Burns So Good

I am sitting in a train on my way to a Burns supper. For those who don't know Robert Burns, he is a famous Scottish author and poet. It's a bit of an institution here in Scotland. They bring out the Haggis, the Piper, and the whiskey in celebration of this great man.

I have been very lucky as my landlord Colin is a big Burns fan and so I have been getting some enthusiastic poetry from old Robbie. It really is beautiful. I am trying to think who would be our South African poet that brings us together? Who brings our culture to the fore? Maybe it is one of those things that apartheid robbed us of?

Anyway I got to thinking about institutions today. What is it about unity and institutions? Do institutions start when people decide they wish to live in certain way, have certain way of doing something? I think even young institutions to some extent rely on a large portion on tradition. Each session etches the tradition in to the recording of their lives. I think tradition can be a beautiful, liberating exchange of unity. It engages us in our diversity that we might say or do as one. there is something beautiful about despite our differences we join as one in common communion.

It is important however that we don't allow tradition to be our master. Tradition serves the people not the other way around. It almost as if we in some part of our being are connected to repetition and history of our tradition. It becomes a person in our lives and the slightest change or removal creates a death in our identity.

If I look at some of the greatest movements of Christian history, I am sure that people have not wanted to create an institution but rather a tradition of living in a particular way. Jesus, Wesley and Luther never sought to create a new institution. They were set against but rather wished for a new way of living to continue.

Maybe it is call on me to look first, at how I live and second, what things should i discard or create as tradition and be careful to to make them institutions