The Delivery of Tradition

I posted this earlier on a blog that I’ve since discontinued.  Since it revolves around my coming to Christ Church, I thought it would be of particular interest to the parish family.

Our English word, "tradition" comes from the Latin word traditio, which means "to deliver," or "hand down."  In the Church, we are the latest links in a chain of handing down.  But what sort of "delivery" is involved here? Are we simply copyists, doing our best to Xerox what was delivered to us, then transmitting that to the next generation?  Our family's experience in moving from Virginia to Alabama provides a more creative understanding of this process of "Delivery."

It was in late November that I accepted the Search Committee's call to serve as Rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Albertville, a mere 11 hours away from the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC, where I had lived for the last 23 years.  This included 14 years in our apartment.  Needless to say, we had a lot of work to do as we delivered ourselves and our home to a new place.

First, we had to look at the "stuff" we had accumulated for those 14 years, and had incorporated into our home.  It's always easier to add things to your home than to get rid of them. You can always find a way to make space for something new.  And over time, you can adjust your own sense of personal space to accommodate the stuff you've added.  Getting rid of stuff you don't need takes money, because if you don't need it, chances are that nobody else needs it, and the labor involved in moving your junk out doesn't come for free.

Some "stuff" we sold, but not for too much, since our goal was not to make money, but to get rid of it.  Other "stuff" we simply gave away for free.  Other things however, had too much memory attached to it for us to dispose of: pictures our son had drawn, framed pictures that reminded us of where we have come from.  Those were to be delivered from the previous generations to the next.  One that stood out for me was a landscape, painted by my Aunt Salome, of the Alabama woods in Elmore County.  Playing by the water mill are my Aunt Faye, Salome and my grandmother, Belva, along with Uncle Kearney.  That painting was delivered to me, and I will deliver it to my son, though how he chooses to dispose of it will be his decision.

Finally, we were ready to be delivered from Virginia to Alabama.  We arrived early in January.  The next day, the delivery truck arrived with our "stuff."  We soon discovered that furniture which had fit in our old home did not fit into this new space.   More phone calls.  Parishioners helping to take some of this stuff away.  Some of it being put into our new garage, slated for consignment.  But the pictures, the repository of our memories, remain.

The very act of "delivering" requires the deliverers to make choices: what to keep, what to throw out, and what to store for the future.  That is "Tradition."  It is not about photocopying, but moving.  And in that moving, we are bound by the memories of the past, but also by the demands of the present and future.  And the flexibility of balancing past, present and future is something we have no right to deny to those who come after us.  They too will be bound in love, for the past, the present and the future.