Tag Archives: Introspective

Nostalgia in Perspective

About a year ago, I decided to re-watch the first season of Heroes. When the series first debuted, we were just married, and life was full of promise. It was, after all, the Before Times, our lives were still mostly academic, and what better to settle in to watch on a weeknight than a fascinating new take on superheroes? I was hooked.

The series, in my recollection, declined a bit in quality. Season 2 fell victim to the 2007 writer’s strike, and I was unimpressed by season 3. As I began collecting the Blu-Rays last year, though, I decided to go all the way through…to give it another chance. I’m glad, because the quality gets better again as the series progresses.

I’m not writing about Heroes, though…perhaps in another post.

As I’ve re-watched these episodes, the technology grabs my attention (product placement was really a thing in that time), primarily their mobile phones. You see, this was before we all had ubiquitous connectivity provided by slabs of glass that we carry in our pockets. These were the days of text-only data connections and physical keyboards. Better days, I would argue.

They were also the days before I made some choices based on discontent that pushed our family into a new direction, a career change that ultimately resulted in time away from my family and poor health for years, decisions that caused un-necessary stress and close financial calls through the subsequent years, to say nothing of the close friends with whom we’ve lost touch. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because, had I to do things over again, I would go back to that point and make a different decision. Watching a television series from that time period is just bringing that home for me.

It’s easy, especially when one reaches a certain age, to become steeped in nostalgia. In my case (I’m guessing I’m not alone), this is informed by the fact that life was slower, less stressful, less chaotic then. We weren’t ruled by Big Tech yet. I could look at the future and still be hopeful.

The natural inclination of this sort of nostalgic impulse is twofold: dwell in memories, and try to force life back to what it was. Neither of these are productive. The first wastes time when permitted to become consuming, the second will never work because it’s simply not possible. That’s a topic for a different day. My point is that I put effort into both of those, and they were wasted efforts. As Bonhoeffer has been quoted as saying:

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have to make the best of where I am, where we are, with the lessons I’ve learned. I have to allow those experiences to make me better. I have to work to bring the best of the Before Times into the present, because we unfortunately can’t go back.

Hopefully, that’s helpful to my fellow nostalgia addicts.

The Before Times

In my last post, I referenced a time period in my life that I’ve began referring to in my head as “the Before Times.” I also consider them to be “the Good Times,” times before certain decisions were made. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect that I will be referencing that concept more frequently over the next few months, so I thought it worthwhile to talk about what I mean by this, what that time entailed, and why I was thinking about it a lot to begin with.

Elizabeth and I had been married about 3 years, and we had gotten this fantastic apartment. Dual income and no kids, we were living the lives of successful post-grad-school professionals. I was still pondering “what next,” and we were very actively involved in creative ministries in our local faith community. I had not changed careers yet. I was helping people, every day. We were dreaming about what we wanted for our lives. Netflix subscriptions still mailed DVDs every month. The Internet was not yet in everyone’s pocket.

There was this specific moment that I recall in which I was home from work, and was looking out the window later in the evening as several others began returning from their workdays. I remember them seeming obviously stressed, obviously having put in a long day (given the time), and thinking that I was thankful to not be in the corporate machine. I never wanted to be in the corporate machine. I was, in that regard content.

Through a series of life events, I made a career change that was a great financial move, but entailed being drawn into the corporate world with which I never anticipated being involved. I didn’t know how negative an impact that would have at first. I wouldn’t learn until much later. I remember our oldest daughter being born just before that career change…the time that I was able to spend with her. After the career change, the time vanished, but in a deceptively subtle way that you don’t notice as it’s happening. It was years before she regained that time. I shudder to think that perhaps our youngest never had that time.

I realized this when I was briefly unemployed last summer. Those sorts of crisis events have a way of giving you space to focus on what’s important. I’m blessed to be out of the corporate world now and am regaining my faculties.

There’s something else that contributed to those times, all those years ago, being better. Technology had reached a point where it was helpful in many aspects of our lives. There was a “sweet spot”, as it were. We’ve passed that now. We’ve reached a point in which we’re willingly serving the technology instead of the technology serving us.

As I think back to those times, I remember an idea that I had once to write a book, sort of a memoir, about all of the places that we had lived and some of the neighbors we had encountered. I may have even started a manuscript for it somewhere, long ago. We’ve had a lot of neighbors over the years, and I’m amazed to think about how our lives have impacted each other, briefly been a part of each other. Those are holy encounters, encounters which are sadly less prevalent, or at least less appreciated, now in the age in which we serve our technology.

I want to go back to the Before Times. I entertain this desire occasionally by watching television series from that period. I would love to go back and re-make some decisions, but, as Billy Joel pointed out, we can’t go back, only forward. I’m wondering what from that time I can bring forward into this time, because I’m convinced that our family will be better for it.

