Tradition

In our local chinese tradition, the teachings of our elders (normally the patriach of the family) are passed from generation to generation by means of story tellings. The electronic media was beyond the reach of the commoners and owning a family radio was about the only thing. I remembered walking to the temples during the festive seasons for a show, opera show that is.

Our forebears told us plenty of stories, some mythical, some religious, some family history and occassionally tong san (old country ie. China). My granpa has a peculiar love for his homecountry and village where his father came from, Lo Teng, now assimilated into the larger metropolis of Guandong.

The passing down of our family history and chinese traditions were done purely by oral tradition. As we were young, our minds absorbed the moral, ethical, religious lessons without much difficulty. These knowledge informed and formed who I am today, a chinese.



Just a couple of days ago, I had the opportuniy to witness perhaps a new beginning of passing on tradition(s) to my children. I had always requested that Jon and Joel to pray out loud the mealtime prayer before dinning together every night. Jacinth being the youngest, is exempted. To my surprise, she mumbled the same prayer one evening, imperfectly though. I was thrilled because she had done that voluntarily.

It was an indirect form of passing down the tradition where she had absorbed and remembered the prayers. By simply listening and observing, she is being discipled. We formally teach Jon & Joe during our evening prayer compline and they have memorized all the prayers in no time.

In the Orthodox Church tradition, the idea of paradosis is central. The process of passing down, transmitting traditions are consciously carried out from one generation to the next. I feel at home immediately with this universal practice. Chinese strongly believes that good traditional teachings are transmitted best in the grandfather-grandson relationship, as most fathers are busy working. Perhaps it is time for our modern society to seriously look into strengthening the normally weak grandfather-grandson link, for the happiness of our future generations. And we should pass down more than our religious convictions, our children have to learn our way of life.