Small Homes of Great Joy

Housing. It has been a problem that we have sought to solve many times. But, due to a lack of resource and funding and time, we have routinely put this concern on the back burner. To temporarily deal with our needs we simply converted our Sunday school room, and nursery, and prayer room into living quarters for our long term volunteers and have made use of two travel trailers available behind our main church building. And then a light bulb was turned on.

In an attempt to bypass prohibitive and costly parish red tape and code costs we began to build a series 100 sq ft tool sheds and after looking at the shed I thought, “Ya know… this wouldn’t make a bad bunk house for a few folks. With the high ceiling you can make a loft to sleep in. And since we have a kitchen inside and a shower and bathrooms, we don’t necessarily need to put that in them either. This might be our answer.” Then while surfing the web I ran into Tumbleweed Houses. Jay Shafer makes some incredible homes that take up less space than my garage.

Now I’m not one who thinks that the world is overpopulated or that we are running out of space at a faster clip than we can produce living quarters, but I do like the idea of utilizing spaces efficiently and economically. I’m not against capitalistic exuberance either, but I also don’t see any reason why we should put profit above sensibility or bloated pricing beyond commonality. The heart of a compassionate capitalist sees profiteering not as an event in exploitations, but rather as an exercise in gaining for the sake of sustaining and giving. This is where the folks at Tumbleweed rock the hizzy.

As Jay says on his site, “The simple, slower lifestyle my homes have afforded is a luxury for which I am continually grateful.” I, too, am grateful for his inspiration and creativity in bringing what is unattainably exaggerated in most housing circles down to a level of attainability. There is definitely something to be said for those who seek to modify the norm for the sake of need rather than for the excess of want.

We hope to incorporate these ideas into our own housing needs at SGHM. Sticking with the 100 sq. ft. housing model allows us to avoid the added expenses and pitfalls of traditional routes in housing solutions for long term volunteers. Take a look at this tour through one of Jay’s homes.

Redeemed Bohemianism

Once I settled into college life I realized that I wasn’t exactly thinking like the average collegiate student. I noticed that I had been given a variant mindset. I wasn’t always on the same page with the mainstream salmon swimming up river but I know that part of that alternativeness was my wanting to be different.

In the thick of youth and in the thrust of a trapped nature I was guilty of just being abnormal for the sake of being strange and liked the odd attention and curious gazes.  However, as time has found new pages, I see that not all that was immature lip service was stage dung.  As I think back on my life I see that God has given me a true alternative mindset that has transcended the self and myopic focus of my twenties.  And so here I stand… heading an urban missions project that was brought to us by the folks at Katrina – the national nasty babe for all things overblown and flooded.

And so the miraculous providence of the One who is there descended upon my heart and redeemed me from my purposed Bohemianism and has wrought a new perspective among unconventional wings. I begin this blog as a portal into that journey of things living outside the traditional box. I’ve always disliked the box for its fruit was always either sprayed with glowing wax or truly rotting from within with putrid collapse.

The beauty of this sojourn is that once I was able to shred myself of the false dichotomies of secular vs. religious and the strings of radical hyper-fundamentalism where more emphasis was put on whether something was pagan or holy rather than the realization that the Lord is already Lord over all things, I was freed to pursue being salt and light as myself instead of some superficially constructed caricature of what He intended me to be.

I hope that as I pursue this progression into sanctification under the cultural mandate I can see the glory of God in full redemption as the not-yet grinds towards the complete where the mirror loses its dimness and we see all things face to face with the One who has commission so great a work.