Prayerfully, that will be a success.

Into the future we go….

Why Yes…I Do Want To Do Things Differently in 2024

Happy New Year's 2024. Used under Creative Commons.

Dearest reader…especially those who have been with me here for a while…can I just tell you that 2023 has been a crazy experience?

I feel oddly reminiscent of when I wrote about the change of decade in 2020. I wrote a post so full of meaningful reflection and optimism, only to go falling with the rest of the world headlong into a generation-defining event. In a somewhat similar way, I journaled about New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of 2023, and the year began perfectly fine. Then, as fear about the economy shifted, I was laid off from my job, as were many of my colleagues. Needless to say, the summer was tumultuous as a result. In the middle of this, we switched the kiddos to a new school and we began attending a new faith community in a city that we had only moved to a little over a year prior.

A little change is a good thing. Too much is chaos.

The strange thing is that I’m not sure I would have had many of these things go differently, because I experienced a great deal of life change and personal growth through that trying time period this summer. I also truly experienced the depth of Romans 8:28 is a manner that I’m not sure I ever had before, in that, after scrambling to find employment and all of the panic that went with that experience, I ultimately ended up with what could quite possibly be the best job that I’ve ever held. I feel as though work holds its proper place in my life, and only its proper place, in a position that I find fulfilling. In short, I couldn’t be happier with that part of my life.

“All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Julian of Norwich

All of that to say, while there is now a happy ending, life was strictly about survival for a bit of this year…thus the notable absence of writing here.

So tonight, as the Christmas lights on the outside of our home are illuminated for the final time of the season and I watch the clock tick down to 2024, I’m remembering the New Year’s resolutions that I made for this year, and how many of them received no attention because life got in the way. And, I’m debating whether or not making such resolutions is really just an exercise in futility, if I’m to be honest.

Still, there were good intentions there, and some of them I want to keep in 2024. I still want to watch less and read more, as well as writing more…here, finishing my novel, as well as other ventures. I have the time and the mental space to do that now, which is such a gift that I don’t intend to waste.

I want to re-establish contact with old friends from the before times (I plan to post about what I mean by that soon). When I dropped most social media, I didn’t think through how to maintain contact, and so I’m leaning heavily on my contacts application and hoping that a lot of those details haven’t changed for people.

I feel incredibly optimistic about 2024. I have learned and grown this year, and have emerged both with a newfound perspective on what’s important, and with the space in my life to work on implementing what I’ve learned. We can’t know what lies ahead…I know many who are filled with pessimism about the upcoming year, which is an easy state in which to arrive if you read more than a few minutes of news. I’m holding out hope, though.

My friend, I don’t know what 2023 held for you, or what 2024 will hold. I pray it’s all working out for the best for you. I’d love to hear from you about how it’s going. Please keep in touch, and I’m planning for more space for conversation here in the coming year.

Here’s to 2024!

Image attribution: Carol VanHook under Creative Commons.

What To Do With Anxiety?

If I could articulate one truth about life as a follower of Christ, it’s this: we live many areas of our lives in a state of cognitive dissonance between what we know to be true, and what we experience. Our emotional response to an event is frequently incongruous with our theological understanding on the same event. In other words, we know that God will take care of us, and can look back to see how He always has, and yet we’re in this tension of “will He this time?” when confronted with an event.

There’s a lot of writing out there examining the question of whether or not anxiety is a sin. Various writers fall on both sides. Many writers who fall on the side of it being a sin, I think, are in a mindset that treats psychology and mental health as being somehow inherently invalid, that every problem is a spiritual problem. So before I go further, let’s dig into that statement for a moment. First, every problem is, in fact, a spiritual problem. We know a great deal more today about both physical and mental well-being than we did even a decade ago. Theologically, I’m a trichotomist. That is, I believe that the body, soul, and spirit are three separate and distinct aspects of humanity’s existence. Each person has each aspect. I find it obvious that each of these aspects inform each other, and impact each other. Spiritual health, mental health, and physical health inform each other. It is difficult to maintain mental health without spiritual health, or physical health without mental health, for example. Accepting that, then every problem becomes a spiritual problem, because our spiritual state impacts every problem that we confront. Human beings are amazingly complex, and we are not living in the condition in which we were designed to live.

I think you see where I’m going with this.

