malakhgabriel

A couple of the fetishes on my FetLife fetish list are things like consent, yes means yes and only yes means yes. These are big deals to me. In fact, they’re probably my only dealbreaker fetishes. I suppose that makes consent the only true fetish I’ve got. It is the one thing I absolutely must have in order to play with someone.

Because of this consent fetish, there may be a long time between expressing interest in someone and actually playing with them. Before I can do anything, I have to feel comfortable that the consent that’s given is fully informed and enthusiastic. That means talking about what consent means to us, talking about what exactly we do and do not want to do, talking about values, desires, expectations, demands. It means making sure that consent is not just an absence of “no,” but the enthusiastic presence of “yes.”

This can make things complicated. It means I won’t play with anyone who can’t or won’t have an open, direct conversation about what they want and need. It means that if someone prefers to communicate in hints and flirtations to the exclusion of directness, we’re not going to be able to do anything together.

Consent, to me, is so much more than negotiating and honoring safewords. It’s about getting to a point where I trust the negotiations are free from coercion. It’s about trusting that if consent changes or is revoked in the midst of a scene, that such will be communicated.

I see a world around me in which consent is not valued. Some people are socialized to accept that things are taken from them and others are socialized to take. Some are told to never say “No” and others are told to never take “no” for an answer. Women are often expected to, among other things, rebuff sexual advances even if they welcome them, and to welcome them even if they do not want them. We’re surrounded by a million cultural forces telling us what we should do, bending our will. Because of this, consent is a goal to reach under quite strained circumstances. If I’m going to tie you up, spank you, set you on fire, fuck you or engage in any other such delights, I need to know that the “Yes” I get from you is a yes that you mean, not one that you have given under duress, or because you’re expected to, or because you just figure you oughta. That’s what I mean by “Only yes means yes.”

It often feels to me that, despite all the focus kinksters put on consent and negotiation, there’s very little addressing how to do those things without coercion. Kinky settings can often lead to an expectation of availability. Just look at how many submissive women have to say things like “I’m a submissive, not your submissive.” There’s an expectation amongst enough folks that if you’re at a party, at a munch, on FetLife, open about being kinky, that you’re fair game because, hey, you can always say “No,” right? None of that takes into account social pressures, the conditioning that some people have to say “Yes,” the subtle ways that people can be coerced, or the effects of an expectation of availability. That’s why I like “only yes means yes” as a starting point. It’s not enough that someone can say no, that they can reject advances, that they can use their safeword if they need to. A panic button isn’t enough for me to call a situation consensual.

So I may go slow. I’ll likely ask very specific questions. I’ll assume that if we come to a consensual arrangement, that the consent is specific to that time, that place and those specified activities. Instead of saying “If you’re not comfortable tell me, and we’ll stop,” I’ll say something like “Are you comfortable with insert specific thing?” and I’ll stop unless I get a clearly affirmative answer.

Some folks think that asking for permission isn’t sexy. I think that it’s what makes what comes next sexy. You know how many times I’ve asked “Can I kiss you?” I’ve not yet had anyone who didn’t appreciate being asked. You think it’s not sexy to get a bottom’s permission before each new thing? You whisper in someone’s ear “I want to do X to you. Do you want that?” and have them repeat back to you what they want you to do and then tell me that’s not hot.

I spent most of my formative young adult years in an emotionally abusive relationship. I had to learn a lot of this shit the hard way, and I know I hurt some folks along the way in doing so. This is what it takes for me to be happy. This is what it takes for me to trust that someone’s yes is undoubtedly a yes. This is the best understanding I can get of what it means to negotiate the things we do when we live in a world infused at every turn by patriarchy, by kyriarchy. I love playing with power, but when power is so unbalanced in the world, and so abused, it takes a very serious, deep approach to consent for me to play with power in a safe, useful, respectful and feminist way.

Hi. My name is Gabe and… I’m racist.

It’s true. It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s something I work against, but I don’t think I’ll ever be free of it. It. Look at that. “free of it.” I don’t even like saying what it is.

I don’t think I’ll ever be free of my own racism.

There. I said it.

For me, and I’d wager for most white people, racism doesn’t just go away. You can be aware of it and try to keep it in check. You can break the patterns of racist behavior when you notice them, but you can’t just turn them off. At best you can be in recovery. We’re talking some 12-step “It’s been 7 hours since my last racist thought” kind of shit. And even though I can’t think of one off the top of my head, I don’t doubt that it’s been less than 7 hours.

I’m a recovering racist.

