punchworthy

A blog whereby I motivate myself, and my readers, to punch me in the mouth.



  "Punchworthy feeds our deepest Freudian wishes!" --Entertainment

  "The consumate rocker's rocker. Charming, personable... a sucking void of inescapable inner turmoil."
  --Newsweek
  

Sunday, March 26, 2006

where do we go now?

In the words of The Poet..

Where do we go? ..where do we go now?
Where do we go-o? ..where do we go now?
Where do we go now?

I-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-wheredo we go now!?

N-I-yi-I-yi-I-yi-ow I-yi-I-yi-I-iyow!!...

Ok. So those aren't the words of The Poet. It's just Axl Rose. What can I say? I was not raised on the classics.

But the question, regardless of its source, is still valid. Where do we go now?

Now, in these uncertain times. Times when Greg packs it up and heads to the big El P.. times when our children are seperated, 3 hours, from grandparents who--in a word--rock (HARDER THAN OZZY!!!). (it doesn't count as words if it's parenthetical)

Times when Brant has gone off the spool and started living a lifestyle that is even more consistent with his convictions than it was before.. with the home churching and the home schooling and the other home-things of that nature...

Times when fair-trade coffee and free-range chicken and a host of other nouns with hypenated adjective qualifiers begin to surround our heads like a swarm of buzzing bees.. when social conciousness and personal faith and the general conviction that life, as we know it, as we live it, is not being lived right.. where do we go now!?

I-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-etc...!

(man, would that be a good band name!)

Well.. I'm not exactly sure. I think that I would like to buy some land, get a few chickens, a big vegetable garden... perhaps some minnow ponds.. set up a little goat and sheep farming operation. Maybe have some calves. I would like to engage in a little lifestyle that I call "Subsistence + 1 (or possibly + 2)." ... where we raise quite a bit of our own food, and then add in just enough to sell a little, off the farm. Which, in combination with my copywriting, and music playing, and painting jobs, and maybe still a "regular" part-time job, and Deb doing some CPA-ing out of the house or whatever.. yields enough income, from diverse enough sources, that we're just like.. you know.. hangin' out and chillin' and livin' the life and whatnot.

I would also like to be able to set up a duck decoy making operation with my dad. And possibly run a weekend freshwater fish restaurant.

These are just some things that could be the answer to "where do we go now?"

Or, alternatively, we could jump the CU ship and head down to WPB with the Brantster. Since we can't comment on his blog anymore, maybe we could just pop over to his house occassionally for BLT's or sumthin'.

We could go with Greg, and bust out the New Church thingy with his family .. Out in the West Texas town of El Paso... Marty Robbins, eat your heart out.

Or maybe, as my dad said this weekend, his home congregation will get too big to expand anymore, and instead of dumping a bunch of precious resources into some stupid building (my words, not his), they'll just take a bunch of people, drive over to Nauvoo, and set up a new shop--as close as possible to the foot of the behemouth Mormon temple. And maybe we'll go help. That'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it?

You know what else? Dad & the elders (at that church.. this is not another band name) are reading through "They Smell Like Sheep", and dad is really digging it. He tells me that this shepherd model really seems like the way to go. Sure, it's great to have a building, an organization, a "program".. but, you know, their benevolence ministry just put tires on some family's van so that they could take their kid to Iowa City for an operation. They're helping people they don't even know! And it's awesome. He's on a one-man subversive mission to slowly turn their entire congregation into contributing members of society. It's so cool.
: ] It's so cool, it almost makes me want to go join him! Be subversive alongside my dad. That would be so cool.

So.. anyway.. sorry to string you along (that is, if you thought there was going to be an answer to that question). I don't have an answer. But I can't help but feel that we are going to "go" somewhere--even if we don't really go anywhere.

But hey.. isn't that what we were asked to do in the first place?

9 Comments:

At 5:49 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the words of Hurley, "Dude."

I always thought Wayne Caparoon was a supremely cool guy. Good to hear that God is shaking some things up in smaller churches like Burnside.

Have you read "You God is too Safe" by Mark Buchanan? Sounds like you're heading for "dangerous" territory. Cool. I love to hear about this kind of God inspired wackiness. (As opposed to the kind that makes people strap explosives to themselves and blow up buses.)

 
At 6:39 AM, Blogger caparoon said...

oh.. uh..

Did I not mention the explosives?

