Nostalgia

It was heritage day, and sitting around my living room were three generations. The conversation following the outing, took shape as we shared our earliest memories. My ears were attuned as the things remembered most clearly by the middle generation were shared. I wondered at the many things I had done wrong (for the right reasons) in parenting and partnering.  Lots of warm memories were shared, but the lingering question of what might have been different remains.
 
Once, in a small church group meeting, I heard a woman say, “The good old days are gone, and the problem is we didn’t know those were the best days at the time.”  From my generation’s point of view,  the expectations of church and society were far from perfect.  Nostalgia comes up every time someone recalls the former days of the downtown shopping core, the schools overflowing with kids and volunteers, and yes, Sunday schools bursting at the seams.
 
I remember with nostalgic delight walking up the stairs to the central office at Goodman’s to see my grandmother making change and sending the money back to the department through the vacuum system.  For transactions these days, I choose “TAP” as often as I can; a technology that could not even have been imagined 40 years ago.
 
While it may be helpful to remember the past, nostalgia doesn’t help us much as we live for today or plan for tomorrow. It doesn’t help us make an economic plan and it doesn’t help us live faithfully. God’s constant call is into the future. “Follow me” Jesus says. Follow me to the places where the story of faith lives in real life. Follow me into the places of unrest and vulnerability. Follow me where issues of justice need to be fought and where forgiveness is aching to be felt. We can’t get to those places by trying to recreate our memory of yesterday any more than the first disciples could. In order to live into the reign of Christ, the first followers had to trust and listen and know that God is revealed in the unknown.  
 
Creativity and positivity will serve as better tools for living into faith. We remember our story, but our story goes back farther than our living memory. Planning for tomorrow will begin when we stop longing for a time past and open ourselves to the opportunities for God’s reign to be born anew.  Acknowledging that we have not done everything right, will be a big part of seeing how things might be better. Focusing on the message of Jesus will serve us better than remembering how we used to do things. His message of compassion, inclusion and forgiveness and redefining what it means to follow are vital in faith for today.