Falling Into Nostalgia

a devotional for late summer

Thank you for joining us today!

First of all, I wanted to share that the talented Kevin LaTorre interviewed me a few weeks ago and posted the finished interview in his newsletter last week! Kevin was a gracious and wise interviewer and I really enjoyed sharing my thoughts on faith, nature, and poetry with him. Read the full interview at the link below!

"Fearless Acceptance" — A Conversation with the Poet S.E. Reid

Now, before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:

On our devotional about the hazy, smoky seasons of our lives, Adrian Conway commented:

It’s never welcome but I sense faith may reside as much in the hope for cleansing rain as in the willingness to be scorched and choked by purgatorial fire.

Very profoundly put, Adrian! Adrian writes “literary fiction with a gritty, spiritual feel” here on Substack, and you can find his work here!

If you want a chance to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!

Now, on with this week’s devotional…

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that song
filters through the speakers
and throws me backwards
into myself,

and suddenly
I'm in the past. 

time travel
they say
has not yet been achieved

but I disagree;

a scent
a voice
the feel of certain ground
beneath my feet;

all have the incantatory power
to turn reality
into rememberance,

and I'm sixteen again
(or ten
or four)

dreaming of the day
(though it will never arrive)
when I'll be done
growing.

It’s hard to describe why, but autumn always arrives for me with a hint of nostalgia. Something about the back-to-school pace, the turn of the weather, and the seasonal drawing-inward make me think of the past. Long past and recent past. Childhood, teen years, even early adulthood. All mixed together in a collage of time.

Music is particularly potent for this, isn’t it? In autumn I start to crave the music of my past, now so easy to find thanks to the Internet. And certain songs slam me into my high school years so fast that it makes my eyes water, or place me gently into my dorm room at college, or bring me back to travels I’ve taken.

Research is emerging that music and memory are so powerfully intertwined that even dementia patients can process music long after they lose their ability to speak or dance. What a beautiful gift it is, that human memory is often so attached to music!

But nostalgia is a double-edged sword, of course. It can smooth over the sharp edges of a time period. It can make us think that times were simpler then, sweeter in some way. Better. Better when we didn’t know as much as we know now.

But autumn is complex, and so is nostalgia.

It is human to believe that things were better before. Before what? Before, before, before. Music captures a moment in time, a tiny piece of an era. But it doesn’t capture perfection—just a taste of goodness, a hint of sweetness.

Autumn’s arrival every year comes with the invitation to recognize our own growth. With every passing year, I am no longer the same person I was when I first heard that song, first caught that scent, first walked that floor. I know more now. I am more, now.

Nostalgia is not to be worshipped. Instead, it is to be cherished, a tiny gift of memory for us to sing along to.

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