Josh Becker is probably my favourite minimalist on YouTube, and I also especially like Madisun Gray and Nicolas Garofola.
Those are the ones I like best, but there are several others I follow, including Gabe Bult. In the last day or so he made a video that made me think, and ask myself questions, so I've put a link to it at the bottom of this post in case you're interested to see what set me off along this track in the first place.
In the video he laments the way (not how he puts it, this is me) the slime mould of Mammon has overgrown the core intentions of minimalism.
I have a vivid visual image of this right at the foot of our garden. There's a strip of land belonging to our borough council, running between the river bank and the gardens of our houses. They haven't been taking care of it (though our new borough councillor has responded to a nudge from us and is on the case). After the wet spring followed by a hot summer, the self-seeded wild plants growing there are on a marvellous rampage. There are nettles 7ft high just past our back fence, the bindweed has taken off to cover everything, and shrubs and small trees have become the supports for wild vines.
The house next door to ours is currently vacant. Here is what the shed at the bottom of their garden looked like last winter.
You can see the wild trees growing along the river bank just beyond their fence — elderberry and suchlike — but note, the shed and fence itself have no overhang of vines and creepers. After our wet spring and hot summer, with no residents to tend the garden, this is what it looks like. Uh-oh.
And Gabe Bult is saying that's what happened to minimalism as a movement. The invasive forces of consumerism have detected an opportunity and capitalised upon it to sell an aesthetic, publish books, monetise YouTube channels (like Gabe's, as it happens) and generally convert it into a breeding ground for their own agenda.
Gabe expresses frustration about this, urging people to return to what he sees as the core purpose of minimalism: financial freedom.
It all made me reflect on my own minimalist journey starting back when I was fifteen, and what my intentions were/are, what set me back and what made things easier, why I still do it now, and what the path has looked like over fifty-four years.
I would say the first thing is that it helps to "know your Why".
For me in the first instance the Why was that I wanted to be like St Francis. Over time I came to see that minimalism was absolutely central to the earth journey of Jesus. Put straightforwardly, if he hadn't owned nothing and kept moving on, he'd have been killed even earlier than he was. Extreme minimalism bought him the space he needed to teach and heal and pray and walk away from mobs trying to stone him. If you read the gospels with that in mind, you can trace how this is so. And his minimalism allowed the light to shine through. If you think about his birth in the Tower of the Flock at Migdal Eder, wrapped as were the sacrificial lambs, in swaddling clothes, and laid in the manger, you can see that a symbolism shines through that would have been entirely blocked if his parents had been wealthy and powerful enough to command expensive accommodation. One might argue that this was poverty rather than minimalism, but the poverty in this case led to minimalism: improvisation, simplicity. Similarly the flight to Egypt that saved his life — it was fast, it was responsive, they weren't rich; they must have travelled light.
Philippians 2.6-7 speaks of what the theologians call "kenosis" (self-emptying), saying that being in his very nature God, Jesus did not consider equality with God something to exploit to his own advantage, but made himself nothing [emptied himself], choosing the path of the servant, coming to us in human form. That's my paraphrase, there's a proper translation here.
So Jesus knew his Why. He came to save us. That's what had to be done. That's how he reconnected humanity to God, earth to heaven, opening the new and living way — by coming here, dying, harrowing hell, rising, ascending, pouring out the Spirit — so we could find our way home.
Through the years, my Why — which began as love for St Francis – became creating and expanding possibilities for my family. Practicing simplicity/minimalism opened my eyes to its possibility for doing this. It became a powerful motivator.
This is still true — my family needs my help still, and this is achieved by the practice of minimalism, whether financial or in terms of accommodation. Less for me is more for them, that's how it works, and it brings me joy.
But alongside the Why there's also the How.
The How is relationship. How Jesus practised the minimalism that allowed him to be our saviour was by the help of other people. Lazarus and his sisters at Bethany who made house room for them (they must have been minimalist too, to make that feasible), or Peter's mother-in-law who had the unenviable job of making supper for them all, or the man who said Jesus could borrow his donkey to ride into Jerusalem. Or even the companionship Jesus pleaded for in the Garden of Gethsemane — "Will you not stay and keep watch with me?"
I have found that nothing scuppers minimalism like loneliness. People need cheerfulness, occupation, stimulus; they need something to interest them, they need to play. If it isn't forthcoming from the company of others, they substitute with things. In the modern world, they go online and they go shopping. People buy things they would never even have given a moment's thought because they are tired, stressed and lonely. For a pick-me-up, for consolation.
There are, of course, heroic souls who live in silence, solitude and simplicity as hermits; they are minimalist indeed. But that is a narrow calling, there aren't many of them. And even they, I think, are fed by the company of the animals who live alongside them and the human souls who seek their good counsel.
As well as the Why and the How, there's the pattern of perseverance. As with most forms of endeavour, minimalism often proceeds through repeated failure; it has in my life. I get distracted, get bright ideas, get muddled, make mistakes. I get bored and play at consumerism for a while, I allow myself to be seduced into making purchases I don't need. Sometimes I kit myself out to protect myself from events that don't even come to pass, or to equip myself for situations where I feel inadequate (giving talks, taking jobs etc).
So I drop the ball.
But I always come back to it, because in my experience there's nothing quite like it. Minimalism is a key that opens a living way.
I have heard that the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem has an exceptionally small, low entrance. You have to stoop, to make yourself less than you normally are — like Jesus did when he came to be here with us. They call it the Door of Humility.
That sort of thing.
Anyway, those are my thoughts occasioned by listening to Gabe Bult reflecting on how minimalism can be perverted by consumerism, in this video.
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