Tradition

As my lifelong struggle with my relationship to the divine continues, I have realized another important fact about myself and alongside it, another significant piece of my conception of religious life.
It has been a well documented fact that I am a fan of tradition. I had always assumed that my affection for it was another manifestation of my desire for control. The predictability of events and the actions of others that traditions provide cannot often be found elsewhere in our lives. The comfort of this cannot really be put into words and I do not mean to diminish its importance but I realized that tradition is much more important to me for a much bigger reason than I had really given it credit for.
Over several conversations with my Mom, my husband’s Grandma and several new friends who are a little too evangelical for me to be comfortable with, I pieced together this new understanding and then all of the sudden it clicked; tradition is important to me because it allows me to be connected to humanity. It makes me into a living part of the creation of history.
My recent return to church has been a mystery to many of my closest friends, including myself. I have often felt that my experiences in church and in the yoga studio were similar in many ways. That may sound trifling to whichever of those traditions in which you place more stock, but hear me out. Each event is a gathering in which you receive some instruction but a great deal of familiarity with the routine is also required. Contact with your fellow gatherers is limited and follows a prescripted format. Yet somehow their presence is instrumental in your very personal experience.
I believe this is true because of the long traditions out of which each came. Beginning or ending a yoga practice with three heartfelt “Om”s or reciting the Nicene Creed from the Book of Common Prayer both offer me the opportunity to connect to the humanity that is around me and the humanity that came before me.
I said before that I was retuning to church because I knew that I believed in God. I was not sure about who God really is but Christianity and specifically the Episcopal church are my “first language” of the divine. If I wanted to discourse about God with others, I needed to do so in a language I could understand. All of this is still true for me but the experience has highlighted for me something I always knew; that religion is much more than a way to relate to God. Religion is about our social interactions and our personal lives and our relationship with God and really a whole lot else too. Religion is about all of the messy places where our lives do not match up and how we cope with that.
Religion must feed the needs of us as individuals. Some people need to be told, in very clear terms, what is right and what is wrong. I personally cannot stand that shit, but some people need that clarity to be handed to them. Personally, I need tradition. Many people find it stifling but I see the ways it enriches my life and the freedoms it offers to me as a person. I feel so lucky to have discovered these things about myself but I also know that people change. I know that as I change, the things I need from religion may change. I feel very strongly that the very best use of my time on this earth is to be found through self awareness. In my search for it so far, I have discovered that it leads me in turns to connect with others and the world and God.