Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung April 8, 2025.
Recently I attended on Zoom a celebration of a good friend, Paul Zolbrod, who died just a week after our last phone visit. The celebration of his life was attended by many who were inspired by his love of learning.
Paul was a literature professor for many decades. He was also deeply invested in the Navajo people’s stories, their central myths and their beautiful weavings of rugs that captured their narratives, their traditions and their love of the earth. I have been reading his book, co-authored by Navajo Roseann S. Willink; they worked for decades ‘to bridge the gap between Navajo culture and non-Navajo society.” He even mastered their language to more fully represent them and their tradition.
His exploration of Navajo rugs is the theme of Roseann and Paul’s study. It inspired me to think of our own American tradition, what it expresses and how this basic history is under siege by those who would rewrite it to serve their selfish agendas. But first a few ideas on why a people’s tradition like ours is so basic to our sense of identity that is still in-formation.
Tradition is what we see and understand by means of. It can also put blinders on us so we don’t see what should be included. Traditions contain the forms of our history, beliefs, values and aspirations. Democracy is much more than a political stance; it encompasses what our identity calls us to become.
As an organic living structure, tradition, both personal and collective, offers resiliency as a touchstone when we become confused, uncertain or fearful of forces intent on dismantling it. We garner our way of viewing, valuing and validating a particular angle on reality, adjusting according to historical, spiritual, economic and psychological needs. Our tradition is our living, vibrant, shared myth.
At its best, tradition serves all of us. It acts like a value conglomerate that continually reminds us of what we mean to the collective, that is, to one another. Greed, lust for power and other ego-centered perversions distort, disorder and deflect us as a people from our basic identity. That includes those among us who have been marginalized, written off, ignored or chastised by those in power.
A tradition is not to be confused with an ideology. Following on Paul’s study of Navajo rug art, tradition is a shared tapestry on which we weave changes into it for the benefit of all of us, including the most vulnerable in need of our assistance, not handouts.
History reveals that when the transcendent realm is not part of the weave, societies often collapse on their exclusively secular selves. While an intolerant ego in leadership can damage this fragile ecology of values for the good, the collective wisdom of the people can sustain it.
No less important to the survival of a tradition is our relation to our shared home, the earth herself. To be dismembered from the planet’s needs and nurturing will be as devastating as our loss of the sacred.
No tradition can survive without a clear sense of boundaries, limits and finite realities. These virtues help maintain a sense of balance, order and shared meanings. They are all cultivated and shaped gradually over time. But they can be sundered over a much shorter interval if cowered by fear into defeat.
Our American tradition is unique, one-of-a kind; it should not be surrendered without a fight. For what is emerging today in its place will serve only authoritarians seeking more and sharing less of what belongs to to the collective.