Entrenching a tradition.

I attended a course along with other clergy in beautiful Wydale Hall. The surrounding countryside beckoned me to an early morning walk. The grass was heavy with dew so I tucked my rapidly soaking trousers into my socks. I got back to the hall just in time for morning prayer in the chapel. I forgot about my tucked in trouser bottoms. Immediately after the prayers a fellow course member came to me and asked in all seriousness, "Is it part of your tradition to always pray with you trousers tucked into your socks?" I laughed but he didn't. I dispelled the idea that I was practising a trouser tucking liturgical tradition and explained about my walk!

It got me wondering if this could be how some traditions are born. Someone does something oddly inexplicable and someone observing thinks, "that must be the thing to do" and joins in. Before long a bunch of people are doing it and no one knows why. A new tradition is brought to birth!

So "Why?" is a question we need to apply to all our actions. If we don't we may find ourselves doing the things we have always done just because we've always done them; thinking the things we've always thought just because we've always thought them and saying the things we've always said just because we've always said them. So we settle for a sealed system of orthodoxy instead of a journey of discovery.

"Why?" Well I'm the Anglican - Rector of a 1000 year old church.. so where to begin...