2024-11-27-Amanson on Tradition

Session

Lesson

Tradition is that link in a chain that continues linking, drawing more and more enthusiasm from its participants as time and the tradition goes on. It will link one generation with another; one century with another; it will link the great-great-great grandchildren with their great-great-great grandparents.

Tradition can be stifling if it is not exposed to fresh air, fresh thinking, fresh joys and enthusiasms as years go on. It began for a purpose and the purpose is an inner need to worship, although some would consider it - this worship - mere observation. But tradition begins in joy, a heart-felt activity that expresses love and devotion and enthusiasm for humankind, for the community, for the family. It is an emblem of one’s love; often of fun, of communication between individuals as the years go by and the tradition takes shape and takes hold. The fun grows, the meaning grows, because you know it has been assembled by others before you and has taken on a momentum of its own.

The meaning of any tradition is the link it establishes in the continuing river of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness animating mankind, bringing one's fervor to the fore in joyous opportunity to honor those who have gone before, and conversely, to look forward to those who will someday be participating in the enjoyment of this same tradition.

Your thinking need not become hide-bound as concerns these well-established activities. As I have said, they need fresh air, fresh thinking, fresh approaches. But at the core is what was established many years before: the giving of the heart; the sighing of the attendee’s breath in unison, in harmony, with breaths of centuries of attendees before. So you hold hands with a grand chain of people, whether in a family tradition or a nation’s tradition or a world tradition, a community’s tradition; all those who have gone before you and participated in this tradition, they hold hands with you when you in your present day participate in that tradition.

Tradition is a way of grounding the Spirit to the earth life, bringing the two into alignment. "This is how we believe; this is how we celebrate." This is the way Spirit can make itself known in the lives of a community, a society, a family. It needn’t be a religious tradition at all, but just a tradition. For the Spirit that animates it is ever the same, whereas the generations that participate in it, that activate the actual doing of the tradition, they change.

But the Spirit remains the same. This is tradition’s glory. This is tradition’s purpose – to stay, in a manner of speaking, acquainted with the ancestors, and then to stay present with them; to let them visit once again, as you will one day visit once again in the years, the decades, the centuries to come. You will be welcomed in by those who have come after you because you too celebrated this tradition in which they now participate. It’s a way of Love. It says “I love you, we are having love, we are giving love, we are being love as we celebrate this honored tradition”, whatever it is. It is mankind being true to itself, honoring their earthly mothers and fathers, honoring their spirit mothers and fathers; Mother and Father. For the Spirit is ever fresh – always One, always new. But traditions, they are gloriously old. It is a pungent combination.

Pay heed to the traditions. Strike step with them. Give them your time. Make it worthwhile. They will nourish you. For it is that blend of the ‘passing parade’ and the eternal Now that nourishes both aspects and will be forever treasured on your planet, for it brings Beauty, Truth and Goodness, and these are the values around which the entire lesson plan revolves.

Traditions will fade but others will take their place, for, again, they are Love-in-activity; the spirit world meeting the physical world - when hands are busy and eyes are bright; when the mouth is laughing, the spirit is shining and the world is all the better for it.

Now, there are some traditions that should fade, for they have not an expanding world’s best interest at heart. They do not espouse Beauty, Truth and Goodness. They are merely habits. Those must be examined and altered for a changing world. But such traditions – family histories, racial histories - have time itself as an ally, revealing, as time does, those aspects that will not stand the test of time. For time to become an ally in this respect is a most beneficial development.

Love your traditions. Change the ones that don’t bring joy, comfort or love. But celebrate the ones that do. Actively participate in them. For centuries from now others will celebrate you for having engaged in so loving a pastime. Bring your heart to the surface of the world through these celebrated traditions for they link you with all humanity. And that is so important now. That is what is needed now. Amen.