It’s one of the reasons I get so pissed off when I see white people saying “I’m not racist.” I tend to see that in one of two ways. The first is immediately before or after saying something racist, like the old woman who lives across the street from me who yesterday said she didn’t want to talk to one of her neighbors “because they’re black, and you just never know who has a gun these days.” In that context it’s easy to spot that “I’m not racist” means exactly the opposite. The other way I see it used is during a critique of racism in something that the white person likes or identifies with. “You say this song/movie/video/book is racist, but I love this song and I’m not racist, so there!” That one may not be as obvious an admission of racism, but it’s a damn fine example of derailing. It’s stopping the critique and trying to refocus it on the fine, upstanding, not at all racist person who said it.

And I’m just as guilty of this shit as the next person.

See, our whole culture is shot through with racism. It was in the air I breathed as a child. It was in the stories I read, the shows I watched, the behaviors of those all around me, and now it’s in me. It’s one of my own little demons, one of my own original sins, inside me for as long as I’ve had consciousness.

I’m a racist. Now that I’m aware of that and working on my own recovery I can try to get on with the work of being anti-racist.

I’m thankful that I’m not alone in this. Once I realized that dealing with my own racism is akin to being in recovery from it, I just knew that someone smarter than me had to have thought of it too. Luckily I was right. damali ayo has even written a wonderful piece called “The 12 White Steps” (link is to a PDF). Give it a read. Then read it again. Then, if you’re so inclined, print a copy and stick it to your bathroom mirror, on the wall next to your desk, anywhere you’ll see it over and over. If you don’t want to open the PDF, you can read the short version of each step here.

1. Admit you have a race
2. Accept that there is a higher understanding that can restore you to sanity
3. Realize you don’t know it all
4. ‘Fess up
5. Own your legacy
6. Move beyond your ABCs
7. Make racism a white issue
8. Bite the bullet
9. Share the cookies
10. Go the distance
11. Teach your children well
12. Recruit, recruit, recruit

My name is Gabe and I’m racist. I’ll be fighting that my whole life. Fight with me.

As a follow up to my previous post on building temples, I offer this, The Politics of Pentecost Versus the Religion of Empire.

That the Occupy Movement will not introduce the commonwealth of God announced by Jesus does not stifle my enthusiasm. In a totalitarian corporate capitalist order we must seek to create fissures and occupy spaces that can then be widened into “temporary theonomous zones” where true human life can be renewed and flourish once again. In this way the parallels between the Occupy Movement and the early churches are worthy of comparison.

Emphasis added.

Kester Brewin writes:

The city, our whole world, is a rich resource for enquiry and inspiration. We need not to build temples, but to see the world as a temple. To see each thing as sacred, as having the potential for beauty, for transformation, for guiding our thoughts.

The last sentence quoted above could well be a summation of my goals in life. To be aware of the sacredness of everything in every moment is something I strive for. In contrast to Kester, however, I think it is precisely this reason that we do need to build temples.

The voices that surround me are those that tell me the world is mine to be bought and sold, that it is a dangerous place in need of taming, that it is crude matter trapping a higher spirit. The world is a material to be formed into a product and escaped. To be transformed by the sacred beauty of the world I must train myself against those voices. I must learn to identify the sacred over the commodity. I must grasp beauty over usefulness.

When advertising is the dominant feature of both the landscape and the discourse, how do we reorient toward the sacred? This reorientation is goal of the temple. The temple is the place in which focus on the sacred is the goal. The temple is the part of the landscape in which the focus is necessarily on the sacred. The Temple is the site of resistance to the desacralization of the world. It does not (or should not) define itself as a sacred space in the midst of the profane, but as a point of focus on the sacredness of the world.

The temple is the training ground.

I pray daily. I set aside time to sit and be in the presence of the divine. I break out of the patterns of the day and put my focus on God through contemplation. I learn to experience the presence of God.

This practice does not imply that at all other times I am outside the presence of the divine. Rather it teaches me to become aware of the presence at all times. I don’t pray and then define all other activity as not-prayer. I pray so that all activity becomes prayer. I sit at my altar and practice specific forms of prayer so that I can orient my entire awareness toward prayer.

This is the goal of the temple. It is a space in which to learn to see the sacred, not so that everything outside the temple is excluded from the sacred, but so that outside the temple we can see the sacred in the face of all that tells us to deny it.

We build temples not to exclude the world from them, but to learn to see the world as the temple that it is.

I’ve been invited to be a part of an online sermon series, and my first day to preach was today. Below is what I was led to write.

26 February 2012: Year B, First Sunday in Lent.

Genesis 9:8-17, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Peter 3:18-22, and Mark 1:9-15

Turning. Turning toward something. Turning away from something. Changing direction. Reorienting. Our readings today speak of turning.

