One of the great burdens of contemporary forms of church is the (largely) unspoken demand to be original. Every. Single. Weekend.

This is driven by a popular sense in the contemporary American imagination that any practice or words or songs from earlier generations are inferior or stale or not as wise as the words and practices we come up with right here, right now. Our hubris in this assumption is amazing. 

Tied to this in some churches is not only a demand for the new or original or fresh but an urgent sense that the church must always be poised to run toward "the next big thing" God is doing.

This restless disposition is also often connected to the desire for emotional, spontaneous and—this is sometimes missed—"positive" experiences. It *has* to be uplifting. 

This can leave no room for lament or sorrow or the very human experience of loss and defeat. It can be driven by a kind of escapism and denial of the world as it is, motivated by a gnostic vision of some other place than earth, far away from the good creation held hostage, far from the actual world in which the incarnate God is with us, and with all persons, baptized or unbaptized, seeking to save us all and the cosmos he loves on a torturous cross of wood.

The great treasure that we have in the prayers and liturgies and songs and sacrament—and seasons—of the church of the ages is the benefit of collective Christian wisdom, forged in the harsh and fiery conditions of fallen existence across cultures and times and languages and empires other than our own.