Three Imperative Values: #1 Tradition
Arriving in Kerrville for the first time, I discovered I’m not a stranger to this town after all. My mom told me that as a young girl, she would visit her beloved grandparents, Mamaw and Grandad, in Kerrville regularly, wearing gloves whenever she went into town with them. In fact, she said, they were buried in this town, though she couldn’t remember exactly where. So we piled in the car and went to find out.
Standing by the Bowden tombstone in the Kerrville cemetery, I watched my 14 month old crawl back and forth over the weathered inscription marking the place my great-grandparents are buried. George was born in 1885. His wife Jennie died the same year I was born. My mother told me that Jennie saw me just after I was born. Unaware, my son played happily over the grave. For me it was a joyful sight to see; five generations represented by that image of my youngest son playing beside his great-great grandparents’ marker. I now felt myself a stranger no longer; I understood that I belonged in this town.
All of us are “walking over the tombstones of our forefathers,” and not just our immediate relatives, but really every tombstone in our midst. They are the majority of the dead, the giant shoulders we stand on, our forbearers, and to them we owe a debt.
Tradition, at its best, is the duty we owe to all those who went before us. It is the intentional preservation of all the good that they discovered, carried, built, and taught.
American culture tends to worship the novel. Regular election cycles are a constant reinforcement of an “out with the old, in with the new” mentality. How often has a politician, of any party, won running on the promise of change?
Change, of course, can be healthy, but a constant liquid culture results in a kind of cultural amnesia in which sincere lovers of the novel forget the debt we owe to the past and the principles that built the present.
Tradition, on the other hand, teaches us where we come from, how we got here, and who we are. Tradition is an anchor in times of tempest; it is the north star that guides a boat lost at sea.
Tradition is one of the imperative values for a healthy education of children because these little persons, fresh to the big world, need the security of understanding who they are, where they belong, how to speak to one another properly, and what to believe. When the road gets dark, tradition is the light that helps keep us all on the right path.
Three fundamental traditions should inform our children: the Christian tradition, the Western tradition, and the local tradition. From Christianity and the saints that went before us, children learn to love God and to live out our faith. From our Western heritage and the heroes of the past, children understand honor, sacrifice, and culture. From our local traditions and neighbors, children are initiated into the world of work and community.
Tradition is also a way of “re-membering,” a way of putting back together something that was lost or scattered. The best education for our future is one that rejoices in the past.