In the first, one of the most terrifying episodes in the Bible has come to an end and even God wishes to turn from that. The one who is love turns away from destruction and toward love. Toward life.

What does it mean that God turned, changed direction, reoriented?

We see it again in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus, after his baptism, a very public ceremony, turns away from the crowds, from his family and his people, He turns away so that he can turn back toward them renewed. He turns away from temptation so that he can turn toward his ministry.

The Psalmist asks God for help turning. “Make me to know your ways,” he says. “Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long.” Turn me toward you, Lord. Take me out of my busy life. Teach me patience as I wait for you.

And the author of 1 Peter talks to us of our own turning, our baptism, “an appeal to God for a good conscience,” echoing the earlier cry of the Psalmist.

Here at the beginning of Lent we bring our attention to our own turning. We may be turning away from our evening cocktails, or from spending too much time online, but in these turns our goal is ultimately to turn ourselves toward God. Often in saying “O my God, in you I trust” we have to remind ourselves to turn away from the places where we often put our trust, places that do not deserve it.

On Ash Wednesday we heard the words “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This reminder of our own mortality, and of our oneness with all that surrounds us, opens our entry into Lent, into our turning. Looking at this precious and brief time we are given forces us to take note of our own direction, to be deliberate in that toward which we are oriented.

Perhaps you are called to turn away from clothing yourself in the products of worker abuse. Perhaps you are called to a clearer mind, turning away from alcohol or other substances. Perhaps you are called to turn toward God in regular prayer. Perhaps you are called to turn toward God in service. Perhaps you are called to fasting and self-denial, to turning away from yourself and toward the other, often-forgotten children of God. Perhaps you are called not to turn away from yourself in self-denial, but to turn toward the self that you or others have forgotten to love, toward remembering that you are made in the image of God, that you are holy and that the dust from which you came was stardust.

Whatever the call may be, God is calling to you. God is asking you to turn, as God has shown you God’s own turning.

Lent is a time for turning, but I cannot tell you how to turn. I can only tell you that God’s call is to love. You must listen to God’s call, to how God is calling you to love.

O God, in this season which begins with an embrace of our own mortality, an acknowledgement and observation of the brevity of the time in which this pile of dust is animated by your holy breath, we put our trust in you. Help us to walk the paths to which you call us with steadfast love and faithfulness. Help us, O Lord, in everything that we do, to turn toward Love.

In a recent post I mentioned that I spent part of a weekend going around New Orleans looking at churches. There are some amazingly beautiful structures dedicated to God in that city. I’d recently gone to a Christmas concert at St. Louis Cathedral, and while the focus on imperialism and violence in that building left a bad taste in my mouth, it also left me wanting to see what else the city had to offer.

Christ Church Cathedral is home to the first Protestant congregation in the Louisiana Purchase, and the building itself is beautiful, sitting right on the streetcar line in the Garden District. The chapel just next door was constructed in the same style, and looks to be a seamless addition. I’d love to have gone inside, but alas, the church was locked. And the gate was closed. And the chapel was locked as well.

I found myself being angry that the church was locked and that the parking lot was gated. What right do we have to stop people from entering the Lord’s house? How can we decide “church is closed”? Are we not supposed to receive all visitors, to give to those who ask of us? Are we really limiting when people are able to use the church building for worship or prayer? If anything should be open to all at all times, it is a church. To quote Johnny Paycheck, “That’s the House of the Lord. That guy’s got a hell of a nerve.”

Churches locked, gates closed, no trespassing signs on cemeteries, everywhere people are being closed out of sacred space. As I saw more and more of this, I became more and more incensed. And saddened. How greatly are we failing the world if our doors are not always opened to all comers? These churches were doing it wrong!

As I sat with how upset I was with the people running these places I began to see them as a mirror. As I plan a guerrilla art project to mark mundane spaces as holy in their own right I started to ask myself how I was closing off Christ’s church to those around me. How often do I lock my car doors, or avoid the eyes of those asking me for help? How often do I close myself off, refuse to see Christ in my neighbor, or show my neighbor Christ in myself? I lock my front doors when I leave, pretending that “my” house is anything other than God’s.

Pete Rollins has talked about how people give themselves permission to have crises of faith. As long as someone in authority has faith, he says, they tell themselves its okay. They don’t have to actually experience their own loss, because they can hold onto someone else’s faith vicariously. I was doing that here. The crisis wasn’t in the closing of the church doors. It was in the closing of my own doors. I acted as though I could do that, I could fail to live up to Christ’s standard, as long as the Bishop did it for me.

