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Hallo again to all.
What is history? It's facts, anniversaries, events, words—the remembrance and record of them. But it's also in the dirt below us, the buildings around us, the things we touch and the water we drink. In Jamestown, archaeologists can dig and sift to find out about history; we can visit the same geographical place where history was made 400 years ago, and stand on dirt that sits on top of dirt where people stood then. In the Church, history is an essential part of tradition, the lived-in, Spirit-filled, passed-on truth of Christianity. In the life of faith, we participate in, guard, share and plumb the great tradition as we move forward in history. We can dig and sift in tradition, too, to find out about its content and to help in its transmission. It's a good thing for us to get our hands dirty in it and our minds full of it so we can think and live within tradition—sentire cum ecclesia, some have called it. It is tradition that gives history context and texture.
Although there are sure dangers in relying on oral tradition alone—even with so august a pedigree as this one—for factual accuracy, this charming incident fills us with a little bit of awe for the kind of continuity that can be maintained in a succession of teachers and students within a fixed field. The internet and various forms of digitial media allow us today to choose our teachers at will. Within the relatively small field of American Anglican church history, we have at our fingertips Manross, McConnell, Tiffany, Doll, Hawkins, Shattuck and Hein, and a vast trove of related documents. History is easy to get at, easier than it ever has been. Tradition remains the sort of thing that requires us to make a little more effort to discern what it is, to move beyond historical knowledge—from books, digital or printed, to experience, whether in railed chancels or cozy living rooms. A shout from across the room about the accuracy of an Anglican historical fact means that our peculiar tradition is alive, and that tradition itself goes on from strength to strength. It's not that tradition is better than history, but instead it's somehow more than history. History engages our senses and intellect, while tradition enlivens them dynamically. It's tradition that passes from piano keyboard to piano keyboard and from altar to altar, whether in Chicago or Virginia. See you next week, sharp or natural. |
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