If you had told me that I would be living in a van today one year ago I probably would have said that you are crazy. I mean no one in his right mind would just want to go live in a van. Well since I have been living in a van I have learned a lot about my friends, I have learned a lot about the people I thought were my friends, the people I know, and the people that I meet. And probably most importantly I have learned a lot about myself.
When I decided to do this it started with a book called “The Irresistible Revolution” by Shane Claiborne. Shane is someone who I respect and I can also identify with him and some of his stories. Now I don’t want to talk about the book too much if you are interested then you can read it. But basically I am a Christian and have been for most of my life. Shane discuses in the book a completely different side of Christianity in which there are no multi million dollar churches or pastors getting paid six figured salaries or book stores making a fortune off the name of god. He talks a lot about poverty and the lack of interest the Christian community has with such a major problem in our country.
Anyway when I started living in a van my goal was to experience “homelessness” even though living in a van is a stretch on the word homeless. I wanted to be part of the solution to poverty and I believe that no one can understand a problem unless they experience it. I cannot honestly say that that is still my goal because, I mean, it is over. I have already experienced it for the better part of a year. In that amount of time I have found myself strangely comfortable in the van and I have no plans to move out of it.
There were other things going on in my life that assisted like the situation with my roommate, and the fact that I had the van at my disposal. When I read The Irresistible Revolution I saw a person who had taken their life as an average middle class college student and done something radical with it. I thought that is exactly the kind of thing that I want to do. I am the kind of person that doesn’t like to conform or just go with the flow. If everyone else is going to grow up, go to school, get a job, get a wife, buy a house, have kids. Then I am going to do the exact opposite. Don’t get me wrong I would love to have a family of my own someday, and I probably will but for right now I just want to live in a van and be a kid. And I know that that isn’t a very responsible way of looking at my life, but I feel like I am pretty young still and I think I will have that mind set for at least another year or so.
Another reason that I decided to move into a van was that I think that rent is the biggest scam in human history. It makes me very sad that we put so much emphasis on money. Americans are probably the worst too. You turn on your TV and you see shows like Cribs and The Real Housewives of New York and you can see that Americans just glorify the wealthy. I mean look at the American dream the idea that one's prosperity depends upon one's own abilities and hard work. It is all selfishness. Someone once said that when we really learn how to love each other capitalism won’t be possible and Marxism won’t be necessary. I love that quote because if you think about it, it is so true. Can you imagine what life would be like if everyone bought things for other people instead of buying things for themselves? We would all be rich.
There is this group of people called the Psalters. They all live together on a bus and they just drive all around the country and sing worship songs and perform. They live nomadically because they want to live like many of the disciples in the bible lived. They talk about how none of us have a real home here on earth because nothing that we have here will last in terms of eternity. Its like when we buy a house we say that this is my house or my land. But they live life in the state of mind that we never actually own anything and all the social systems that man creates just tries to elevate man to gods level.
But it is important for me to say that it started with the book. See I struggle with this type of mindset just as much as anyone else. Buying an iphone and a $2200 computer is not exactly using my money to benefit myself in the eternal aspect. Neither is going to Spain for any reason other than to have fun. That’s why I feel that it is not a good thing that I continue to live in a van and then I turn around and spend the money that I save on myself. If I remember right I was supposed to do this so that I would be the solution to a problem. See when I moved into the van I thought this is great now I can take all this money that I am going to save and go buy a bunch of homeless people some food. It is easy for me to say that before the fact but once you actually have all that money, its like well I really want an iphone and I can help out the homeless some other time. Wow I feel like a terrible person as I write this but it is so true.
Its like people that are so wealthy that they cant spend their money fast enough. It is so easy for them to just give their money to charity because they have so much of it. Then everyone looks at them and they are like wow look at this person giving $50,000 to the homeless. What about their time though? It is easy for people like that to give their money away but they don’t have to see where it is going or be the one to find a homeless person on the street and say hey come with me to this cafe and I will buy you a meal. Its almost like they are paying so they don’t have to spend any of their time at a homeless shelter. All the money in the world would be useless if there is no one there to budget it and spend it where it needs to be spent.
Now I will be the first one to tell you that I am a hypocrite. So right now I am going to challenge myself. I am going to spend half of my paycheck on someone else. I am going to take this very seriously and I want you guys to keep me accountable. I want you guys to ask me how I am doing with it. If I cant do that by the end of May then I will move into an apartment. This is the only way I can justify living in a van and I think I can do it.