I coulda sworn I mentioned that.

: -|

 
At 9:19 AM, Blogger Josh said...

Ok Cap,
Do you have my house bugged or something? I think there are a lot of us who are trying not to drown in a very simlar current of thinking right now.

How many families are about to go bankrupt because their trying to keep up with the materialism of other people in the church. Both the church specifically, and generally.

I think something's gotta change. Soon.

Here's a riddle in the spirit of what I'm driving at: How many chocolate fountains does it take to send 50 pepople on a missions trip?

 
At 9:39 AM, Blogger caparoon said...

hahaha.. "chocolate fountains"... heheh.. You are a delight, Josh. A true joy. I swear. I am falling for you.. the twinkle in your eye.. that unruly mop of red hair.. Watch yourself, fella!

No, I do not have your house bugged. But now I'm considering it.

There are a lot of us in this place right now. ..for cryin' out loud, even my dad is getting in on the action!

(don't get me wrong.. my dad is the coolest.. but not a direction that I saw it coming from)

On my list at the moment.. me'n Deb, Hunts, Hansons, ..and..uh.. this list is too long to put here. (!) Trust me, it's a lotta people.

It's amazing how many times in the last few years I have started thinking/feeling something.. and then tentatively put it out there.. first to Deb, and then to a few close friends.. fully expecting to be branded a heretic.. only to find that, SURPRISE!, they find themselves being moved in the same direction!

So.. welcome to the freakin' party, man. Don't ask me how it got started--it was like this when I got here.

My thoughts, btw, are not so much related to the number of chocolate fountains, really. I don't much care what *is* being done--at least not about "correcting" it, or whatever. If God is in a thing (and at last count he was in... everything..??) it'll do fine by him. My thoughts are more on the topic of what *isn't* being done. What *could* be done.

(And, of course.. as always.. what *I* wanna do! : ] It's alll about me, Baby...

 
At 6:09 AM, Blogger mr_eric said...

went to burnside a few weeks ago and it is rockin. There is so much stagnation and degeneration in that area and then you step in that church (in the middle of nowhere) and there is a marked difference. People are alive.


They are certainly on to something there.

 
At 7:01 AM, Blogger caparoon said...

re: Burnside

I'm sitting in west central IL, in a town of .. 80 people..? In a church service that must have 250 people in it. To my right, there are about 15 high school *guys*.. singing along, listening to the sermon, etc...

That right there tells you something.

Oh, and there were *no* girls in the group. Crazy..

Your dad & Mark were playing this weekend. Your dad was totally leading it. Very cool to see.

 
At 9:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can go to El Paso if you want.

But I've been there several times, and it always makes my nose bleed. Too dry.

We're not too dry down here. In fact, a few times a year, we get 20 inches of rain all at once, blown in circles at 120 mph.

Cool about your subversive Dad. That's terrific.

Brant "Hanson"

 
At 9:33 AM, Blogger caparoon said...

Sorry, Brant, about the name/spelling issue. I don't seem to be able to help myself.

Of course, what it *really* means is that I do not care about or like you, and it's not even just that I care so little.. am so apathetic.. as to not be able to be *bothered* to spell your name right.. it's actually a an active dislike, a (passively) agressive thing, where I spelled your name wrong just to get under your skin.

I know that's what you're thinking. Don't deny it.

And yes, having a subversive dad is very cool. Almost everything about my dad is cool. It's just true. No denying it. Also, he could still take me in a fist-fight. No doubt.

I will consider the circular rain argument. It seems a good one. Though the arid climate would be better for my vocals..

 
At 7:25 AM, Blogger caparoon said...

Remember when you said "I want to leave because this isn't how I want to do church" and I said, "but if you leave how is the church ever going to get better?"

We're not all talk. We are moving on it.

But to "move on it" doesn't mean necessarily wasting your procreative energies on re-birthing an existing system. That is what I was saying, and will continue to say until God places letters of fire on my lawn stating otherwise.

Anyone who wants to start tearing down the "old" church, knock yourselves out. But don't expect me to join the party. I have enough trouble trying to make my life consistent with what I believe God wants, without spending time and energy telling other people that their system doesn't meet up to my standards--or even my perspective on God's standards.

Maybe you just meant to say that we should go start our own, new thing elsewhere. Not saying that won't happen, either. But there is more than one way to skin this cat.

 

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