Nostalgia, Star Wars, and Even a Bit of Church

 

         Not long ago, while watching Rise of Skywalker, I wept. Not just a bit around the edges, but big tears rolled down my face. Even though I wasn’t sad, really. Or especially happy. Why?

 

         Was it the movie? Probably not. No one, even in a galaxy far away, is ever going to tell you that any of the nine Star Wars movies were high art. 

 

         Mind you, Rise of Skywalker had three Oscar nominations: Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. But besides not actually winning an Oscar, it certainly didn’t get any acting or drama nominations.

Rise of Skywalker Poster

         You probably know Rise of Skywalker’s plot, more or less, even if you didn’t see the movie. It is very nearly the same plot the other eight Star Wars movies had. In brief, the Resistance—the good guys and gals—is once again down on its luck and hiding. The evil Emperor Palpatine is back with a new fleet of planet destroyers. The last and most beautiful Jedi knight, Rey, is the chosen one to save the universe. And after several light sabre duels and gun battles; after jumping from one moving space ship to another and sailing a tiny boat across a raging sea; after dying and rising from the dead; Rey Palpatine—for it turns out that Rey is actually the evil emperor’s granddaughter—Rey Palpatine defeats the evil emperor and decides to change her name to Rey Skywalker (the good). The universe is saved. The end.

         Was it silly? Yes. Was it cartoonish? Absolutely. 

 

         And yet. I wept.

 

         Why the tears?

 

         Nostalgia. It just seized me, there, in front of my TV, and wouldn’t let me go. Nostalgia.

 

         I saw the first Star Wars movie in the summer of 1977. I was just 20 years old. I went with three other guys, a few days before we all hopped in a car and drove across Canada and back on ten dollars a day. I was so carefree back then. I wasn’t taking my studies seriously. I wasn’t thinking about the future or my dreams. I had a loving family that blessed my wanderlust. Life was good.

 

         But now, as I watched the last Star Wars movie and remembered the first long ago, I realized that of the four who went on that road trip, one of us—maybe two—has already died. I’ve lost track of them. So right off, sitting before my TV, I’m thinking both about how good life can be, and also about how brief and full of loss it can be. Most of you have been there.

 

         Nostalgia. It is lovely, but it hurts. Nostalgia is this sense of the past as something both lost and precious that informs our hopes for the future.

 

         Nostalgia is usually scorned because it is seen as a yearning for something that really never was and contempt for the present. Sort of like President Trump’s notion that America was great, once upon a time, in the long-ago past, but not now—or at least, not unless he is reelected. Nostalgia used to be scorned as a dreamy inability to face up to present reality by romantically inflating the past. 

 

         And there is some truth to this concern with nostalgia, because on the whole, the past was not always as wonderful as we imagine it was. In fact, on the whole, the past was pretty rough.

 

​         Not quite fifty years ago, mortgage rates were 18 percent and unemployment over 13 percent. The Vietnam war raged. Decade after decade, famines raged throughout the world. Not long ago most cancers could not be beaten, the cold war filled us with fear, labour strikes were regular occurrences, and acid rain had killed many of our lakes. Residential schools sundered children from parents and tribes. Looking a bit deeper into the past, infectious diseases were the number one killer, as many as twenty million people were starved to death by the Soviets in Ukraine, there was WWII, the Holocaust, slavery Jim Crow, and we lived, on average, twenty years less than we do now. 

 

         We should not idealize a past that never was.

 

         And yet, as with many things, there are two sides to this story. In fact, there is also a more personal, more positive aspect to Nostalgia.

 

         Contemporary Psychologists explain. For them, nostalgia is not a malady, but a powerful stimulant to feel optimistic about the future. What is past, even if lost, can fuel hope for the future. Constantine Sedikides recounts how concentration camp survivors often told stories to each other about past meals and gatherings. “This is what we did,” one survivor said. “We used our memories [of past feasts] to temporarily alter our perception of the state we were in. It was not a solution, but the temporary change in perception allowed you to persevere just a bit longer. And that could be crucial.” Nostalgia need not lead us down a rabbit hole of regret and anger. Nostalgia can encourage perseverance.

 

         Such nostalgia—let’s say, nostalgia around personal experiences, nostalgia at its best—may serve as an emotional anchor chain. Nostalgia may ground tomorrow’s challenging voyage in yesterday’s safe harbour, in good memories, in refuge and shelter, so that we can face what’s coming at us with hope for better times, and the energy to strive for them.