Now you may ask whom exactly I will spend this money on. I don’t want you all to think that you are getting a new TV. I do have a plan for the money, I have this idea in my head that I have thought about for quite some time but I have never put it into action. This is the perfect opportunity to do it.
I call it the Love Project. What I would like to do is rent, or lease a house somewhere in Champaign. I would park the van in its driveway this way I would not be freeloading power and Internet. I want the house to be located in the poorest part of Champaign. I would then go out and find a few homeless people and invite them to come live in my house where they would have their own bed and a room that they could share with another person. They could live there only under the condition that they work hard to get clean from any addictions they may have, or find a job I want this place to be a transition home to help the homeless. In addition to being a temporary home for these people the house would also be a headquarters for a group of volunteers to help the surrounding community. Things like picking up trash, helping people with household chores, helping kids with homework, delivering peace meals, and other things like that.
Now I know that this sounds like a lot of work and I realize that this is going to be a huge goal or challenge for me to reach. I think that this would take the combined efforts of many people, people that I probably haven’t even met yet. But I believe that spending half of my paycheck on the homeless is a good start to reaching this goal.
It really bothers me the lack of community service that the area churches do around Champaign. Sometimes I wish that people that go to church every Sunday would spend more time being servants of the people around them than worshiping God. When people think of a Christian they probably get a picture of an ultra conservative, Republican, rich, person. I think Christians have this arrogance about them and I think that it is because many Christians push religion onto people. Its like “well I am a better person than you because I am a Christian”. I don’t think that it should be that way at all. Somehow I don’t think that that is how Jesus lived. In fact I know that Jesus didn’t live like that. Jesus didn’t push his views on people or tell them that they are terrible people or look down on them. He didn’t go around and judge people.
There is this hilarious video online where Jesus is walking around the disciples and telling them all the sins they have committed and how they should all repent and be sorry for what they did. Now the video is quite funny but I think that it is the perfect example of how people view Jesus. I think that people get that image because of how many Christians act towards other people. It makes me sad that so many Christians cant just simply live like Jesus lived and love people and be a servant towards other people, like Mother Teresa.
In the Irresistible Revolution Shane tells a great story about Mother Teresa (he worked along side her for some time before she died). He was saying how he noticed that her feet were deformed and disfigured. He asked someone how her feet got that way and they told him that whenever the mission where she worked got a box of shoes, she would always go through the whole box and she would find the pair of shoes that were the most worn and she would use them so that all the other people around her had a better pair of shoes than she did. Now I am getting a little sidetracked here but I think that this is the perfect example of something that Jesus would do if he were running the mission.
So in conclusion I want to thank you for reading about my thoughts. It is kind of weird for me to be just laying my thoughts out for everyone to read, probably because I get kind of nervous when I want to be serious. It is much easier for me to live a comedic life. But I hope that you can understand better what my mindset is when I go home to a van every night. If you have any questions about it I want to encourage you to talk to me one on one about what I have written here. It would be a much more comfortable setting than talking in front of everyone in the office. Also I would love it if you could check out the videos on my youtube channel. I have given the link and a short description of each of them on the next page.
Go to www.youtube.com/buklybrawler85 at the top of the screen you will see several links, click on the one entitled “playlists”. Click on “van life”.
Psalters interviewed on AWIP - with Shane Claiborne
This video is one of my vary favorite ones. The psalters, I mentioned earlier, have a wonderful way of thinking about how to live life. I really love how they put their ideas into words.
mewithoutYou Aaron Weiss in Amsterdam
mewithoutYou is probably my favorite band. Aaron is the lead singer and this video is a little long but I want to encourage you to watch the whole thing. Whenever I listen to Aaron speak it inspires me so much, and I hope that he does the same for you.
awip.us Volume II - Wall Street Money Drop w Shane Claiborne
Now this video gets a little corny at the end but I still like it. When the awip group earned $10,000 on Wall Street they turned it all into change and singles and spread it up and down Wall Street to “give the money back” to the homeless. I also like the stats at the beginning.
Shane Claiborne's New DVD Project
Now I don’t know anything about this DVD but I like this video because Shane explains the Simple Way very well. I also like some of the topics he brings up.
Aaron Weiss of mewithout You on AWIP - with Shane Claiborne
This is another video of Aaron Weiss talking about some of his own struggles and his time at the Simple Way.
PLEASE CHECK OUT THESE VIDEOS