There’s a lot exegesis of the the Greek involved to decide whether or not you believe that anxiety is a sin…that is, if it’s wrong, and thus subject to a need for forgiveness. I am not convinced that it is, but even if you are, you’ve experienced anxiety. Given a frightening enough scenario…imagine being confronted with the potential of a catastrophic loss of income, or with a war, or an assault…the human condition is such that it will experience anxiety, especially when secondary to trauma. And while there are many definitions of trauma, perhaps, I would argue that we all experience a trauma at some point. I heard a mental health professional say once that, if trauma were effectively handled when it occurred, that the DSM would be a pamphlet. I think that speaks to how critical it is that we accept this as part of the human condition, to not avoid it, but to confront it.

I recently went through an incredibly stressful period with life events. So many of what I understood to be stable aspects of my life were suddenly thrown into question. I’ve experienced a lot of anxiety over the past few weeks, as would, I think, anyone in a similar position. Through that experience, I’ve learned many hard lessons, grown as a person and as a Believer, and found a great deal of peace.

The first step in living with the cognitive dissonance that I mentioned is to recognize that it exists, and to not deny it. The Christian faith is full of hope, but, as always, we have to approach that hope from the starting point that it is needed, which is rather difficult to do if we deny a problem to begin with. So I guess my point here is, don’t run from it. Don’t theologize yourself into thinking that you shouldn’t be experiencing anxiety about a situation, that it should somehow make you question your faith. That way leads to legalism, and, if anxiety is what you’re experiencing, then it is freedom that you need.

And I pray that you find it.

Image attribution: Kevin Dooley under Creative Commons.

Second Nature: A Theological Idea

Something has happened to me that I never anticipated. Words that I never imagined saying escaped my lips this week.

I’ve become a morning person.

I have no idea how this happened (a friend’s response was words to the effect of “welcome to being old”), but it has. I’m routinely up 30 minutes before my alarm, often with two hours of quiet before anyone else in the house is awake. I eventually stopped fighting it, and accepted that I now have this wonderfully quiet time in which to pray, journal, and be productive. So, fresh cup of coffee in hand, I start with trying to just focus on God each morning.

Which is difficult. Oh, so difficult.

Almost immediately as my brain begins to wake up (see the previous reference to coffee), the concerns of the day begin to crowd in. All of the things that I haven’t written down are spinning in my head. All of the day-to-day things that need to be done are pressing in, even before I’ve consulted my to-do list. Because we live in a material space, it’s really difficult to be aware of anything beyond that. And, almost all of the things crowding into my head at this point are material, at least in the sense that they involve physical things (“wow, the kids didn’t pick up their toys again in this room”) or the practical (“I need to schedule the maintenance appointment for the car”). These are things that I can observe, things that have a concrete outcome, things that just need to be done.

Since my Easter reflections, though, I can’t get rid of this awareness (when I can quiet myself enough) that, beyond the white-noise of our lives, there is this extended reality that, while not immediately observable, is more real than the concrete. The realm of the spiritual. The part of our existence from which we become increasingly isolated because of our excessive focus on empirical data.

Now, as certain readers of this begin to rage that I’m anti-science or some such, I’m not. Empiricism has its place. I’m just asserting that that place is not to be worshipped or deified, which currently seems to be the religion of the day. I’m cautioning against scientific reductionism…the audacity to assume that because we know everything about a thing, that we know the thing.

The reason that I bring this up here is not to re-state my previous post, but rather to expand with this idea that I can’t let go of: that the salvific process of choosing to follow Christ fundamentally alters what we think of as the human condition. We are very different once that happens. Human, but in a way alien as well, in the sense that our humanity is somehow changed.

Hear me out before thinking that my sanity has finally escaped my grasp. After Pentecost, it was established that Christ-followers receive the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, as part of the justification event. I was raised in an atmosphere in which the work of the Holy Spirit was somewhat minimized to “conviction” or to some form of inspiration. What I think I’m beginning to see is that, as the Holy Spirit somehow joins with a person who is otherwise in a fallen condition, a regenerative event takes place that makes us, though still human, somehow very different. I think that this difference is somehow instinctively detectable by those who have not had the experience, and thus they become uncomfortable. I also think that the experience is frequently barely registered by those who have it, because of the crowded landscape of observable data that I mentioned above.

I’m getting this hypothesis from a few references: Romans 8:9 and 8:16, I Corinthians 3.16, Ephesians 2:6, Colossians 3:4, I John 3:1-10.

I’m also not in anyway suggesting that this result in a mindset of “the other,” in which Christ-followers view those who do not follow Christ as somehow less or deserving of disdain. In fact, the event that I’m discussing should have quite the opposite effect when realized.

To summarize, I wonder if, at the moment of decision to follow Christ, our humanity is somehow and suddenly different because of the Holy Spirit’s “moving in?” I’m holding onto this lightly because someone (including you, dear reader) could present a persuasive argument to the contrary. If I’m right, though, it changes so much of how we see our day-to-day, forcing a re-prioritization of our concerns.