My anger was misplaced. How can I expect others to respond to the call on my behalf?

My girlfriend digs pop country. It’s not usually my thing, but she’s turned me on to a handful of good songs. That’s what I get for writing off a genre completely, right? I end up missing out on good music. Thing is, I also miss out on a lot of utter crap, and that I’m good with.

Listening to songs about being country leaves me with the impression that to be country means to willfully narrow one’s experiences, to be anti-intellectual and to be convinced that these things make you superior to… everyone.

The one on my mind lately is “Bait a Hook” by Justin Moore. This little celebration of xenophobia sees the narrator criticizing someone’s new beau for such egregious offenses as caring about the environment, drinking fruity drinks and, god forbid, eating sushi. Mustering all his eloquence, the narrator says such a life “sounds like it sucks.” The chorus of this ditty?

He can’t even bait a hook
He can’t even skin a buck
He don’t know who Jack Daniels is
He ain’t ever drove a truck
Knows how to throw out a line, but not the kind in a field and stream book
No darlin’ I ain’t even worried, you’ll come runnin’ back
He can’t even bait a hook.

Now, setting aside the fact that the name of the man who gave us the ubiquitous Tennessee Whiskey was Jack Daniel, not Jack Daniels, this whole thing is the narrator saying “STOP LIKING WHAT I DON’T LIKE!”

This limited view of what is and isn’t country isn’t new. Hank Jr.’s “If Heaven Ain’t A Lot Like Dixie” and “Country Boy Can Survive” are two songs that I grew up on that have the same attitude. “If it’s not what I’m used to, then it’s crap!”

Things like this made me so very thankful for Johnny Cash’s words in his autobiography, Cash:

I was talking with a friend of mine about this the other day: that country life as I knew it might really be a thing of the past and when music people today, performers and fans alike, talk about being “country,” they don’t mean they know or even care about the land and the life it sustains and regulates. They’re talking more about choices — a way to look, a group to belong to, a kind of music to call their own. Which begs a question: Is there anything behind the symbols of modern “country,” or are the symbols themselves the whole story? Are the hats, the boots, the pickup trucks, and the honky-tonking poses all that’s left of a disintegrating culture? Back in Arkansas, a way of life produced a certain kind of music. Does a certain kind of music now produce a way of life? Maybe that’s okay. I don’t know.

Perhaps I’m just alienated, feeling the cold wind of exclusion blowing my way. The “country” music establishment, including “country” radio and the “Country” Music Association, does after all seem to have decided that whatever “country” is, some of us aren’t.

Cash by Johnny Cash, pp 12-13.

I grew up in the country. Country life made me who I am today. It influenced the way I think, the things I enjoy, the ideals I carry. My favorite snacks when I was a kid came out of mamaw’s garden. I’d walk next door and grab turnips, green onions and cucumbers out of the garden, wash them off with the water hose and eat them. I know that nothing storebought can beat the taste of yard eggs, and that snap beans taste best when you snap ‘em yourself. I know how to milk a goat, and that you grab her by the ear and pop her on the nose if she tries to butt you.

I also hate hunting and fishing. Hell, I don’t even eat meat. I’d rather have good gas mileage than a giant pickup. I think Bud Light is shit and sushi is the shit. I’ll jump off the rope swing into the river with you, but you’re going to have to go gigging frogs on your own.

As I often do, I’ll defer to Don Williams’ classic “Good Old Boys Like Me.”

So what do you do with us? What about folks who were shaped by and love the country, but who find its trappings these days to be abhorrent? What do you do with those of us who like to read and write, who’d enjoy a glass of wine on the front porch, who’d fire up the grill and throw on some tofu or mushroom caps, but who also know what shade of yellow-green means to watch out for a tornado and that when all the cows are huddled in one corner of the field there’s rain coming? What do you do with those of us who can’t think of anything more beautiful than a star-filled silent night sky, and who wish that damn whippoorwill would shut up long enough for us to hear it, but who recite poetry when we see it?

If I were a lesser person, and I may well be, I’d turn Mr. Moore’s words back on him.

He’s never even read a book.
Hides his insecurities in a truck.
He has no clue who Walker Percy is,
and probably doesn’t give a fuck.

I’m wearing boots and a Wrangler shirt while I type this. I just got an email about the garden we’ll be planting soon. I’m in the middle of a book on the lives of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor and, yes, Walker Percy. I cried when I saw Kris Kristofferson sing and on the day Johnny Cash died. With all due respect, Mr. Moore, if that ain’t country I’ll kiss your ass.

