Sermon Tone Analysis

Nostalgia

by

Wayne Hammel, Jr.

Listening to multiple versions of Hickory Wind, a tune written by Gram Parsons, and performed by such varied artists as The Byrds, Emmylou Harris, even Keith Richards, of all people, and of course, Gram Parsons himself, is not something that a naturally melancholy man ought to do when he is struggling with spiritual matters.

It can bode nothing but ill for him.

The creeping crud of nostalgia, that quintessential emotional crutch that all baby boomer former hippie types seem to carry around with them like a badge of honor, is not one that small children, or those who sicken easily, should ever be forced to observe close up.

And so being the man that I am, when I become shipwrecked on the shoals of nostalgia, I try to find something that will prolong the agony for as long as possible.

So, if I am feeling particularly masochistic, I will search with trembling heart, for a PBS presentation of a Hootenanny; those miserable productions featuring broken down folk singers crooning their songs of protest and rage along with their hymns of praise to a bright new day of freedom, equality, brotherhood, and endless sex.

The audience is the reason to watch these things, though.

The congregations–that is what they resemble–are filled with the upraised hands of late middle-age boomers, the men balding and paunchy and glassy-eyed with regret, the women with the hard edges from too many loveless nights spent in the arms of too many indifferent lovers.

They move their bodies rhythmically and in unison, a single organism desperately groping its way toward the ultimate group orgasm.

They imagine they have been pursuing freedom all their lives; or at least ever since the magical, effervescent sixties.

They are still looking for their identity, still trying to find themselves.

They never will.

They should have given up the pursuit upon leaving the angst ridden teen-age years, but they didn’t; they never grew up.

The reason they still can’t find themselves?

They can’t separate from the herd long enough to find much of anything except for the dung dropped by the rest of the cows walking mindlessly in front of them.

They have never reached the perfect orgasm, attained ultimate freedom, or found the cherished identity they have been chasing so forlornly after all their lives.

They are like drug addicts running forever after the elusive perfect high.

But instead of nirvana, these adolescent fifty and sixty year olds have settled for nostalgia.

So why have I spent the better parts of more Sunday afternoons than I care to count listening to a song that can produce nothing but a cheap ache in my heart?

What is it, anyway, about sad songs that evoke such a sense of place for me–a sense of being alive–in a way that happy songs and happy stuff can never produce within me?

I never seem to be more awake, never really feel the warp and woof of this thing called living, the wholeness of it, than when I am hurting.

Interesting, isn’t it?

And pathetic as well.

It is a typical baby boomer response to living.

It’s all about me! It’s all about my pain, my loves, my music, my ache, my politics, my melancholy, my life, even my salvation.

Even when others are included in the paradigm, even when genuinely good deeds are performed, it is all about me and my goodness!

Talkin’ ‘bout my generation!

Hope I die before I get old!

I haven’t heard all that much from Townsend lately.

I wonder if he is glad he’s still in the land of the living, even though he is now officially a dirty, old man.

That was gratuitous.

I should apologize; but I won’t.

I read somewhere that Townsend really didn’t mean the line about dying before he got old.

What he really meant was dying before he got rich.

I wonder why he didn’t just use the word rich then.

I wonder why he just doesn’t die.

He’s both old and rich now, isn’t he?

But it was never really about wealth or dying.

It was about Townsend, and my generation, sticking our tongues out at the parents who nurtured us and took care of us, and petulantly telling them, “Well, I hope I die before I become like you!”

It was simply an ungrateful teen-age rebellion that has never ended.

What incredible arrogance, though!

An entire generation lost in space, as the song says, and arrogantly demanding that the rest of the world pay attention to its strident pronouncements on everything from sex to religion, politics and freedom, even to life and death.

Where was the church when all this took place?

The liberal ones were involved in the only thing of real value to come out of the sixties, the civil rights movement–that and destructively and systematically dismantling, in the name of preservation, all the historic, orthodox doctrines of the faith.

The conservative ones were engaged in making certain that anyone with a brain would be repulsed by them.

Far too many conservative churches are still in the business of doing just that.

All you need to do is check out the utter imbecility of what is being passed off as Christianity on the tube to see that terrible and sad truth.

