For the Joy of the Journey

Quarantine Reflections – Nostalgia (2)

George April 22, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 1 Comment

When the world around us changes rapidly, and beyond recognition, it helps if we can hold on to something familiar. These days though, our world has become strange and unfamiliar and the landscape around us

Reading the quote above this morning, I was further convinced that nostalgia (reflective) is a readily available, cheap and effective balm in the midst of this pandemic and attendant social distancing. Not in an addictive way, but, perhaps more akin to a cup of coffee in the morning, only better. (Apologies to my non-coffee friends). I highly recommend both, nostalgia and coffee.

I digress, back to the business at hand. Picking up from Part (1). Perhaps you listened to Shaun Casey’ s lecture.If not, it is available here: https://youtu.be/ukrGmEC5ZzA

So the question is, why is Casey in such a twit about nostalgia? I took it a bit personally, since I count myself as one who thinks nostalgia is good thing. In fairness, I lifted his comments on nostalgia from a speech of which the subject is much broader than nostalgia. If he had used the term “restorative nostalgia” as previously defined, instead of simply nostalgia, I think that would have gone along way in clarifying and justifying his concern. (I could be helpful to re-read my citation of his remarks and insert restorative before nostalgia)

Nostalgia is powerful. Nostalgic moments produce feelings that are rarely replicated in other experiences. Unfortunately, it does not matter whether memory is manufactured, misbegotten or real, the emotional and motivational impact is the same. Given the pleasurable experience of nostalgia, available at no cost and little effort, there is little incentive to discriminate between good and harmful nostalgia. However, the consequences of indiscriminate nostalgic indulgence can be harmful, or, even catastrophic.

In Casey’s speech, he understands and rejects Evangelical Christianity’s response to the rage against violence and injustice in our society that is shaped by a restorative nostalgic ideal of “Traditional Christianity”. I think he contends correctly, such response has not and will not make our society healthier, much less more “Christian”.

It is a restorative nostalgic impulse fuels “Make America Great Again”. That same impulse motivated and sustained the Restoration movement of my religious heritage and countless other religious restoration movements, all …” pursuits of that which never was in the pursuit of addressing some perceived current malady.“

Restorative nostalgia is a not a virtuous recollection of the past. Rather, it is an intellectually lazy and dishonest reliance on unreliable memory. It is naive and enables avoidance of daunting and complicated realities and the hard work necessary for solutions. It is enabled by our enlightenment ethos that believes whatever one perceives, is truth for them. Therefore, it is non-partisan, neither the left nor right’s “good ole days” hold the answer.; “Truth” cannot be compromised, gridlock prevails.

There is a temptation to ascribe restorative nostalgia to others and exempt ourselves.
Be careful, you may be a “restorative nostalgic” if: you are saying things like: “I wish we could just get back to the basics.” … “Just give me that old-time religion”…”We didn’t have these problems when ____” … “They just don’t make them like they used to,” et al.

I am not implying there are not valuable lessons to be learned and remembered from the past. We cannot recreate the past, neither can we ignore it. As one author observed, “Good” and “bad” nostalgia are defined by our expectations about what those memories can do for us. It is not the past itself, but rather our attitude toward the past, that makes all the difference. Restorative nostalgia is based on unrealistic and /or irrational expectations and therefore will always disappoint.

I think I better understand why Shaun Casey was in such a twit over nostalgia. First, I owe him an apology for reducing his ardent passion to twit. What I am able see now is Casey’s outrage at people who, by virtue of their faith in Christ, bear responsibility to reflect His image in the world around them but choose restorative nostalgia rather than grappling with reality. Put simply, they spin fairy tales and proclaim them to be truth.

Nostalgia is analogous to opioids, and should be treated as a controlled substance. Administered in proper doses (reflective) it is a wonderful and powerful treatment that heals. Abuse of nostalgia (restorative) is additive and destructive. One is led to a false sense of reality that restrains healthy and productive lives. Unfortunately, the FDA does not recognize nostalgia as a controlled substance. Each of us can dispense it at will.

