“Tradition!”
Running on fumes (and Target Swiss trail mix) here, but I have to post this one note about today’s Parish Council retreat.
Our theme this year is “preserving tradition, embracing change,” since we are celebrating our Parish’s 50th anniversary next August, but we have just received our first new pastor in twelve years, and we have a (relatively) new Pope and Bishop. (The Bishop came the December after B XVI was elected.)
Anyway, one of our deacons came to our retreat today to discuss this topic, and he kept mentioning Fiddler on the Roof. This is funny for a few reasons. One, my senior year of high school, this was our musical. We must have watched the movie about a million times, I had friends in the chorus and the pit (Tiff did the bottle dance solo!) and on the crew. Fiddler had a huge presence in our lives. So whenever anyone says “Tradition” we immediately think of Tevye and dancing in the barn. (OK so that’s a different number, bear with me.)
Besides wanting to burst into song everytime Deacon John mentioned this, or said the word, I had been teasing Mike (the originator of the Best Quote Ever, see below) that he needed to watch Fiddler because he’d never seen it (the way AMC runs it, which is pretty constantly, I have to say this surprised me.). So as soon as we broke for lunch, I told Mike one of our first orders of business as a Council Executive Committee (I’m Secretary, he’s the President-elect) was to watch Fiddler. Because, really, you cannot appreciate the references until you’ve seen Topol dance around the barn and sing, or watched all of Anatevka get down to “Tradition.”
