History

History for a lot of people is very important even if they never lived at the time of the history they so admire.  They want to go back to live and worship as did people in some previous era.  They are not happy with the present post-modern and very secular world.  But I would be careful of that desire to go back.  Do you want to go back to ice boxes?  Outdoor privies?  Horse and buggy?  Now the Amish never went back. They just kept living to a certain life-style.  The rest of us bought into the modern and then said we did not like it.  I am not interested in worshipping in some nostalgic fashion.  History is helpful to me to teach me from mistakes made in the past so we don't repeat them.  Or mistakes made in some other cultures past, so we don't pick up on their mistakes and live them in our present.  Keep what works but let go of what cannot speak to the modern world.  Alcoholics Anonymous would be an example of holding to a base but being open to change as times demand.  What does not change is your purpose.  What does change is your way of manifesting your purpose for others, newcomers.  Concerts are the place to hear beautiful old classical church music.  You sit there and listen, but that is not communal worship.  Private religion is part of the past, a past filled with racism and bigotry and prejudice.  Even in a monastery that has lots of silence, solitude and stillness, when we gather, we sing, and we sing chants that are possible for us to sing.  Why?  Because singing in common is one of the things that make us communal, and the God we believe in is a community-forming God.  Singing together challenges us to love one another when we are not in choir.  Modern worship is to get us out of ourselves in a world that lacks community and fosters individualism and separation.