Hopefully, these posts have stimulated some thought about the value and peril of nostalgia. I plan on one final post which will address nostalgia and marketing. Thanks for reading

Quarantine Reflections – Nostalgia (1)

George April 17, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 2 Comments

This post continues my quarantine reflections. As mentioned in my previous post, quarantine has provided opportunity to clean out. Among some random notes I came across were notations from a speech by Shaun Casey at the Christian Scholars Conference at Lipscomb University in 2017. The subject of my notes was nostalgia. They are thought provoking and obviously caught my attention listening to the lecture. The title of Casey’s lecture was ” Rage, Nostalgia and the Forgetfulness of God”. Prompted to re-listen to the lecture I was surprised to find that my notes were generated by a brief segment in the latter portion of a one hour + lecture. Those notes seem to be even more relevant 3 years later and worthy of sharing.
Excerpts on nostalgia:

I now want to turn to a troubling but all too common Christian response to rage and that is nostalgia. I’m trying here to answer the question why are so many American Christians attracted to nostalgia today.

I also hear the voice of my 23 year old daughter who responds to any declaration I make and “Dad what is wrong with that?”. So to the people who think nostalgia is a good thing, I’m trying to address you if you’re here today.

I’m trying to argue that nostalgia is not a Christian virtue. That more often than not nostalgia masks darker impulses. While explicitly marketing certain forms of virtue that delude and misdirect Christian theology while purporting to restore some lost theology or practice.

Nostalgia is a misbegotten form of memory. It is the pursuit of that which never was in the pursuit of addressing some perceived current malady.

Nostalgia needs a narrative of failure and loss to be attractive and to be intellectually or psychologically effective. All nostalgic narrative have a golden era.

Something from the past has disappeared or it’s currently existentially threatened, in order to make the appeal to restoring what has been lost persuasive.

Ironically, what is lost often proved to be imaginary and not real. Nevertheless memory manufactured or misbegotten can be as powerful is memory of real events and we need to be able to separate the two.
Traditional Christianity is a nostalgic construct.

After reading my notes, I was again thrown in to a state of cognitive dissonance (Oh no, not again). On the one hand, Casey was playing to my choir. I perceive much of the divisive rhetoric I hear, political and religious, is based on a nostalgic construct that fits Casey’s description: Nostalgia is a misbegotten form of memory. It is the pursuit of that which never was in the pursuit of addressing some perceived current malady.
On the other hand, I am eaten up with nostalgia. In the longer view, it is probably a natural consequence of aging. As life gets shorter, looking in the rear view mirror becomes more appealing, for good or ill. More immediately, redoing my office and cleaning has revealed my nostalgic impulses. (See sample below)

Nostalgia is a pleasure I’m unwilling to give up.
…nostalgizing helps people relate their past experiences to their present lives in order to make greater meaning of it all.
“Nostalgia makes people feel loved and valued and increases perceptions of social support when people are lonely.”
While I have no illusion about nostalgia as a Christian virtue, I understand it as human experience endowed by our Creator.
A bit of research on nostalgia produced some helpful insights.

Svetlana Boym identifies two distinct types of nostalgia: “restorative” nostalgia and “reflective” nostalgia.

These two types of nostalgia represent fundamentally different attitudes toward the past, and it is this difference that largely determines whether our memories of those happy days of yore will evoke feelings of joy or of sadness. Restorative nostalgia, involving a desire to “rebuild the lost home,” views the past with an eye toward recreating it—a desire to relive those special moments. It is what spurs us to pull out our phone at 1 a. m. and call up an old boyfriend or girlfriend because we just heard “our song” on the radio.
Reflective nostalgia, on the other hand, accepts the fact that the past is, in fact, past, and rather than trying to recreate a special past experience, savors the emotions evoked by its recollection. This acknowledgment of the irretrievability of our autobiographical past provides an aesthetic distance that allows us to enjoy a memory in the same way that we enjoy a movie or a good book. If “our song” were to come on the radio at 1 a.m., reflective nostalgia would be more likely to make us reach for an old photograph than for our phone, evoking in us a momentary sense of emotional pleasure rather than a restless urge to recreate a special moment from our past, and a sense of sadness when we realize the futility of that desire, that special moment, as it was lived, being forever sealed off from the present we inhabit. With reflective nostalgia, it is the very fact that an experience is sealed off from the present that makes it a source of pleasure. Like a favorite movie or book, it possesses an aesthetic wholeness that allows us to savor it again and again with no nagging uncertainty about how it will turn out.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/time-travelling-apollo/201606/the-two-faces-nostalgia

Though I’ve had occasions of restorative nostalgia, wishing to recreate a “special” moment, they always proved to be a disappointment. As it’s been said, “You can’t go back”. Memories are tricky, often misbegotten. I am reminded of how shockingly small the roomy house I grew up in was when revisited as an adult.

