What's Old Is New

I was an early adopter to minimalism. When my wife and I met in 2008 I was sleeping Japanese style on a futon mattress-topped tatami mat on the floor in the bedroom of my apartment. When I moved in after we got married at the age of 30, everything I owned fit in a Honda Civic.

I was only a couple years ahead of the minimalist movement, and of course some of it was due to budget, singledom, and mobile circumstance. It wasn't a bad thing either--I had divested myself of a lot of "stuff" when I moved into a schoolbus, and it was a cleansing kind of game to see how little I could live with in the way of possessions.

But now I'm going to make a prediction--restoration is going to trump renovation in the near future. The grandparents dying and the boomers downsizing and trying to foist off things onto their millennial children who "don't want their stuff" is creating a pennies-on-the-dollar flood of furnishings on Craigslist and thrift shops. The craftsmanship is unparalleled but the style passe. Young people prefer particleboard to hardwood, white to walnut, sleek to plush, so the demand is not there.

I'm not so young anymore. Yes, my parents were like many boomers who cut their square footage in half and had been holding things to grace us with that we didn't particularly want. Thankfully the timing worked well that were moving into a bigger space as my parents were moving into a smaller one. My wife's great aunt gave us a massive Japanese china set. We needed a China cabinet for it, and I found a beautiful one at a thrift store for next to nothing. I'd say 80% of our house is furnished with stuff that was free on Craigslist or given to us by my parents when they downsized, and it all seems to go as well, but the motif is more traditional. Our house was built in the 50's. It's cozy, a little messy, and feels nice and lived in. There are toys everywhere, toys people give us, presents at Christmas and birthdays, hardly anything we bought, it's a kind of organized chaos. As the proverb goes, "Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox come abundant harvests." (Prov 14:4)

Everything that goes around comes around--what's out today is en vogue next year. My prediction? Mid-century is going to make a comeback. IKEA will still have it's place among college students and transients. But somewhere, at some point, people are going to wake up in their white room white couch white bed clean dustless childless quiet modern home and experience a curious longing for the forgotten comfort of grandmother's delicate tea sets, grandfather's tan armchairs, the soft yellow glow of incandescent lightbulbs, and yes, maybe even the extravagant opportune of a mahogany China cabinet. But it won't be there anymore except in the most high end of antique shops.

In many ways I fear the Faith I am caring for, trying so carefully to preserve, maintaining its integrity and instilling the rituals and remembrances in our family life as my children are young, will be rejected when they come of age. "Sorry dad," they will say, "we don't want your stuff." An old missal, a rosary polished from years of fingering--they'll become like cherry armoires and cast iron cookware: of no perceived use to them.

Everybody has their preferred style, but there is something to be said for a quality handmade chair, an old stone church, a set of steel hand tools because it carries with it a memory, a legacy, and a history. Non-denominationalism is the IKEA of worship and architecture today. It is modern, sleek, relevant, and sterile. It's roots do not run deep, it's foundation is like that of a vinyl-clad townhouse.

In the secular arena, modern progressives destroy everything they touch. They tear down with no real cohesive or thought-out plan of how to rebuild. They tear down the family and religion, statues and monuments, traditional sexual mores. They are impatient, and content to slap up temporary shanties until they can figure out what next thing comes next. Social change can't happen fast enough. Out with the old, in with the new, until new becomes old and then off to the dump again.

But things get destroyed in the process. Timeless things, priceless things--immortal souls, traditional families, rituals and connections to our past and our ancestors and predecessors.

My prediction goes beyond furniture and housewares, beyond trends and tastes and kitchen renovations. When we hit the modern bottom, when the demons start to tip the scales and become too powerful, when the non-denominational particleboard gets wet and warped, when the trans-everything nonsense hits fever pitch...a few will start to pine for an ancient faith. They will go online to order and meetup; they will seek and they will not find (Jn 7:34) except in those pockets in which it has been preserved as the pearl of great price that it is, a soft glow of candles in stained glass windows in the darkness, shards of light reflecting off a gold monstrance in the sanctuary, the quiet ancient chant of plainsong beckoning behind thick solid wood doors. It will be exotic and intimidating, ethereal and forbidden, austere and arduous, foreign and yet completely familiar. The Faith of our fathers, the Faith handed down, the Faith communion that takes place in real time...it will be both old, and new.