Thought for the Day

Good morning. In a twist I had not anticipated, it would appear that for some young people at least, digital cameras and wired earphones are back. The technology of my youth — iPods and Walkmans — is being embraced by Gen Z. Indeed, social media is full of people talking about why they're going back to basics, using devices that many of us consigned to the bin years ago.
As someone who loves shiny new tech I’ve been left wondering what is going on. Well, while some have said that older tech is higher quality, others have expressed a strong sense of nostalgia for reminders of simpler times.
Nostalgia is an idea with a rich and complex history. The historian Agnes Arnold-Forster has written brilliantly about how modern ideas of nostalgia emerged in seventeenth-century Switzerland where it was held to be a disease of home sickness which could quite literally kill you. These days nostalgia is just as likely to be co-opted by advertising agencies to sell us stuff or by politicians to pitch their latest policies.
The Bible treats nostalgia with suspicion. In the book of Ecclesiastes it says, ‘Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.’ Its writer challenges the rose-tinted glow we can feel when looking back on the past. This view chimes with the famous story of the Israelites who, lost in the desert on the way to the promised land, look back fondly on their days of bondage in Egypt. Their leader Moses shakes them out of their reverie and gets them to start looking forward again.
Certainly, nostalgia can be understood as sentimental and regressive. The poet Billy Collins captures this brilliantly in his satirical poem ‘Nostalgia’ in which the speaker is so enamoured with the past that he ends up believing that even a few hours ago is better than now.
However, I don’t think looking back fondly is necessarily retrograde or bad. Agnes Arnold-Forster also says, ‘Nostalgia can help us re-enchant the past’. On Sunday I worshipped at a Book of Common Prayer service. I felt a wave of nostalgia for its exquisite seventeenth-century language, but I also felt profoundly connected to God in the present. The old language quieted me. I was freed from the frenetic and distracting shape of my ordinary life. The past came alive but so did my present.
In their own way, perhaps those young people using older tech might also feel freed from the frenetic modern world. Certainly, I am reminded that while I find the challenge of the new compelling, there are riches to be found in how the present is illuminated by looking back to the past.

11 AUG 26

10 AUG 26

08 AUG 26

Good morning.
You’re listening to this, so the chances are you’re not on holiday. You may be enjoying a staycation and devoted to early-morning radio, even when you don’t have to go to work; but for many Brits this is the peak season for getting out of the country, and indulging the luxury of a lie-in, as the summer loosens our usual routines.
I really feel for those whose holidaying plans have been disrupted recently by travel companies collapsing into bankruptcy. Holidays are good for us, psychologically and physically; and though it’s less often noted, spiritually too. In which context, it’s worth remembering those countless other people around the world for whom they are simply an impossibility.
The word holiday comes from the Old English and literally means “holy day”; and in a colloquial sense, many of us continue to think of our holidays as something sacred. But the old Christian holy days meant more than just time off work. They included formal worship, processions, pilgrimage. Their moods varied – from fasting and mourning, as on Good Friday, to feasting and celebration, as at Christmas or a saint’s day – but they all had a definite religious focus. A world away, in other words, from pina coladas on a sun-drenched beach, the cliché contemporary breakaway that’s focused instead on personal pleasure.
That said, supposedly secular forms of escapism can sometimes offer spiritual nourishment too. J. R. R. Tolkien made the point that escaping from the immediate demands of your life can take very different forms. Whereas we might deplore the military deserter who abandons the fight he ought to face, Tolkien says, the flight of the person who’s been falsely imprisoned might be courageous and good. Reading certain works of fiction can, he thought, offer that positive sort of escapism. So too, it might be argued, can a beautiful walk, an intimate conversation, laughing with friends. Imaginative flights of all sorts grant glimpses of truth and goodness, refreshment for our souls.
Andy Burnham has been criticised by some for taking a holiday this week – just six weeks after taking office. But his escape with his family on Monday may well provide him more than leisure, in the sense of doing nothing. His flight from Downing Street might, as Tolkien understood it, offer the kind of freedom that’s positively enabling.
Whimsically, given that he’s Britain’s first Catholic prime minister, I like to think he’ll spend at least some of his holiday plotting a revival of merry old England’s medieval holy days. More seriously, and leaving all party-politics aside, perhaps everyone who loves this country should hope that time relaxing with loved ones will nourish his soul as well as his mind and body. There will surely be work requiring moral leadership awaiting him on his return.