It is reflective nostalgia, sealed off from the present, that brings deep pleasure. As the writer above observed, …it possesses an aesthetic wholeness that allows us to savor it again and again with no nagging uncertainty about how it will turn out.
I would suggest that reflective nostalgia may be counted as a Christian virtue. I’ll have to think on that some more.

There is a lot more to to consider, not the least of which is why Casey is in such twit over nostalgia? Part (2) will address that question and some other aspects of nostalgia.

If you are interested (I know you have the time), you can watch Casey’s entire hour long lecture below.

Quarantine Reflections: Hospitality

George April 12, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 0 Comments

The Coronavirus quarantine has provided opportunity to clean-up, clean-out and and take on a few projects. I refurbished my office and in the process I “discovered” numerous notes from classes, readings, sermons, lessons and such. I found several I thought worthy of sharing. This post is the first in a new category “Quarantine Reflections”.

The following are notations on hospitality. My original notes have no date or source. I am certain they are not original to me. They are not intended as definitive, just opportunity to reflect and ponder.

A shared meal is the activity most closely tied to the reality of God’s Kingdom, just as it is the most basic expression of hospitality.

Seeing Jesus in every guest reduces the inclination to try to calculate the importance of one guest over another.

“The tasks aren’t what hospitality is about, hospitality is giving yourself.” If hospitality involves sharing your life and sharing in the life of others, guests/strangers are not first defined by their need.

(Meal time) is the time when hospitality looks like spiritual service.

Simple acts of respect, appreciation, presence are indispensable parts of the affirmation of human personhood.

…the pinnacle of lovelessness is not our unwillingness to be neighbor to someone, but our unwillingness to allow them to be a neighbor to us… (Alan Boesak)

The greatest lie of this broken universe is that God cannot be trusted and we have to take care of ourselves.

Nothing we as believers do together will ever make up for our own relationship with God.When we put the church in that place we make it an idol and others will always end up disappointing us.

Still on the journey…

Christian Values (?)

George April 8, 2020 Christian Values 1 Comment

This post is the second in a series on Christian Values. You can read the first post HERE.

Experiencing cognitive dissonance after reading articles such as those cited in my earlier post, my first inclination was to provide proper definition of Christian Values and relieve my, and your dissonance. Fortunately, it occurred to me, those authors were doing the same in their respective articles.
What makes me think I have better understanding of Christian Values than people obviously more qualified than me?
In all likelihood, I, like them, am certain my understanding is correct and therefore have an implicit responsibility to defend those (my) values and challenge any deviation. Ergo, our divisive culture.
Feeling foolish, I have abandoned the idea of defining Christian Values, at least for now.
Instead, I want to probe some thoughts and ideas about values to stimulate our thinking and hopefully move toward greater clarity about Christian Values.

Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work. They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, they’re probably the measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want it to. When the things that you do and the way you behave match your values, life is usually good – you’re satisfied and content. But when these don’t align with your personal values, that’s when things feel… wrong. This can be a real source of unhappiness.
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_85.htm

I propose the first step (of course there is a plan) in moving toward greater clarity comes at a personal level. Step (1) Conduct a complete and thorough self-examination to determine my real values . Since all of us are irrationally wedded to our beliefs and derived values, any reasoned attempts to come to a truthful understanding of our values will be futile; unless there is some transcendent existential intervention. i.e. Moses and the burning bush…David and Nathan…Isaiah in the temple…Saul on the Road to Damascus… Peter again and again. et al.

Some think the Coronavirus pandemic is divine existential intervention, regardless, it is a significant transcendent existential experience which provides an opportunity for an examination of our values.
Admittedly, the depth and breath of the pandemic varies widely. But, even for those of us in our privileged confines are being forced to think about what we value.
This pandemic may not be a Damascus road, but we shouldn’t let a crisis go waste.
To that end, I am making an intentional effort to gain better clarity about what my true values are.
That is a daunting task but it pales with the thought that I might discover my values are misplaced and need to be changed. Sorry, that’s premature, one step at a time .