Tonight one of my favorite writers on theology and philosophy of religion is speaking at the college where I started my degree. Unfortunately I live a good 8 hour drive from there now, so I won’t be in attendance. At the same time, across the country, a conference on process theology will be starting up.

I’ve found myself critical of contemporary emerging, progressive, liberal Christianity’s focus on conferences as a major mode of community building. Soularize, Wild Goose, Emergent Village Theological Conversation, Jesus Radicals. In the build up to all of these you hear things like “You’re going to want to be there,” or “If you care about these topics, you need to get there.” It feels somewhere between the advertising industry’s more common “You owe it to yourself to do this” and the more evangelical Christian “God is moving in this place.” To not go is something between denying yourself and denying God.

The site of the work, the community and the celebration is not in the churches, but in the conferences. To some degree it feels to me like “Come do these things here, because you’ll never find this at your local church.” And that’s probably true. But I’ve wondered if the conferences serve as ways to avoid making these things happen in our churches. If we get to talk about process theology once a year, then we don’t have to push to bring in into our churches. If we have alternative worship experiences here and there, then we don’t have to fight to have them at home.

Then there’s the costs of both time and money, which make the gatherings inaccessible to many. Registration, lodging, travel, time away from work, time away from family, childcare, these things add up, and likely figure into why these events are overwhelmingly populated by white, middle to upper-middle class, hetero, cis men.

And to top it all off, I’m such an introvert that being around that many people is draining.

I think these are valid criticisms, but I also think I’ve put too much stock in my criticisms.

The other night I was watching a National Geographic documentary on the Appalachian Trail. Seeing and hearing from those who were hiking the trail made it clear that the experience was one of pilgrimage for many of them.

American Protestantism does not have sacred sites, but many still feel the draw of pilgrimage. We desire having space, time and movement set aside for God. This stuck me this weekend as I ambled around New Orleans, looking at the beautiful church buildings that permeate the city. To travel to a sacred site touches something deep inside many of us, and hearing the hikers speak about their experience on the trail it hit me that these conferences function as pilgrimages for many in American Protestantism. People are creating their own sacred spaces, temporary and movable. People are building their own pilgrimages from the ground up. Whatever critiques I may have of the process, I can relate to that desire.

Bo has been discussing the Wesley Quadrilateral in a couple of posts at Homebrewed Christianity, as well as on his own blog. I have absolutely zero background in Methodism or in the teachings of John Wesley, but I love the idea of the Quadrilateral, and his posts and the ensuing comments have me thinking.

Bo described the conversation: “Every time I bring up quadrilateral, more than half of the conversation will be centered on reason. This week was no exception. Reason draws the most concern – which is funny to me because tradition is the one that I find most suspect.”

I can relate to Bo when he writes, “I grew up evangelical and developed a disdain for tradition. It was a bad word to me – like religion. It meant thoughtless, empty ritual done on autopilot in rote repetition. I see things a little differently now.” The church in which I was raised thought of tradition as what those Catholics did, and singing the first, second and fourth verses of hymns and having weekly altar calls as authentic, self-determined worship. Tradition was man-made, and should be discarded, or that was how it was said.

While I wouldn’t say that I find tradition any more suspect than the others, I would say that of the four (scripture, tradition, reason and experience) tradition is the one that holds my attention recently.

It seems as though when tradition is called upon, it is the stick by which we measure our own conclusions. “Does this practice or idea square with the historical practices and ideas of Christianity?” Rather than seeing it as such, perhaps we could reevaluate what tradition means.

Tradition, in the context of the other three parts of the quadrilateral, isn’t a limiting force, nor a measuring stick. Rather it is a recognition of context and of community. Tradition is what we look to in order to see our own limitations. Acknowledging tradition is acknowledging the ways that our spiritual forbears shaped us.

Rather than being that with which we must be in accord, tradition is the means by which we engage in community with our brothers and sisters who came before us, and the means by which those who follow will include us in their own community. In looking at tradition we may easily become aware of the failings of those who came before us. We may see their prejudice and the ways their ideas damaged the world. By engaging those who shaped Christianity over the last 2000 years in community, we can learn from them and we can hopefully retain a sense of humility. In them we can get a glimpse of how our our failings and prejudices will be seen by those who come after us.

None of us are able to see the full picture, and none of us exist in a vacuum. Tradition is an acknowledgement of that. Tradition is welcoming those who shaped us, those are are shaping us, those who we are shaping and those who will be shaped by us.

Perhaps the word itself should be replaced in our minds.

Perhaps instead of appealing to tradition, we should say we are appealing to community.