Members of ethical, political, and spiritual traditions share primary assumptions, basic ideas, and central convictions about their associations and establishments. Since human beings are self-interested and fallible, phrases and ideas are many-sided and ambiguous, and justice makes competing calls for, traditions – irrespective of how noble and good their functions – naturally divide into rival camps that espouse clashing interpretations of their shared inheritance. Grappling with this variety and dissent inside a framework of total unity is a mark of a residing, respiratory custom.