Marching Band

In the fifth grade my oldest child began to play the baritone, which looks something like a tuba but is smaller.  She started out on the trumpet but that did not work out too well.  The sounds that came out of the instrument when she tried to play it were haunting.  The Exorcist haunting.  It was not her fault that her lips were not the right shape or size.  Blame Mom and Dad (she did).  The baritone was a better fit, at least on the lips front.  Poor kid, the instrument was almost as big as she was.  Yet, she stuck with it even when she was the only girl playing in the low brass section of the band.
Now she is a freshman in high school and has joined the marching band.  Not any band, mind you, but the Grand Pacer Marching Band.  What makes it Grand is not clear.  But is is, since the word Grand appears on the shirts, uniforms and assorted literature that the school churns out.  I guess I will have to take the band teacher's word on this one.  It turns out there are two sizes of the baritone: the full-sized concert version and a smaller marching one which she can easily carry (the tuba players still seem stuck in the musical equivalent of hell since they still have to tote that monster of an instrument no matter where they go).  My daughter's challenge now is playing and marching...at the same time.  Prior to joining the marching band she sort of had the playing part down.  If she had, I don't know, practiced, she would be much better.  She is musically inclined but adverse to anything that resembles practicing.  I like to think she got that trait from her mother but even I am not that delusional.  Marching, however, was the real concern.  My daughter is an amazingly fantastic kid, full of so many gifts and skills I can hardly believe she is related to me.  But she is not the most coordinated human to ever walk the earth.  Walking without tripping over something is a challenge most days.  Marching in time with a bunch of other kids, well that is tempting fate.  Playing while engaging in said march, Lord, help us all.
The first couple of weeks of marching band were rough.  Band camp started the first of August when it was really hot and humid (my daughter does not like hot or humid).  But as she, I don't know, practiced, she got better and more comfortable.  When they had a marching drill contest she lasted longer than over half of the other band members.  She was proud.  So was I.  Only problem was, I really don't know what the point of the marching band, even the illustrious Grand Pacer Marching Band, is.
Let me rephrase that - I know what the point used to be.  Long before Jerry Jones and his $100,000,000 video screens people wanted entertainment at sporting events.  What evolved to fit that need, especially at football games, was the marching band.  Marching bands had it all.  They could play music (and play it loud) throughout the game.  They could also put on a show that would give the crowd something to watch while the players were in the locker room.  Honestly, can you think of anything more captivating than watching dozens of people, in uniforms, marching together in time and making all sorts of shapes and sizes. 
In our video age the role of the marching band has been reduced.  Yes, they still show up at football games, especially college and high school.  But massive video screens and PA systems have put the squeeze on marching bands.  They seem to still exist for one reason -tradition.
Tradition has its place.  It is just that in American society that place is often behind whatever is new.  Our culture loves innovation and we put a greater value on that which is brand new than we do the tried and true.  Right or wrong, that is who we are. Forget the flavor of the month, we are all about the flavor of the moment.  Age-old traditions and practices are fine until something new crops up to challenge them.  Then the onus is on that which is established to justify its continued existence.  If it can't then out it goes.  And in comes the Jumbo-tron (which was replaced by something bigger and better years ago).
I often wonder where God is in this tension between the old and new.  Traditionalists (the minority in our culture but well represented in the church) will talk of the Rock of Ages, the God who is the same today as God was yesterday.  God's greatest characteristic is God's unchanging nature.  What is is what should be.  If it is not broken, don't fix it (and if it is broken, well just leave it alone and maybe it will fix itself).  Advocates of change will point to a God who is always revealing Godself.  The universe is constantly changing, always in flux.  God is at the heart of this evolutionary process.   Preserving tradition boxes God in and denies fresh, new revelations of the Divine.
I do not claim to know where God falls in all of this.  If I had to guess, and it is just a guess, is that God values both tradition and innovation.  And respect.  Respect for those who need something predictable to hold onto and respect for those who desire the unknown.   God can be found in the ancient and the new, the stable and the still evolving.  Where God begins to disappear is when we stop respecting those who need something different than we do.  God gets pushed out and replaced by our own desires.  That is called idolatry.  And it is a bad thing.
May your day be filled with respect, for yourself and for others.  May you experience something new and unexpected as well as a little bit of the familiar and established.  Oh, and if you have the time, check out the Grand Pacer Marching Band.  It is a Grand tradition.  But always changing.