The experience of nostalgia is a feeling of beauty’s remoteness, but only because it is so far in the future, rooted “deep down things.” It is hope. And the great thing about true hope, this nostalgia for the future, is that it has none of the irritability, fear, anxiety, and discouragement that flavors many of the words of those who describe the demise of Christendom in our day. We were denied the garden, and then we were exiled from the enchanted cosmos. Now we must own our modernity. But by doing so, we engage in an extraordinary ascesis of the senses. We must move forward and look beyond.
