Though he died, he still speaks.
- Hebrews 11.4
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our
ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the
small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
- GK Chesterton
Very early in life, we learn to learn from our
mistakes. We intuitively know that it is in our best self-interest to pay attention
to what brings health, fulfillment, and success, and what doesn’t. However, as
life is short and our bank of experiences limited, the wiser among us also realize
the importance of learning from the experiences of others, which includes the
dead.
When I was around 10 years old, my dad decided to
see if he could expand my choice of reading materials from Green Lantern and
Superman comic books to something a bit more substantive. Toward this end, he
would listen for whomever I seemed to admire and then leave a short biography
of the person on my bed. It worked. I loved reading about Albert Einstein,
Mickey Mantle, Madam Curie, and George Washington. While unaware of it at the
time, this was a crucial aspect of my development, as I was learning about what
was required of me to be successful in life, not just regarding the honing of
skill-sets, but also the importance of character. I was learning, albeit unconsciously,
from the lives of others.
It was during my senior year of high school, in my
Honors American Prose and Literature class, that my unconscious learning from
others became conscious. (Thank you, Mrs. Cogar!) Now, it wasn’t only
biographies on the living and the dead who were teaching and inspiring me, but,
also, fictitious characters and stories. The stories of authors such as Nathaniel
Hawthorn, Edgar Alan Poe, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Conner didn’t simply
entertain me, they were teaching me about human nature, ethics, wisdom, and the
quest for redemption.
Wisdom From Across the Ages
Whether it is the right ordering of the soul and
our lives, or the right ordering of society, for century after century the wise
have always sought out a body of literature that contains ideas and ideals that
have been tried and found true regarding First Principles and Permanent Things:
classics where “time and timelessness intersect.” (TS Eliot) This body of
literature includes fantasy, fiction, poetry, biography, history, classical philosophy
and Christian theology. Western Civilization grew out of such a particular bank
of wisdom that guided our ancestors in their quest to discover and pass on to future generations the ultimate values and virtues of a prosperous and
harmonious society.
(Today, most people in the US are clueless, or worse,
uninterested, regarding the books that were seminal in the development of
Western Civilization and the founding of our nation. This helps explain much of
the loss of faith, humanity, vision, identity, purpose, and the demise of all
that made us a civil society that we are
presently experiencing.)
As we seek to order our lives and our culture, wondering
where the path of wisdom and truth lies, relying solely on our own wits and
intelligence will leave us wandering down corridor after corridor of confusion
and dismay. God’s wisdom, which has been providentially revealed over the ages,
calls to us offering knowledge and understanding. Only the naive or foolish will
ignore the offer.
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2016
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