Grace and this incredible thing called Christianity were hijacked by liberal gangsters hellbent on redefining the faith, and by conservative Pharisees equally hellbent on hypocritically denying anyone the slightest bit of pleasure in this life.

More recently, the faith is being defined by a bunch of hucksters selling snake oil in the form of health and wealth and prosperity.

And my generation?

We just got loaded and examined our navels.

The result has been catastrophic for individuals, and for America.

To say we no longer have a moral compass is to utter the silliest of cliches.

The barbarians are bearing down on the gates of the city and all we can do now is wring our hands and moan, “How did this happen?”

Our children are running amuck.

Their values are shaped by a culture that is devoid of even the most elemental rules of behavior.

They are indeed what Rousseau labeled The Noble Savage.

Unfortunately, although Rousseau certainly got the savage part right, he failed miserably in his prediction of the savage’s nobility.

It is interesting, though, how little in the way of understanding the members of my generation, the ones that I know personally, anyway, have about the roots of their lifelong love affair with immaturity.

And that truly is what it amounts to: the entire squalid pool of sixties silliness is more the temper tantrum of a spoiled brat loudly screaming, “No!” and flinging it at the adult world, than it ever was of a reasoned critique of a culture that did indeed have some serious problems that needed to be addressed.

But we are the adults now.

We are the establishment and there is no one left to clean up our messes.

We form the neighborhoods, the school boards, the political parties.

We are the candidates, the teachers, the philosophers, scientists, preachers, church goers, mothers and fathers.

We have the power!

And yet we still blame everybody else! Again, interesting, isn’t it?

“It’s Bush’s fault!” we scream.

How did one man come to be so hated?

For a group of people who blather endlessly about tolerance, love, and non-violence my generation sure are a bloodthirsty and intolerant lot when it comes to W. But past presidents aren’t the subject of this little piece; my brush with the death of nostalgia is.

Nostalgia is a kind of soul death, I believe.

The very ache of it is not only a prelude to death, but also a real ache of pleasure as I look further and further back to a time of endless possibilities, and of dreams charged with a dangerous hope; a hope fortunately dashed on the reality of life.

The hopes and dreams of a generation of potheads were really nothing more than pipe dreams.

Pun intended.

I wonder if death ever intrudes on the thoughts of my peers.

And not the death of a soul subsumed into the great ultimate consciousness, that impersonal force out there just waiting to gobble all of us up into its cosmic essence.

No, I am talking about real death: soul screaming, horrific, mind numbing death.

Not the mumbo jumbo of Shirley McClaine and the other New Age wack jobs, but the death that has all of us terrified, the death that is so personal and real most of run as hard as we can from it.

Most of us are so desperate to avoid all thought of dying we eagerly enter into all sorts of silly and irrational beliefs in order to protect our minds from the ultimate horror of the Big D.

And that ain’t Dallas either, Debbie!

What are some of those silly and irrational beliefs?

And while it is certainly true I don’t really much care to talk about my generation’s irrational hatred of George W. Bush, and its equally irrational hope in the new Messiah, Barrack Obama, I will comment on some of my generation’s more idiotic brushes with religion.

First on my list is L. Ron Hubbard.

If there was ever a more thorough con man out there than Hubbard, I haven’t found him.

Here is a man who created a pseudo-psychotherapeutic religious empire based on an alien intervention in human evolution millions, or perhaps it was trillions, of years ago–I never did get the time frame straight.

I hear Scientology, Hubbard’s bastard child, is popular in Hollywood.

Imagine that!

Lotus Land embracing a wacked out religion from a genuine nut job is hard to believe, ain’t it?

Then there is the ubiquitous Shirley McClaine; I think I will just pass on her.

If McClaine’s religious pronouncements are honestly viewed as doctrines germane to a rational discussion of religion, then have at it!

There is not much hope for you.

Oprah Winfrey, of course, is hard at it with her new guru, old what’s his name?

I can’t recall the particular man she is following this week.

But with the enormous clout of her television empire, she is influencing millions of seekers with her mantra of, “Hey!

We’re all ok.

There is a little bit of god in all of us.

Sin?

No such thing!

Evil?