{"id":2056,"date":"2025-11-01T09:55:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T14:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2025-11-01T09:55:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T14:55:35","slug":"nostalgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/?p=2056","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nostalgia is a fascinating human experience. It can be playful or delightful, as when old friends reunite. Suddenly they are in tears or side-splitting laughter as they recall long-forgotten songs or jokes or shared antics. Their recalling of story after story rekindles old connections, and everyone feels gratitude and joy. Alternatively, nostalgia can evoke a deep and wistful longing for what once was or what might have been. I have written before about the Welsh word Hiraeth<\/em><\/a>. In its darker forms, nostalgia can also evoke rage or blame or contempt toward those who allegedly ruined the good things that used to be \u2013 even to the point of scapegoating and violence. If you study the history of any genocide, you will find nostalgia in the mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all nostalgia is helpful, and not all nostalgia is truthful. As Bren\u00e9 Brown suggests, \u201cNostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not uncommon for me as a priest to hear a resentful rant about how America used to be the greatest nation on earth, but now\u2026those people\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes, I will kindly and playfully ask, \u201cDo you think that\u2019s the story Jesus will tell us when he comes again? Is he going to assemble all the nations and every human who has ever lived to sit and listen to how much greater America was than all the other nations?\u201d That usually gives some pause to the person. It reminds me of the school kids modifying their story when they realized that my friend (their principal) had been viewing the entire incident on the security camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is that our American story is quite a mix of greatness and darkness. It includes some of us living privileged lives at the expense of others. Nostalgia becomes a drug to distract our notice from what it is really like to be downtrodden and oppressed. God never forgets his little ones. Judgment Day will uncover the full truth of how we choose to love and serve the poor (Matthew 25:31-46). G.K. Chesterton wrote a century ago, during an age in which nationalism was also running high. As he explained then, genuine patriotism is not loving your nation as better than all the others. It\u2019s loving your nation because it\u2019s your home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether we realize it or not, we tend to edit our stories. Day and night (including in our dreams), our brains are at work, trying to make sense and meaning of our human experience. If it\u2019s not safe to feel grief or hurt or anger or intense unmet desire, we are prone to tell a more pristine story about how things used to be. We will play up the beautiful and happy memories and hide away the dark or disturbing ones. We will bury our deeper longings and settle for a superficial nostalgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m nearly finished reading Erik Varden\u2019s The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance<\/em>. All his writings invite a healthy asceticism that helps reclaim and re-order the intense longing of the human heart. These longings are \u201cvery good,\u201d and can only truly be satisfied through God\u2019s plan to have us share in his divine life and become truly like Him. Our deepest nostalgia is for our heavenly homeland, which leaves its traces everywhere in this creation. We are homesick for the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nostalgia that only looks backwards will ultimately leave us disappointed, disillusioned, empty, and embittered. It will sap our Hope. This world and all the things in it are passing away. Nothing here can ultimately satisfy our intense and unquenchable longing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Varden reflects on Jesus\u2019 seemingly random reference: \u201cRemember Lot\u2019s wife\u201d (Luke 17:32). Lot\u2019s wife looked back, and turned into a pillar of salt. As Varden explains it, we are prone to sacrifice a good future by turning back to what is left behind. Therefore, Jesus goes on to explain that we will lose our life if we try to save it, and find our life if we are willing to give all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, I\u2019ve been reminding people of those words of Jesus, as I travel the nineteen counties of my diocese. I\u2019ve been facilitating a few dozen listening sessions as we launch our renewal efforts, inviting a pivot from maintenance to mission. I\u2019ve tried to avoid the equivalent of a Pawnee Town Hall Meeting<\/a>, successfully in every case but one. In order to allow everyone a voice (especially Jesus!) we\u2019ve included silent time to reflect and write. Of course, that leaves me reading through the written reflections of over 3,000 participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my reading, I am finding no small amount of nostalgia for an \u201camazing\u201d past that was probably not as flourishing and carefree as the person remembers. Nor is the nostalgia limited to one political or theological ideology. Many people, understandably (but unrealistically) just want things to go back to the way they used to be. Or they just want to hold on to some small scrap. Or they blame \u201cthose people\u201d for wrecking everything. Or they are simply resigned to ongoing decline. Can you hear the grieving process here (denial, bargaining, blame, depression)? Neither our culture nor most of our church communities know how to grieve well these days. I am noticing a palpable proportionality: the more intense the nostalgia for a supposedly glamorous past, the less imagination there is for a hopeful future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nostalgia that gets stuck in the past enables us to bypass our grief. It becomes toxic and ultimately lethal. It will kill our Hope. It is only when we are willing to enter together the pain of the Cross and the Tomb that we can be surprised with the Hope of the resurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mass allows us to experience genuine nostalgia. We remember the saving events of Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection in a way that makes them truly present. But the Mass is also a memory of the future. We gain a foretaste and anticipation of the wedding feast of the Lamb. We become again and again what we one day will be \u2013 each of us individually and all of us collectively in a one-flesh union with the Bridegroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a reason why words like hiraeth<\/em> or saudade <\/em>or Sehnsucht<\/em> have provoked endless reflection from poets and mystics. We were created for eternal communion with the living God. We ache for a homeland that we cannot yet fully receive.  For most humans most of the time, it is easier to bury or avoid or escape that longing.  To desire and not yet possess is perhaps the greatest suffering \u2013 known and embraced by all the Saints. The more they desired, the more they joyfully received, and the more they joyfully received, the more they suffered in their desiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, perhaps, is why the Saints were so often unwelcomed and persecuted, not only or even chiefly by this world, but by the very Church they loved and served. The witness of the Saints awakens longing and invites conversion from a merely human nostalgia. In the presence of the Kingdom of God, there is no standing still, no comfortable plateaus to settle on. Any earthly power or privilege will be turned on its head, and exposed \u2013 not as evil \u2013 but as inadequate for answering our deepest questions or filling our deepest longings. Idols are often the beautiful work of human hands. We don\u2019t like to remove them from the holy place of longing in our heart that belongs to God alone. Waiting with empty hands is scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are your idols? What are the idols of your civic community or of your church community? Where does most of your nostalgic energy go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we celebrate another All Saints\u2019 Day, may we feel their invitation to embrace our deepest longings and renew our trust that God is faithful and true to His promises. Come, Lord Jesus!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nostalgia that gets stuck in the past enables us to bypass our grief. It becomes toxic and ultimately lethal. It will kill our Hope. It is only when we are willing to enter together the pain of the Cross and the Tomb that we can be surprised with the Hope of the Resurrection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58,57,61,56,55,54,60,59],"tags":[494,675,227,677,676,672,378,673,674],"class_list":["post-2056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-renewal","category-healing","category-reception","category-saints","category-scripture","category-spirituality","category-the-church","category-theology","tag-brene-brown","tag-christian-nationalism","tag-desire","tag-erik-varden","tag-g-k-chesterton","tag-hiraeth","tag-longing","tag-nostalgia","tag-patriotism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/nostalgia.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2058,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/2058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}