The True Function of Tradition

Where have our old traditions gone & what traditions are we participating in creating?

The simple fact that an idea, ritual or practice has persisted for tens, hundreds, or thousands of years means that it had and has an important function, a deeper significance related to the fundamental wellbeing and survival of a family, of a people, a nation...

Where are our dances? Who is telling our stories? Those stories that, beyond entertainment, art, and the simple joy of sharing, weave us through time & place as a people or a lineage… When did we as a people or a family stop dancing together, creating the spaces to affirm and celebrate Life? Where are our songs of grief and praise? Who remembers, to ask?

I am barely an adult and always a child, without time and knowing little. They say I am a child of the forgetfulness, born from the blood of war and the pain of childbirth, born into debt, a child of the “modern West”. And yet I can't help missing desperately that time beyond 'mine'...

I feel a grief for something that I know without having known; it is beyond my personal/individual memory but can be felt in the bones. I grieve for humankind's loss of our intimate love affair with the natural world, our active & co-creative participation in the dance of the seasons, the cycles, the soil, our bodies of water and stars...and the nuances of how that would & could be expressed within my own lineage. I feel the pain of alienation from Place & Land, family & community, the abundance and diversity of real living relationships and life-sustaining informations in the form of animals & people, wild foods, berries, herbs, trees, microorganisms and mountains. Relationships built on the foundation of real Love & presence, patience and perseverance, trust, respect, reciprocity, & mutual upraising over many generations.

I missed and longed for that something unknown, searching over seas and up&down mountains, until one day the unknown arrived and told me I'd better stop searching, for it wasn't a thing at all. And this lovely no-thing asked me to be danced, sung, and lived by the grace of mystery rather than the play of names. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t been writing as much lately… ;)

And as I lived, I remembered (in a two steps forward, one step back, doe-see-doe kind of way).
And as I danced, my grief became praise,
and I forgot my forgetfulness as if I'd always known all along...
that these were the highs and the lows,
different notes of the same song. <3

So I sang it from my whole heart. And every moment that that sweet heart opens wide, I see more of the great big family I have all around me – the many others singing dancing praying alongside me.
Even the plants and animals are shaking what the good Lord gave 'em, right now as you read this!

And from that deep joy and satisfaction, all I can think about is how to preserve this beingknowing of our togetherness and wellbeing amidst my own day-to-day forgetfulness, how to remember within a constant changing and transforming dance...and a very dizzying world.

I think this question and all the very practical implications around it is precisely why our ancestors, our grandmothers and grandfathers left us mountains of clues & codes in the forms of traditions, practices, stories and arts which, by nature of their no-thing-ness or indefinability, cannot be petrified into concepts or dogmas (though many have tried). And I believe that the original, undistorted impulse to create a proposal, structure, or pathway in response to that question finds its source in deep Love, devotion, and living relationship. 

The essential question is, how do we care for Life? Asking the question sincerely puts us into the disposition of intense and attentive relationship to the entire web of creation, to all the subtle and non-so-subtle causes and effects of our actions, words, thoughts, feelings.

It's a lot to care for, all of these relationships...Caring is a big responsibility, and must be applied with great discernment. Love is infinite but our energy & time is not. 

Sometimes the strength of that same Love breaks my heart. And yet…call them growing pains, call me a fool, call me crazy ness…I simply can't help but fall in Love again and again with the immensity and beauty of Life, her great diversity of being and form, the mystery and deliciousness of this dance. That Love brings me home every time when I see it in your eyes…and when I look at blueberries. :)

So, I ask, pray, and desire with a passion to stabilize and affirm those traditions, rituals, and practices which would better allow me to care for Life. I ask for the courage, consistency, and vision that allows me to show up for Life in the full integrity of who I am--for each pair of eyes & every heart that is the manifestation of that greater will towards integration, harmony, and true service.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

With Love,

Ness