Two Perspectives of Nostalgia
I spent most of last week in Kansas City, Missouri, for the last gathering of my CBF Fellows cohort (and no I didn't see Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce, so don't ask). Over the past two years, this cohort of young ministers has met several times in various locations to network, attend workshops and ministry seminars, and brainstorm about how to be new(ish) ministers in today’s ever-changing world.
Our last gathering was a bit different from previous ones, as instead of educational workshops, we were given numerous opportunities to spark creativity, curiosity, and imagination. One opportunity that specifically comes to mind is our morning spent at the Rabbit hOle (no, that is not misspelled), a new museum experience that celebrates and brings to life countless works of children’s literature. The pics below hopefully give you a glimpse into what the experience was like.
The Rabbit hOle was unlike anything I had experienced before. You can see the imagination and creativity that its founders had in bringing these old works of literature to life for today’s young readers, and you can see their unique focus from the following excerpt from their mission statement.
By inviting young people to actively explore and participate in stories, engage in new ideas, and learn about themselves and others, The Rabbit hOle builds on the power of books to facilitate empathy and critical thinking.
The next day, we went to National Museum of Toys and Miniatures (referred to as "Museum" in the rest of this article for the sake of brevity). During our tour, we saw dollhouses, G.I. Joes, Star Wars figurines, Lincoln Logs, and every kind of toy you can think of, neatly organized behind glass cases. You can see some pics of the museum below.
Like the Rabbit hOle, you can sense what the museum curators hoped to accomplish through this museum, and you can see their purpose through the following excerpt from their mission statement.
The mission of is to educate, inspire, and delight people of all ages by collecting, displaying, and interpreting toys and miniatures that illuminate diverse narratives and cultural heritage.
Now, I don’t want to sound pessimistic or ungrateful for any of these experiences, as they were all enjoyable, sparked creativity, and gave me a bit of nostalgia for times gone by. But, as I reflected on the week, I kept coming back to these two experiences. Both are focused on various children’s relics of the past, yet they take on different approaches, and in turn, offer us two unique perspectives of nostalgia.
The Museum reminds me of the ways nostalgia often causes us to treat the past. While it can be fun to remember the ways of old, just like the toys in the museum, our memories stay in place, untouched by the outside world. As a result, the significant messages and meanings of our past lose all of the vitality and purpose of their former life, so they lose their significance in today’s world.
The Rabbit hOle challenged this notion of the past. Don’t get me wrong: it was still full of nostalgia, as I revisited many of the books of my childhood like Curious George, Goodnight Moon, and Where the Sidewalk Ends. But in contrast to the museum, as I looked around, I saw young kids reading and playing with the books and corresponding exhibits. We weren’t simply looking at these books through a pane of glass but were reading and interacting with these books in physical ways in the here and now. It was in this moment that I was reminded of how our churches can use nostalgia, in similar ways to the Museum and Rabbit hOle.
Like the museum, we can hold onto the things that were and simply remember them as a relic of the past. We can reminisce about the times when the pews were packed and the offering plate was full and remember a time when the church was different than it is today. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but, if the goal of our congregation is to engage with the world around us, then we can’t simply tuck away our church as a relic of the past. We can’t fall to this form of nostalgia, as it will turn our gospel message, something that is so timely and needed for our world today, into a museum exhibit that has no purpose for today’s world.
What if we instead, like the Rabbit hOle, take this old gospel message and find new and creative ways of engaging it. The message is the same as it has always been, but our ways of engaging with it can change and adapt. Instead of telling kids to sit down and be quiet in worship, what if we created opportunities for them to engage and interact with the text? Instead of thinking Bible study has to be done a certain way, what if we participated in new and creative ways of learning? What if instead of doing things the way they’ve always been done, we rely on Spirit’s leading to show us a way forward that helps us better engage with the world around us?
If we truly want to be a faith community that demonstrates the life of Jesus, we must be willing to ask ourselves the kind of nostalgia we will have. My hope is that we choose the kind that is willing to be creative and courageous in finding new ways to engage with an old message.