c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com)

UNDATED _ Halloween found my son William dressed as a cowboy _”Pecos Bill”_ with boots, hat, bandanna and a vivid imagination. He could hardly wait to get outside for”trick-or-treating.” On a street filled with the darkened outlines of children and parents, he ran to each door, while I stood protectively by the curb. After each exchange of friendly greetings and a few pieces of candy, he raced on, chortling merrily,”This is my favorite holiday!” Halfway up the street, I had a blinding insight _ blinding to me, at least, though maybe only a sign of how slow I can be.

My generation laments the loss of what we knew as children. We think it was a simpler era. We think the music was better, schools stronger, neighborhoods safer, politicians nobler and societal values clearer.

But as I watch my 6-year-old son dash across lawns, I realize this moment is every bit as wonderful to him as my own trick-or-treating on North New Jersey Street in Indianapolis was to me.

The difference is that I was 6 then and I am not 6 now. What we have lost isn’t a better era, but childhood itself. If that’s true, then I wonder how much of what we lament _ self-serving politicians, declining schools, eroding cities, lifeless churches _ may be simply the consequence of growing up.

The world seemed smaller and safer when we were children. President Eisenhower was like a trustworthy grandfather rather than a contemporary plagued by the compromises and self-doubts that adulthood brings.

Public School 70 seemed magical to me. But how much of that was the sheer magic of being young? The public schools my sons attend seem just as invigorating to them. They don’t notice the troublemakers, uninspired teachers, budget-driven decisions, or political tampering, any more than I did at their age.

I tend to think of my childhood neighborhood as a blissful haven. But I am choosing to forget the man who exposed himself to little girls at 49th and Central, the older boy who harassed me on my paper route, the murder two blocks away, and the constant wail of sirens.

I remember my childhood church as a glimpse of heaven. But I was 10 then. I loved singing in the boys choir, the pageantry was intoxicating, the antiquated language sounded God-like to my ears, and church leaders seemed wise and wonderful. Now I ask deeper questions as I sit in church, and they can’t be answered by wearing a choir vestment or immersing myself in an ancient tongue. My son William, however, walks out of church glowing, as I once did.

Were societal values really clearer or more worthy in the 1950s? The politics of nostalgia say they were. Maybe, as children, we just didn’t notice the Red Scare, Jim Crow laws, firehose-wielding Alabama cops, the John Birch Society, unsafe cars, anti-labor violence, pollution, or political scandals. And I doubt that Bill Clinton is the first president to solicit campaign funds from the White House. It has just become possible, in the faux morality of this prickly era, to make political hay by noticing the normal.

I don’t want to pretend all is well. But whatever problems we face as a society didn’t come about because someone squandered or corrupted a better era. We cannot address our problems by looking backward, or escape accountability for the world we know by blaming someone else for stealing our birthright.

The world that so confuses and angers us is a world we helped create. Those who blast modernity have simply found a way to profit from clinging to the old. Blaming some nameless”they”for”undermining society”is nothing more than scapegoating.

Nor should we, in our looking backward, fail to see that childhood is still magical to children, or that, even today,”fools fall in love”at”twilight time”and rent”white sport coats”for school proms.

I’ll never know how the world of the 1950s seemed to my parents. But I do know they gave me room for a childhood. No matter how crazy the world today might seem to me, I hope I remember to take my son trick-or-treating. He deserves a childhood, too.

MJP END EHRICH