Tradition

Paradoxically, traditions change over time, even when I try to keep them from doing so.  Moving through life I am always, even if unwittingly, moving on.  Nevertheless, customs I've cherished sometimes crystallize in my memory as flawless celebrations.  Why?  Possibly because this is how I keep my balance, and  because without tradition my life, any life, is as shaky as a fiddler on the roof. 


So what about this moving on process? And the memories? Sometimes done very deliberately, very knowingly, and without drama, moving on often holds trauma that just has to be dulled by real-time unawareness.  Insight comes in time, and perhaps real wisdom,  but the ability to look again with new and clearer focus is, indisputably, quite astonishing and deeply satisfying. 


What am i saying here?  Does it matter that the ham sandwiches on homemade buns and the sugar cookies my grandma served up after midnight Mass on Christmas are gone forever, except in my memory?  Or that monastic observance of Advent purposely delayed all the garlands and cards and creche set-ups until December 24th?  Or that we always decorated a real, not artificial, christmas tree?


I think it does matter because my history has shaped my today.  It is the same now, yet different because of that moving on process, and even because of the trees. 


My photo of the Deception Pass Madrones carries a symbolism for me.  It is not just the several  bright orange trunks visible even from my distant vantage point, it is the full frame shot.  The iron railing, the bare and fascinating rocky facade, the mix of glorious trees above the rocks and then the sky. Visually, when one sees it full screen, I think it's powerful and can speak to anyone. 


But this brings me back to trees, and their links to tradition, and to my life.  The universe, as I know it, is pretty amazing, and holds an endless number of things I am curious about.  Researching, superficially or in depth, can now easily begin on my MacBook.  But even if I once again went through the doors of UCLA's University Research Library (the one closest to the Art Department), I'm sure I'd now be accessing source information via a complex computerized system. Yet I would never find evidence that a tree can love.  A tree certainly has symbolic value, whether it is tall and vigorous or, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, merely a tiny and frail thing.  I can love the tree, but it cannot love me back.


If the thread of my thought got lost in a muddle of words, I mean to come back to something quite logical,  something very  relevant and something which I have lots of evidence for. So here it is in syllogistic form:  Only humans can love.  Not every being is human.  So not all beings can love.   Someone else may dispute this, but it is my logic and I do subscribe to Aquinas' definition of love as a movement (wonderful!) of the will,  to will the good of the other for its own sake, not for what we can get.  


The essential beauty of tradition, and of this season is not so much that I say L' Chaim,  Merry Christmas  or Feliz Navidad,  but that I am a human person capable of love,  trying to speak it out loud and in silences. 


So finally, most importantly, I know this: way before I understood anything at all or was capable of love, I was loved.  By my parents, of course, and my brother and extended family, but first of all by God.  In John's Gospel, the Greek succinctly contrasts LOGOS/SARX (WORD/FLESH ).  The language is weighted with theological meaning for Christians, and brings up many serious questions.  But one very understandable question Christians began to ask centuries ago got answered by the writer Iranaeus.  Q: Why did the Christ wait so long to come?  A: So we could be ready.  Ahhhh, that requires no little effort!  And way more reflection on another day.