This weekend was about remembering.
Somewhere among the burgers and celebrations a lot of us paused to remember. A friend said he thought we should pay more attention to what we’re remembering and why we’re remembering.
I agree, especially with the WHY part. But my friend’s comment got me thinking about the different ways we remember. And since there’s this little bike tour coming up soon, I wondered about how we would celebrate five years of the FREEDOM TOUR.
We remember, systematically at least, through routine, ritual, and, tradition.
Routines are systems of mundane, ordinary (but important!) tasks. Get out of bed, check email, make coffee, brush teeth…whatever’s in the morning routine isn’t stuff you want to think about, it just needs to happen. A routine saves time and makes sure you don’t show up at work without socks.
On a bike tour, routines avoid frustration and keep us sane. How does loading and unloading happen? What happens when we arrive and depart? What happens in the morning?
Two choices. Establish and maintain routines or answer those questions individually for a dozen people every day.
Routines allow us to think less about important-but-repetitive elements of the tour. We’re free to focus more on people, on community, on God…the reasons we did this thing in the first place.
Rituals are routines intended to impact an outcome. Wear your lucky shirt, eat the right pregame meal, sit in the same seat…your team’s sure to win the big game, right?
The Old Testament’s packed with religious rituals–sacrifices, prayers, meals, all prescribed to keep people in right relationship with God. Jesus fulfilled the need for such rituals.
Bike tours don’t need rituals, unless you count someone’s lucky bike shorts.
Traditions remind us who we are so we can move forward based on our founding principles.
In Joshua 4, God instructs the priests to build an altar at the site where the Israelites crossed into the Promised Land. They carried stones across the river and created a memorial to help them remember an important day.
Joshua’s instructions: “In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.” (Joshua 4:6b-7)
Nothing magical about the stones or the altar, but the tradition of visiting and asking reminds future generations (including us) of God’s faithfulness.
I love the traditions of our tour.
For example, each morning we circle our bikes and someone shares a “word of the day.” The person who offers the word talks a bit about why it matters and why we should focus on it during the day. Often we revisit the word a few times along the route and discuss how it impacted our thoughts.
Then it’s time for my favorite moment of each day. HELMETS UP is a tradition we borrowed from our friends at Venture Expeditions. It’s a moment to stop before the chaos of the day and acknowledge the One for whom we ride. We raise our helmets to remind ourselves that we follow Jesus and trust him to use our efforts to accomplish His purposes. After a few moments of prayer it’s time to roll.
I love explaining our traditions each year. “What does this mean?” links new riders to those who’ve been here before and helps us move forward together.
The questioning and explaining matters. Sad to see rich, meaningful traditions become mindless routines or, worse, rituals enacted as though the performance contains some mystical power.
The power’s in the remembering and in a renewed commitment to eternal principles.