I really enjoyed this article. I love listening to 1930’s-40’s music because it makes me incredibly happy. I am nostalgic for a time I never even knew.
Lovely piece. Glad I stumbled upon it! I feel that same nostalgia – that grief and longing – very deeply; so much that it can be crushing. It's hard on the heart to be so in love with something that's fading.
It's helpful to be reminded to reframe it in gratitude, and a fiercer determination to protect what's good.
I'll check out that Willows piece, too. There's definitely something about the literature of that period – Grahame, Tolkien, Lewis, Wodehouse – that speaks to this. They witnessed such a transformation in this country, and you can feel them writing their love into their work as an act of preservation.
I see all nostalgia as a longing for Paradise, and what you wrote resonates deeply with that. It’s like we glimpse what was lost on the grand scale through the particular losses of our own lives. That’s why T.S. Eliot’s lines hit so hard. We’ve all lost the innocence of childhood, which might be the clearest echo we have of Eden:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
What you say about Scripture makes that ache hopeful rather than bitter. The Christian view stretches nostalgia forward into promise: what’s lost isn’t erased but held in God’s keeping, and that longing becomes a guide toward the home yet to come.
This is what makes me a Catholic Anglican. It is what makes much of American evangelicalism so alien to my rootedness in the Church and its creeds vs formulaic religion with its love of the present popular celebrity pastor.
Have you come across (another Welshman), Chris Deacy, and his theological work on the place and use of nostalgia? He's even made it into a podcast, so you can listen to it, as you hike through the darkling vales of this passing life...!
I really enjoyed this article. I love listening to 1930’s-40’s music because it makes me incredibly happy. I am nostalgic for a time I never even knew.
I can't cook without some good 30-40s jazz on in the background.
Verily, verily it is the best cooking music.
Lovely piece. Glad I stumbled upon it! I feel that same nostalgia – that grief and longing – very deeply; so much that it can be crushing. It's hard on the heart to be so in love with something that's fading.
It's helpful to be reminded to reframe it in gratitude, and a fiercer determination to protect what's good.
I'll check out that Willows piece, too. There's definitely something about the literature of that period – Grahame, Tolkien, Lewis, Wodehouse – that speaks to this. They witnessed such a transformation in this country, and you can feel them writing their love into their work as an act of preservation.
I see all nostalgia as a longing for Paradise, and what you wrote resonates deeply with that. It’s like we glimpse what was lost on the grand scale through the particular losses of our own lives. That’s why T.S. Eliot’s lines hit so hard. We’ve all lost the innocence of childhood, which might be the clearest echo we have of Eden:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
What you say about Scripture makes that ache hopeful rather than bitter. The Christian view stretches nostalgia forward into promise: what’s lost isn’t erased but held in God’s keeping, and that longing becomes a guide toward the home yet to come.
This is what makes me a Catholic Anglican. It is what makes much of American evangelicalism so alien to my rootedness in the Church and its creeds vs formulaic religion with its love of the present popular celebrity pastor.
Thank you for giving voice to my longings.
Thanks! My theology has been deeply shaped by Augustine, who, of course, deeply influenced Reformed theology.
Thanks! There is, indeed, so much that is passing in our iconoclastic age...or is it that I'm now middle-aged!
"Human life is, in many ways, a long apprenticeship in parting."
Good words. A reformed theologian, Geerhardus Vos, spoke of 'the already and the not yet' of the Christian's understanding of this world. Loved this.
Have you come across (another Welshman), Chris Deacy, and his theological work on the place and use of nostalgia? He's even made it into a podcast, so you can listen to it, as you hike through the darkling vales of this passing life...!
https://chrisdeacy.com/category/nostalgia-podcast/
No, thanks for the share. I'll look into him. Hope you're well.