Who's a fundamentalist?  I just finished reading two volumes of a magisterial set of five tomes on fundamentalism.  Although I could say much about what I found in this reading, one thing that struck me repeatedly was the interest (some might say obsession) of fundamentalists in the past.  Tradition is everything, and anything that appears to violate or undermine that tradition is to be abhorred and fought vehemently.
     As I pondered this, I thought back to one of the clarion calls of the Sixties movements across the globe:  we need to get back to the garden (a phrase forever enshrined in Joni Mitchell's song Woodstock).  The garden represented the beginning, the foundation, the original perfection:  the most ancient and venerable tradition.
     Yet many considered the Sixties to be anything but traditional.  They believed it to be radically wrong.  For them, tradition meant something else altogether.  My point is that, either way, countless people seem to look to some sort of foundational beginning, some sort of tradition to frame their world.  More people than not seem to want what can become an almost metaphysical grounding for their lives.  We want a starting point.
     As we should.  The challenge, however, is in balancing the virtues and lessons of the past with the possibilities of the present, in putting, as Jesus said, new wine in new, not old wineskins.  We may struggle with and long for our structures and traditions, yes, but we would struggle much more if we had never had them.  We cannot entirely dismiss the idea of beginning.