the stress of packing. We're only taking a three-day trip this year, so this may be the first time where I end up with a negative number when all's said and done. Well, except that time we went in December and there were really amazing rain- and windstorms and our tent nearly blew away and you could hear the snapping of the tarp we'd stretched across our campsite to keep things dry all the way to the beach -- over the roar of the waves -- and we ended up cutting our trip short. That trip may have wound up as a negative, even though LT learned to ride his bike without training wheels between cloudbursts. But every year some of the same issues crop up surrounding the traditions I've erected around the whole adventure. Is it really necessary for C to have her last year's Morro Bay t-shirt on when we arrive this year? Will Morro Rock crumble into the sea if she just wears a generic gray t-shirt? Do the kids each need a book-bag full of things to do in the car on the way there? We've listened to all the Secret Seven books on tape we can get through the library; should we "read" something else in the car on the way there, or would it be better do one of the Secret Sevens for the second time? Traditions enrich experiences for us as they do for most people; It's hard to let go of the ones that have meant so much to us in their small way in the past.
Likewise, my husband drives a car in our local destruction derby every year. At the end of each fair, after the derby, he and his derby buddies generally decide that the next summer will possibly be their last, and at any rate they'll only do one car each year from here on out. Yet every year, the same six or eight guys go through all the hassle and work (and expense) to fix up two cars (so that they sometimes they frankly look better and run better than our daily drivers, if much more noisily) so that they can go smash them up against cars fixed up by other similarly early-middle-aged men (and one woman). I think they'll be sixty years old and saying, "only one next year... I'm having that hip replacement in December, after all...". How much of this is because of tradition and how much is because of actual enjoyment varies from one discussion to the next, but the fact is that if it didn't matter that they'd run two derby cars in every county fair since 1992, they probably would have stopped long ago, as their families got larger and their free time got smaller.
Which (kind of) leads me to my point. How much of what we do as Christians is done because "it's always been done that way"? Is it really necessary, or Scriptural, to have one man up in front who does all the studying every week to present a message to the people who sit in the pews and listen? What about the "worship by proxy" element of a church choir? What about all the emotion that surrounds a boy wearing a ballcap into a chapel building for a club meeting? What about having a chapel building at all? Responsive readings (eighteen years in a lukewarm-to-cold denominational church fraught with responsive readings and the like has left me with a severe aversion to any kind of unison speech beyond the Pledge of Allegiance)? Saying the rosary? Our worship and communion and fellowship experiences are all fraught with tradition from beginning to end. Tradition is comfortable; it's what we're used to; in a lot of ways it defines us as a group. It can even be really valuable, more so to some people than to others. The question is, how much is necessary? To what extent does it get in the way of real life, real worship, real study, a real relationship?
For three years our family was part of a home fellowship, where we basically threw tradition out the window. We met in homes, as the defining phrase "home fellowship" would indicate. Each week, any of the men who had something to share could prepare a message and give it when we met. We took requests for hymns and praise songs and sang them a capella (for a while we had a pianist, but she left for a place where she could be in charge of a Music Program). The music wasn't professional, or sometimes even very good, but it was stirring and heartfelt and I think God liked it just fine. We did not have a proper nursery (which was sometimes a problem, honestly); our pulpit was an old music stand; we had no committees or teas or elders' meetings or pews or bulletins. We did eat a potluck lunch after every Sunday meeting and my mouth still waters at the thought of it. And most importantly, we were all thriving in our personal relationships with God, and growing closer to Him and to each other. The learning and loving and helping that went on from week to week was phenomenal. Which made it terribly sad when the whole thing fell apart gradually, as first one family left and then another (and when you only have about six families meeting, each departure is keenly felt) for various reasons.
I like the place we worship now. I really do. I like the people there; I like that my kids have friends and that there are activities we can all take part in. I like that my whole family attends in one place so that every Sunday is like a miniature family reunion. And I can overlook or work with the things I don't like. But I miss the bare-bones Christianity we experienced for those three years in the home fellowship; I miss the intimacy and the pressure (I use that word with its best possible meaning) to be in the Word often and intensely. I miss the fact that if we didn't like the way we did something, we could discuss it and just change it if it was appropriate to do so. Most of all I miss the stripping away of traditions to leave us with the important, genuine, life-changing aspects of a life spent loving God.
Comments
Aren't the things you are missing themselves a tradition, albeit a short-lived and flexible one? :)
Posted by: Atlantic at August 3, 2005 10:59 AM
No, there's a difference between man-made traditions and God-given mandates or examples. God tells us to bear one another's burdens, to encourage each other, to follow him, to read His word. He doesn't tell us to appoint a senior pastor or break the Psalms into responsive readings or to have a youth group or to have a "holy building". I see your point, but I respectfully and congenially disagree. :)
Posted by: Rachel at August 3, 2005 12:30 PM
I really like the idea of home fellowship. When I was little and my mom first became a Christian, she got in with a group of women and a few men who did the same thing. The manager of our apartment building, Rosie held it in her unit and it was a lot of fun going over there. The old ladies were very sweet and at Christmas time I used to stand around singing carols to them all. It was very intimate and I felt much more comfortable with that then going to a big church where I felt judged for the way I dressed or said or whatever.
Posted by: jenn at August 3, 2005 08:53 PM