In case you’re having trouble getting started, here is a thought starter:
Did you rush out to buy toilet paper, a lot of toilet paper??

In the next post we’ll look at Step (2). How do my values align with “Christian Values”?

Lent, Lament and Coronavirus

George April 4, 2020 Covoid 19 Pandemic 3 Comments

Lent is an intensely penitential time as we examine our sinful natures and return to the God we have, through our own rebelliousness, hurt time and again. Lent is also an opportunity to contemplate what our Lord really did for us on the Cross…

I am a stranger to any formal observance of Lent. My spiritual heritage was non-liturgical and ignored the Christian calendar. If I had read the above description of Lent, my response would have been, “Yeah, that’s what we do every Sunday.”. In the intervening years, my spiritual journey has drawn me to a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of lent. I’ve still got a long way to go to catch up with my liturgical sisters and brothers.

Although, I’m not a stranger to lament, awareness of lament as an important part of one’s spiritual journey has come in relatively recent times. I have written several posts on lament which you can read HERE.
In my words from one of those posts: …lament is the natural, intuitive response of all humans to the reality of the brokenness in our world as seen and/or experienced in their lives. I would describe brokenness as anything that is wrong, perceived or otherwise….if you meet someone who has no capacity to lament, they would be labeled a sociopath. … my conclusion is that lament is a universal human emotional response to real or perceived wrong.

The irony of a pandemic emerging in this Lenten season has been the subject of much writing and commentary. Lent and lament go hand in hand. This Lent is unique, the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed our vulnerabilities and dashed illusions of independence and self-sufficiency in ways beyond our collective memory. If it weren’t so sad, it would be hilarious that the first responders were hoarders of toilet paper.
I expect those who embrace Lent seriously have found their observance deepened and more focused than usual. For those of us who are casual Lenten observers, (i.e. gave up Twinkies) it is an opportunity to embrace Lent/lament seriously. Even in the midst of increasing anxiety and peril, I am finding that I resist lament and opt for feel-good cliches:

God will never give us more than we can bear.
When the Lord closes a door he opens a window.
As long as we’re in God’s will, we will be safe.
If God brings you to it, God will bring you through it.
God will put a hedge of protection around his people.
This is just our cross to bear.
God allows bad things into our lives so that he can turn it into good.
God has given you this trouble to test your faith.
God is trying to teach us something through this trouble.
With God, everything happens for a reason.
God is in control

I know, those cliches are sacred and they satisfy be-happy impulses and allow me to conceal my real fears. I think they are what Job’s friends would say. After all, won’t unvarnished lament diminish our witness to our neighbors? Doesn’t our piety and ministry depend upon stiff upper lips and courageous defiance.
Lee Camp’s latest post gives some helpful perspective. An excerpt follows, you can read the complete post HERE.

…something like a third of the book of Psalms is comprised of Lament Psalms: bold and indignant; complaining and pleading; asking God where God is, sometimes profanely. There is no emotional avoidance here. No false sense of machismo. And sometimes they are shockingly impertinent: “why don’t you wake up up there, and come down here and show us a little mercy?”

This posture of complaining is not a sign of unbelief, but precisely a manifestation of faith. The lamentations arise precisely because the complainer does believe that the Master of the universe can, and has, in dramatic times past, worked wonders. So why now the absence? Why now the cursedness, the loss, the death?

The laments are one reason I find I can believe. They are true to human experience. They evoke a sort of sadness and weary grief which we know to be real. Yet they refuse stubbornly to despair, refuse stubbornly not to see some awe, some transcendent beauty in it all. And they refuse to believe, even in the midst of all that weary grief, that we have been left alone.

I suspect, many are like me. The pain and discomfort of stay-at-home and quarantine has mostly produced compliant and whines. If predictions are accurate, we will soon find our complaints, whines and soothing cliches to be wanting. Facing the reality of utter helplessness we will voice our grief in deep lament to our only HOPE.

If God expects us to trust Him completely, how must he feel when we are reluctant or refuse to lament over real pain and suffering but freely complain about inconveniences? I would not presume to be God, but I might feel like a vending machine. It seems to me lament may be the purest expression of faith. Trusting when there are no answers. Where do we take those questions if not to God?