What Is Preserved When a Practice Survives?

A practice that lasts fifty years does not last unchanged. It lasts by being carried, and carrying deforms. The question is which deformations we are prepared to accept.

In my experience the first thing lost is the reason^[1]. A house does something for a reason; the reason is not written down because everybody present knows it; the people present are replaced; the action continues, now unexplained, and within one generation it has become a tradition, which is the word we use for a habit whose justification has died.

The second thing lost is the exception. Founders make exceptions constantly, because they can see the case in front of them. Successors cannot make exceptions, because they cannot distinguish a case from a precedent. So the rule hardens, and the practice becomes stricter than its founders ever were, and everybody experiences this as fidelity.

We have several observances whose reasons are not recorded^[2]. The stewardship has resolved twice to record them and has not done so. I have stopped assuming this is negligence.

What survives well is form: the shape of the table, the length of the silence, the wording on a card. What survives badly is judgement. Any tradition that wishes to last must therefore find a way of transmitting judgement, and I do not think anyone has ever solved this, including us, including her.