Write Now!
This blog started as a 'Lenten Writing Project', where we wrote each day in Lent. Now that Summer is here, let's keep up the discipline of writing with a weekly writing challenge! A prompt will be posted each week and anyone is welcome to join in and post their writing here or participate just by reading it.
Every writer has their own special light to add to this blog and all of your writing offerings are appreciated, whether poetry, prose, essay, thoughts, lists or comments and encouragement.
by Pat Mason
ReplyDeleteWell, we have had a number of family traditions passed down but I suppose the perhaps oddest one is that whenever anyone in the family goes to the ocean, Pacific or Atlantic, or any other large body of water, they must touch the water with hands or feet to make that encounter 'count'. Only then can they brag about having been there.
What do we not pass down? Serving Lutefisk!
I have been interested in family traditions from my very earliest years. I was aware, as a Mom, of hoping some of our family traditions would continue with my children and grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteAs a young girl, I loved sitting with Grandma Bakke or Uncle Lawrence or Auntie Bee, listening to their stories of the olden days. The summer of my 10th year I spent time with my Auntie Cora, and began to write down the names of my mother’s 8 siblings and their families. I wanted to understand how all my aunts and uncles and cousins were related.
Since then I have gathered about 25,000 (yes, twenty-five thousand!) of my ancestors and descendants in my genealogy data base. For our last family reunion. I published a book with some of this information.
I hope someone in the family with take what I have gathered and continue this tradition.
When I was in high school my best friend's brother went to West Point. Every Sunday we had a quiet 20 seconds at the end of worship during which I began to pray for him and for people in the armed forces. My friend, three years later was able to follow his brother to the Academy and I added him to that quiet prayer.
ReplyDeleteOver the years I've become more of a peace nik but when I find myself in quiet moments particularly in church I still often pray for those in the armed forces - in harms way. Somehow I think those prayers not only help those serving in that way - but it helps me to remember their humanity and their need.
This is a personal tradition (ritual) that in the beginning I had no idea what it would mean to me in the long run and I hang on to intentionally.
Traditional Interchange
ReplyDeleteby Marlene Obie
Living in three different families within our family growing up, I feel my traditions have always been changing, and now I find more occupied with adding new ones.
There was a tradition though of enjoying the outdoors, camping, fishing, going to "the cabin" and national parks. That I feel I carried on with my children. Meeting and enjoying different sections of the Pacific Coast has become a tradition. Going crabbing in the Fall was one of our traditional activities.
There are also food traditions for holidays, although I am always sneaking in something new. There's some procedural order in the way we celebrate our holidays, not to say there isn't an occasional zig out of the norm. (Easter baskets are hidden somewhere in the house, but can't be searched for until after church. Christmas presents are almost always opened on Christmas Eve. Leftover holiday pie is appropriate for the breakfast the following day.)
The most traditional is belonging to a church and being active in it on a regular basis. That is what I most have wanted to pass on. For my children and grandchildren to connect with a faith community (yes, preferably Lutheran) but mainly to remember that God is always with us and develop their own relationship with God. And hoping they become part of congregations that are as loving and fun as I have found.
Traditions that I want to pass down to my daughters:
ReplyDelete• Feeling like the church is another home: maybe not our home, where you leave your toys everywhere and spend the day in your PJs, but maybe your Grandma’s house: You feel at home, but there is respect shown for her Hummel figurines and sweet unconditional love as well.
• Butter & Casseroles
• Potlucks – the food is OK (except of course Mike’s is fabulous), the organization is dependably terrible, but oh, the fellowship.
• Singing in choir…and singing hymns…and singing in general until you get that buzz in your head when you stop. Belt out that descant, my ladies!
• Coffee. When they are older. The fact that a plain white thick-lipped mug, speckled with scrapes containing Lutheran coffee out of a percolator is heaven…is in itself, a miracle.
• The creeds and the Lord ’s Prayer and liturgy. I want my kids to be proud of memorizing what we say in church and I also want them to know what it means and have a thirst for continual knowledge of what it means as their faith evolves and changes as they grow.
• Helping with the service. Acolyting has changed since the formal lock-step I perfected with my best friend – a military kid. We would swiftly and expertly light, bow and extinguish every candle with tight synchronized perfection. I want her to be that freakishly good and proud of it : )
• Running around the church with the other church kids. I remember just running around the fellowship hall, feet contained in tights, smacking or slipping around the beige speckled linoleum and enjoying the echo of my own hollers. Why don’t I let my kids do that? I guess I know why I don’t, but at least I hope my girls get our a few good bellows in HSLC’s peaked acoustics…
• Good Friday service – complete with the stripping of the altar, turning off the lights and slamming the Bible shut. And I hope they cry, like I did. At least a little.
• A good Easter vigil. When I was a kid and slid into the pew and I heard the pastor begin with “In the Beginning” and since it was the day before Easter, I knew I was in for a looooong incense-scented, standing, sitting, singing, listening, reading responsively-time. It was well worth being the very very first people to be able to say ‘He is risen!’ and ‘He is risen indeed!’
• A really good comic-book style Bible. I still have mine. I treasured it embarrassingly much.
• Questions. I hope they have lots and lots of questions. Ones that I can’t answer and we have to visit the pastor. And also comfort in knowing that not all the answers are here for us yet, but we’re all in this together and God is with you.
Prompt #20 Monday March 12, 2012
ReplyDeleteNEW DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL BETTER
I have noticed, with an increasing sense of alarm, that there is a new tradition that has developed in the Liturgies of Promise in the ELCA. This is most evident in the "Cranberry Hymnal".
Change is to be expected as times change and contexts change; and it is important to keep our Worship meaningful. The change I refer to, however, is the deletion of the words "with the help
of God," spoken after promises made in Baptism and Confirmation; and even in the consecration of Sunday School Teachers, new members, and installation of Church Councils and Pastors.
I do not understand how we, weak-willed as we are, can possibly hope to keep any spiritual promises to God, without "the help of God". Even the Apostles confessed to the same problem(I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.Romans 7:18b). Do we not need the Spirit to help us? (Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness...Romans 8:26a) Are we now saved by our own doing? (For by Grace you have been saved by faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--Ephesians2:8)
I know that I cannot keep my promises to God, on my own, not even one day! How then, can we ever hope to keep a simple promise to be a faithful church member, Sunday School Teacher, Church Council Member, or Pastor, not to mention a lifelong Baptismal Promise, without "the help of God".
I fervently urge the ELCA, or at least local congregations, to rethink the Liturgies of Promise, and put the words, "with the help of God," back into those liturgies. If we are really serious about our promises to God, we can do no less.
s.h.