modern spirituality

It is intrinsic to ascetical theology to adapt itself to the contemporary situation, yet it can only evolve out of a living tradition with roots in the past. We have now discovered, rather painfully, that a scholar cannot just sit down and compose a new liturgy; nor can another scholar sit down and write a modern spirituality. Both depend upon the worshipping community developing a tradition. That, by the grace of God, seems to be happening, but it needs a compatible ascetical theology to support, guide, and nurture it, and the only source of such a theology is the tradition itself: it is sometimes more progressive to look back a thousand years than to look forward three weeks.

English Spirituality, 13