This is the one time I wish I could insert music for my title – Tradition! Tradition! Tradition is perhaps the best thing the mainline church has to offer of community. Tradition is hip – old is new – candles are cool! This is obviously a trend in ascetics and trends are just that – trendy. But, this is our opportunity to make faith relevant to the community around us through our practice of tradition.
How can we accomplish this? Do we simply continue what we’ve been doing for the past two hundred years, exactly as we’ve been doing it? I think not.
Tradition left as it is becomes irrelevant. What was happening 200 years ago that sparked a certain tradition is not happening today – we are dealing with different times. So, we need to look deeply at our traditions. Some of them need to disappear for a time, others need to be re-imagined, made relevant for today and we need to make some new traditions.
What would it look like to re-imagine the traditions of the past? What new traditions could we create that would speak to our world today? Which traditions do we practice have become irrelevant?
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When I think of "tradition" I have a mixed reaction. On the one hand having tradition leaves me feeling comfortable with the familiar. Some things in my Christian experience have continued to nourish me and draw me closer to who God is- i.e. quiet prayer, meditative walks, an my familiar way of taking communion (I grew up Episcopal). And yet for me, I also find myself not wanting to get TOO comfortable, for it is then that I miss a fresh, new face of who God is. I am struck with the statement of Martin Luther when commenting on what to call "The Reformation," where he said, "the Church should never stop reforming." As I think of my own personal theology, I have found myself "reforming my beliefs." Instead of upholding the traditional view of women in the church setting, through the years my view of women in church has expanded beyond the bounds of traditional roles. That's just one example. I suppose those areas in my life that have "reformed" flow directly out of my encounters with God, much like Jacob wrestling with the God-man in the middle of the night.
At the same time, it is a difficult task to hold both the old and new. Again, ambivalence- the both/and, that place where I try to keep a tension of both the old and the new.
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