Nostalgia

“Oh, for the days when I was in my prime,
when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house,
when the Almighty was still with me
and my children were around me…”
Job 29:4-5 (NIV)

Over the past year or two, Wendy and I have been observing and discussing how the two of us think differently about time. As an Enneagram Eight, Wendy is future oriented. She is always thinking about what is ahead and what needs to be done to ensure that everything runs smoothly once we get there. As an Enneagram Four, I have a past orientation. I’m a lover of history and I’ve always had a freakish kind of memory. To this I can pull up a photo of my first grade class and tell you the name of pretty much every classmate. I could also point out the house where about half of them lived.

So, yesterday while grocery shopping Wendy asked me if we had a bottle of cranberry juice left on the shelf of the pantry because I had just opened a new bottle from the pantry the day before. In Wendy’s future orientation one should naturally make note of these things so that when we’re at the store we can get one, if needed, to make sure there’s at lest one on the shelf at all times for that morning when we run out at breakfast. I think there was one more on the pantry shelf when I opened a new bottle the day before. I think there was. I don’t know. But, I distinctly remember when I was five and we had this corner cupboard with a lazy susan, and things would fall off in the back of the cupboard and because I was the smallest my. mom would have me crawl onto the lazy susan and she’d spin me around to retrieve the fallen cans from the bottom of the cupboard in the back. That, I remember.

Herein lies the issue.

For that past twenty-some chapters, the ever-suffering Job has been sitting on his local refuse burn pile telling his three amigos that he would like to have his day in court with God. He’d like to put God on the witness stand and cross-examine the Almighty because Job is convinced that he has been wronged and God is the perpetrator. With today’s chapter, we enter a new phase of the Job story. Starting today, and with the following two chapters, Job makes his closing arguments in the metaphorical trial he’s been living out inside his head and heart.

Like a defense attorney speaking to me, his audience and jury, Job begins with a trip down Memory Lane. He waxes nostalgic of the days before that day when a rogue derecho killed all of his children and, simultaneously, some neighborhood gangs stole all of his flocks and fortune. He’s pulling the heart-strings of this past-oriented jury member. I feel it, Job. Oh how good life was, back in the day when I rode my Schwinn five-speed Stingray to the 7-Eleven on Douglas Avenue. It was a half-block east on Madison, hang a right and head south on 31st street, then just three blocks past the Cron’s house to Douglas. The 7-Eleven was on the northwest corner. It used to be a DX station. I’d fill up the Briggs and Stratton push mower. Gas was about 25 cents a gallon. But the DX closed and it became a 7-Eleven where almost every day in the summer I bought a Big Gulp for a quarter that I’d probably earned doing Scott Borg’s paper route at the VA hospital that morning.

Oh…I’m sorry…we were talking about Job, weren’t we?

Along my life journey, I’ve observed that it’s easy to glorify the past, especially for those of us who have a natural bent toward nostalgia. When life gets complicated, when I’m suffering in the present and find it difficult to see any hope for the future, I can reach back to the past like a drug. It provides cherished memories and drums up nostalgia-fueled good feelings. And, that’s what Job does in today’s chapter. The chapter follows an ancient poetic structure in which Job not only waxes nostalgic about how blessed he was, but at the center, he extolls the virtues of his generosity and benevolence (in defense of his friend Eli’s accusation in 22:9):

I was blessed (vss 2-6)
I was honored (vss 7-10)
I was generous and benevolent to the poor and needy (vss 11-17)
I was blessed (vss 18-20)
I was honored (vss 21-25)

In the quiet this morning, I am reminded that my natural bents can end up with crooked and unintended consequences. The glorification of what was can easily lead to me not being fully present in what is nor prepared for what is to come. For Job, I wonder if his trip down Memory Lane is essentially serving to emotionally pick at the scabs of his present suffering and fuel the fire of his resentment. I have learned along my life journey that sometimes I have to will and to discipline myself to be fully present in the moment, and give time and energy to preparing for what’s ahead. Gratefully, I have a partner who provides me with a really good example to follow.