Mocking the Homeless big time

July 1, 2004 Canada Day
I have been sent on assignment to research the claim that camping mocks the homeless. I sit here in my air-conditioned recreational vehicle parked on a hill overlooking the main stage at Cornerstone Festival in the exurban area of Bushnell, IL. I’m lying on my bed, which hangs over the east end of the camper. I have the window zipped open with a screen between the mosquitoes and me. I have a clear shot view of the huge screen just to the right of the stage. For 45-year-old ears, the volume is just right. Relient K (yes, that is the proper spelling for you uninitiated) has the crowd pumped. They began their set with the chipmunks singing some Christmas tunes. Then, I think as a result of their Canadian roots, they gave tribute to this special day in Canada, its counterpart to our July 4th.

They did a full set, but I failed to hear one of our family’s favorite’s “Marilyn Manson ate my girlfriend.” Instead, they ended the set with a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.” The MC then took the stage so that he could highlight one of the Jesus People’s (the festival’s sponsor) ministries, one which provides money, love, and art lessons to children living with AIDS in the orphanages of Romania. They make annual trips to Romania where they teach drawing and painting to the kids, and share God’s love with them. After the speaker plugged the Romanian ministry, the crowd’s attention was drawn to the jumbotron where a PSA type short film was shown encouraging everyone to support the US’s initiatives to eradicate AIDS in Africa.

Now it’s Switchfoot’s turn. They are a group from San Diego that has been a favorite at C-stone for almost a decade. I remember watching their first music video over ten years ago and thinking that these guys are awesome. Now their songs get substantial airplay on top-40 and alternative radio stations. Cornerstone has been a helpful incubator for a number of quality bands over the years. And looking back over the past decade, it’s fun to see how the music scene has changed, and to see the small part that C-stone has played.

WARP SPEED—advance one week, July 8, 2004. I’m home. I’m still protected from the mosquitoes. I sit in a screened-in porch. The birds are providing the music, along with the rustle of the leaves. I realize that I never finished my thoughts on camping mocking the homeless. As I looked out my RV window, I saw hundreds of tents littering the rolling hills. And tens of thousands were outside of my view. The weather was beautiful that evening. And tenting didn’t seem that bad. Besides most of the occupants were with friends and not spending much time in the tents anyways.

COMMERCIAL BREAK FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE—A man went to see a therapist and told the doctor that he continues to have these terrible dreams. “One night I woke up in the middle of the night, looked at myself and saw a wigwam. It was so frightening. And then the following night a similar thing happened, but I woke up in a cold sweat and saw myself as a teepee. The next night I was a wigwam. Then a teepee. Then a wigwam. Then a teepee. Doctor, this continued for weeks.” “Relax, relax,” the doctor told the man. “I know what your problem is. You are two tents.”

While you groan, I’ll continue to ramble on about the two or more tents surrounding our camper. The weather was beautiful on Thursday, but then. Friday came. And the rain came. And the winds blew. And my feeble memory helped me recall our first festival in central Minnesota. We were so excited to have our three pre-teen kids join us in a “large” tent on the soft ground on a flat field very close to the music of the weekend. But we were so naïve and so unprepared. And the rains came. We awoke to over two inches of standing water in our free, ‘garage-sale’ tent. Everything we had with us was wet, as were we. We’ll never do that again, we vowed. It’s one thing to be wet yourself. But it’s yet another to have three wet, whiney kids. We haven’t slept on the ground since.

So where am I going with this? Beats me.

The ever profound musician Steve Taylor, while performing on Cornerstone’s main stage about eight years ago, looked out over the sea of tents having just recently endured a mighty rainstorm, and said with amazement in his voice, “You guys are actually sleeping on the ground tonight? I feel terrible. After the concert, you are all invited back to my hotel room.” Then in his wry voice he said, “oh, I forgot, I’m flying out immediately after the concert. But I’m sure the band here won’t mind you all coming over to dry off and get comfortable.”

He got some funny looks from the band that evening. And maybe he even filled their hearts with terror at the possibility of thousands of wet teen-agers showing up at their door that night. But with his sarcastic wit, he raised the issue of what is our responsibility toward our brother. No preaching, just an ambiguous, light-hearted jab at our need to continually ask ourselves who our neighbors are.

Doug Pagitt, the joker who hosts the blog “Camping Mocks the Homeless,” used that phrase as merely a way to get out of having to go camping with some friends. But that joke got him to think about the way we so often throw around slogans and try to encapsulate complex issues to fit on a bumper sticker. Thus was born a new blog.

For me, all I have to say is that sleeping on wet ground stinks. And so does homelessness.