''Almighty God, thou who holds all Spirits in thy hands, deliver us from the enlightenment and fatal arts of our forefathers, and give back to us ignorance, innocence, and poverty, the only goods that can give us happiness and are precious in thy sight.''

Nostalgia is always about ignorance, innocence and poverty---we yearn to go back to a time when we felt comfortable, we felt safe, we felt young, and we felt happy without ''stuff.'' Yet these nostalgic moments are often misdirected and misconstrued. There is really nothing new under the sun, and what was rough or rustic was once modern and cutting-edge.

Ignorance (a term which Rousseau is using in exaggeration---he is making a statement against the endless quest for knowledge and human reason that was the foundation of the Enlightenment), innocence, and poverty are only good when juxtaposed against the world, and not our forefathers. Our elders have all made mistakes, and we (hopefully) have learned from them. Yet the cycle of screw ups and silly ideas like utopias come and go every generation. It is against the world, the powers that be, the force that tells us to know all, do all and own all.

Ignorance, innocence, and poverty are counter-cultural, especially in a land of 24 hour news cycles, fraternity style living and gluttonous wealth. Yet these are the descriptions of the Jesus-follower, the one that forsakes all worldly possessions and follows Christ, even to the ends of the earth.

We are to live in mystery, for God is a God of mystery. We are to live in innocence, for God has called us to righteousness. We are to live in poverty, because we are to store treasures in the kingdom come and not on the earth.

And when we live like this, we reject the human enlightenment, which ends in the decay of truth, the decay of innocence, and the decay of treasure (moths will destroy!).

Let us seek Christ, the true enlightenment, the One who is the light in the darkness.