 

         Nostalgia, then—my tears at the Star Wars movie—need not be a sign of weakness, but a harbinger of tomorrow’s possibilities. Sure, nostalgia marks the loss of a past we can’t truly relive, but it may also serve as fuel for a life lived out of gratitude rather than bitterness; nostalgia is an invitation to more adventures rather than a decision to set down roots in the land of loss. 

 

         As usual, I tend to look at these memorable moments through the lens of my experience as a minister. Churches of every stripe—liberal ones first, though now the evangelicals are following hard on our heels—are struggling with membership decline and all of its attendant troubles. In my last, liberal, congregation, I sometimes heard people describe a Sunday school that years ago had two hundred kids or a sanctuary packed with five hundred adults. 

 

         That must have been nice. Those were the best of times and those kids and adults went on to help make Canada and the world what it is today. Amazing stuff, really. We should be thankful for those memories and those people.

 

         But what I’ve also heard, once or twice, is a longing for the past not balanced by hope for the future, as if this past is a reproach of the present, a criticism of what we have become. I have heard what I think of as a weaponized past that stands in judgement on what we could be for each other, a "make our churches great again," fighting words refrain.

 

         But I’m not for the weaponized past. At its best, nostalgia, as I said moments ago, is fuel for a life lived out of gratitude rather than bitterness. Memories that help us navigate the present in order to seize the future. Nostalgia is an invitation to adventure rather than inertia. Nostalgia is an invitation to carry on, hope for—work for—more and better and tomorrow.

 

         The churches I served were all safe, encouraging, holy places in times of trouble or uncertainty or change. And now,  our liberal churches are hidden treasures just waiting to be found and brought into the light again, so that the world will remember that Jesus’ example, courage, and vision are not now merely dim reminiscences, but a roadmap for tomorrow.

 

         For us, it’s very exciting. I could almost cry. Which I did. At the last Star Wars movie.

The Land of Tears

Like most men in our culture I was not taught to be comfortable with tears.

So, for example, when I was a little boy, and fell and skinned my knee, someone was sure to pick me up and say, "Now, now, little man, don't cry!" By the time I was eight, I had figured out that if I cried in the schoolyard the whole class would laugh at me. By the time I was sixteen, whenever someone broke out in tears, everyone else stood around feeling awkward. In our culture we have made a secret place of the land of tears.

We’re not alone in this. The ancient Egyptians believed that when they died and they arrived at heaven's gates, the god Osiris would ask them two questions. The first question was, "Did you bring joy?" and the second was, "Did you find joy?" Answering yes to both was the only way into heaven. Not much room for tears in the Egyptian afterlife.

But these days even Christians tend to speak as if finding joy is the main thing in life. Health and wealth television preachers like Kenneth Copeland say awful things like "prosperity is a sign of divine reward" and "if you are not happy, then you lack the Spirit." Robert Schuller, the former pastor of California’s famous Crystal Cathedral, before it went caput, wrote a book about the Beatitudes entitled, "The Be-happy Attitudes." People sentimentalize the Christian faith. The whole sum of religion comes to be looking on the bright side of things and spiritual highs. And, in the meantime, we have made a secret place of the land of tears.

The Jews in the Old Testament, on the other hand, did know how to weep. In fact, large parts of the Old Testament are lament, songs of loss, sadness and tears: Job, much of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the book of Lamentations. One third of the Psalms are laments too. For example, “I am weary with moaning,” says the Psalmist in Psalm 6. And, "My tears have been my food day and night," (Psalm 42:3). 


The New Testament is much the same. Jesus groans to see a deaf and mute man and weeps at his friend’s, Lazurus’ grave. Paul had unceasing anguish because few of his fellow Jews were inclined to follow Jesus. And in Romans 8, Paul describes how the whole world groans under the weight of sin, how Christians groan as they wait for renewal, and how even the Spirit of God groans in wordless intercession on our behalf. There is no special grace that exempts Christians from shedding tears.

And why shouldn’t we weep? Over one hundred Syrians, including babies with pacifiers in their mouths, were executed in Syria this month, in a single incident. There are more than 1000 endangered species in the world today—even though the story in Genesis states that God created us humans with the express command that we take care of all of life. Gruesome and senseless murders made the news this week. People we love have died. 

The thing is, in the secret land of tears Christians can be agents and advance people for divine reconciliation. When Jesus said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted," he was instructing us to be open to the wounds of the world. Look at the world through tears. You will see things through your tears that dry-eyed you could not see and you will do things that are Christ-like. And then the world will be a slightly better place.