Clarity, novelty, diversion, connection, minimalism

I wrote this down, read it through, thought about it overnight, read it again in the morning, published it, then unpublished it, thinking it sounded like a bit of an ain't-it-awful rant in which I hadn't managed to sharpen up what I wanted to say into something worthwhile. Then I saw the video I've put at the bottom, and thought at least that was worth saying. So here you are — pick out what resonates, leave the rest.

When I finished school, just before my eighteenth birthday, I stayed at home for my sister's wedding that summer, then I left. I loved my home and my mother, the village where we lived, but I had a road of my own to travel.

Until that time, since I was fifteen, I had worked various evening and weekend and school holiday (US 'vacation') jobs to give me some income of my own; I bought my own clothes and books and anything else I wanted, and put some money in savings. My jobs were in a supermarket and in care homes — one of them run by nuns.

Then I moved down to Devon, where I lived with some monks. They had a farm and a couple of cottages with a vegetable garden, and they ran the post office. In its small back garden was a caravan in a cabbage patch. They made the post office garage/shed into a chapel.

I lived in the caravan, helped with the cooking, milked the cow and made butter, helped take the produce from the garden to Bideford market to sell, helped with the post office remittance and served in the little village shop that contained the post office, and helped take care of the children from poor urban homes who came for country holidays and stayed at the farm.

It wasn't a paid job, just voluntary, so I lived on my savings until I moved on from there and went back to working for the nuns, living in their nurses' home until it was time to go to university in York.

After a year in university accommodation I became part of a nascent community —intentional. interdenominational, Christian. Father Fabian Cowper, an Ampleforth monk, was our chaplain.

I married not long before the community disintegrated, and moved down to Hastings where I raised my family. I was heavily involved with the Methodist church and the Ashburnham Stable Family (a Christian group devoted to revival in East Sussex), and later became first a preacher and then a minister. I spent my time with people in hospice care, men in prison, and with the faith communities where I preached and taught; and I was raising my children and writing books.

Looking back on all those years, I notice something.

I didn't have to think all that much about what I had or what I wore or how to occupy myself, because my life was full of people — and also animals and growing a garden, and the life of the mind associated with preaching and teaching and writing.

Thinking back to my mother's life, I saw a similar pattern. Born in 1927, she grew up on a Yorkshire farm that employed live-in horse-men, and housed German prisoners of war, and had a variety of other men associated with the farm work coming and going (mechanics, shepherds, men buying grain, pigeon fanciers, all sorts). So she had people all around her. 

Later, when she got married and had a family of her own, she worked to create a property portfolio that included her own home. She spent every hour caring for her home, working in the garden, raising sheep and tending hens and processing the food she grew (or raised) for the winter.

Our possessions were very few. 

When I left the monks in Devon I had a suitcase of belongings and some geraniums.

In my childhood, the ornaments in our home were mementos from my father's travels from around the world. My mother had two blouses, a cardigan, one skirt, one pair of trousers as her main everyday wear kit. We had very little. The only holidays we ever had were trips to Yorkshire to see our relatives.

As my mother grew old, having made money buying and selling houses, she began to acquire stuff and go on cruises and weekends away in hotels. I thought it was because she'd accumulated wealth and could afford it now. Obviously there was something in that, but now I think it was not the main driver of her choices.

For myself, I've noticed that in the last couple of decades I've spent a lot more money on things. I've never had much space for possessions to accumulate because of living in shared accommodation, so a pattern developed of acquiring then ditching belongings.

Thinking about all this in the last month as I have been systematically going through our home, taking it down to the minimum working kit so that we remain flexible in making choices, and the place is easy to care for as we grow old, I discerned a dynamic that I think has been at work in not only my own life but in the lives of almost everyone I know.

I have observed the rich, complex, all-hands-on-deck church communities I remember from years ago — that had morning and evening worship and many faith-centred weeknight groups and mission activities — dwindle to morning-only worship, pastors who have no time for people, and a bums-on-seats, finance-focused, numbers-based approach to church, with TV-style performance type of worship. 

Neighbourliness has faded and gardens stand untended, full of weeds and junk people can't think how to dispose of. The people are inside and online. The doors are shut and they lock automatically, no longer standing open through the summer. It takes a long time to learn the names of your neighbours. When we had our local elections a few years ago, our next-door-neighbour Darren was elected as a borough councillor. In jubilation, I mentioned this to my next-door neighbour on the other side, as I saw her coming out of her house. She said: "Darren who?" Two doors away. Knew nothing about him.

As well as thriving on connection and interaction, human beings have a thirst for stimulus, variety and novelty. They now find these on the internet and by consuming 'experiences' and buying things. 

My mother did this as she grew old. She transferred her lively interest in life to shopping and trips away. Driving around in her car visiting retail outlets and buying things kept her busy and happy.

And I — as my life was repeatedly uprooted by first my husband of 24 years leaving us for another family, then my second husband dying, then leaving my work and my family to relocate for a third marriage, then the onset chronic illness — became increasingly isolated. 

I tried again and again to rebuild community and connection, because those are what we were made for; but it's not that easy any more, it no longer happens naturally.

And it occurs to me that a driving dynamic in modern life is the prevalence and increase of isolation and loneliness; people are easily suspicious of one another, consider each other in terms of social category not as individuals, drift apart.

As the new data centres accumulate, greedy for land and resources, already we are seeing the cost of computers and phones going up significantly. As government seeks ever increasing control, privacy/security risk driven by increased electronic surveillance handled by careless entities is steadily rising. 

Homes are typically cluttered, and so are schedules. Burnout and chronic illness and neurological issues are prevalent.

When it comes to human relationship, even the word 'relationship' has come to mean 'sexual relationship', as if no other kind mattered.

It seems to me that in the near future we are going to have to find one another again, find our stimulus and novelty once more in human connection not in consuming, somehow rediscover how to sing together again (not just perform songs for money to passive consumers) and tell stories. The future, for ordinary people who value privacy, sanity and freedom, may very well once more be offline. To rediscover clarity of thought and peace of mind we will have to simplify our homes and our lives, move away from dependance on cars and computers and phones. To survive in harder times amid rising costs, habits of consumerism we hardly notice will have to be laid down.

I think change is coming, and the more simple and frugal and minimalistic are the habits we develop, the better we will thrive in the times to come.