Greetings from the Dean

Beloved,

May is here, bringing new beginnings for our ministry and fresh opportunities to advance the Kingdom of God. I pray that our life together will be fruitful as we grow more fully into our calling as the Cathedral Church for the Diocese of New Jersey and for the city of Trenton. I am grateful for this season and excited for the future we will share.

In these first weeks of May, I have been sharing something of my own story. I am a child of the Deep South, having grown up in Charleston, South Carolina. Like many of us, our origins shape our identity and influence who we become, for good or ill. Although I have lived in many different parts of this country, my upbringing remains deeply woven into my life—in the food I enjoy, the music I love, the way I move through the world, and the traditions my family has passed down.

May is a significant month in many ways. It includes beloved observances such as Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, graduation ceremonies, and for me it also marks the birthday of my beloved spouse. As the fifth month of the year, May signals a change of season—spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. It is also a month rich with tradition.

One tradition associated with May is the Maypole. This centuries-old custom appears in many cultures around the world. I first learned about it through my mother after she spoke with an elderly member of one of my former congregations who, like us, had roots in Charleston. Listening to their conversation sparked my curiosity, and I asked my mother to tell me more.

Traditionally observed on May 1, the Maypole often appears at spring festivals, school celebrations, camps, and community gatherings. In its familiar form, participants dance around a tall pole while weaving long ribbons into a bright braided design. Once especially popular in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, this joyful custom has seen renewed interest in recent years. Simple though it is, it beautifully marks the awakening of spring.

As theologian Jaroslav Pelikan wrote, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” He added that traditionalism is what gives tradition a bad name. In Pelikan’s view, tradition is living and dynamic. Like the Maypole tradition, it can travel across cultures and generations while still speaking meaningfully to the present. The same is true of the Church. Traditionalism, by contrast, is rigid and stagnant—the unthinking repetition of actions simply because “that’s how it has always been done.”

As inheritors of the Christian tradition, we have received a rich and holy heritage. Through the centuries, that tradition has been carried to people of many cultures, races, ethnicities, and languages, proclaiming the gospel to a broken and weary world.

You, the beloved people of Trinity Cathedral, have also inherited a blessed tradition—one shaped over nearly a century by the wisdom and faith of those who came before us. We honor and cherish that heritage with gratitude. At the same time, we must not become bound to traditionalism. If we do, we risk turning this living inheritance into a museum piece rather than allowing the gospel to speak with relevance and power in our own day.

I look forward to sharing in the traditions of our Cathedral and continuing the work entrusted to us by those who came before. Together, we can move faithfully through the present and into a hopeful future, engaging the past while keeping, in Pelikan’s words, “a living faith.”

Faithfully,

Dean Lee+

The Reverend Canon Terence Alexander Lee+, M.Div.