Rogue Reverend

Best. Newsletter. For Homeless Ministry. Ever.

My friend, Hugh Hollowell, of Love Wins writes:

Dear Friends,

Several weeks ago I sat in a room full of pastors from downtown churches in a forum called by the Raleigh Police Department. Ostensibly, it was to talk about how faith communities can properly secure their premises, especially in light of Martha’s murder a few months ago. The gist of the presentation was about church security - having your facilities well lit, etc. And then, they started talking about the homeless.

We saw pictures of dangerous criminals (their words), all but one of whom were black, as examples of the sort of people we should be watching out for. (Of course, most of the folks in the audience were white, so this played with their stereotypes perfectly.) Then they presented us all with trespass letters, which, if signed and placed on file with the police, would give them permission to arrest folks found on their property after hours. The entire presentation built to this, and you got the feeling this was the whole reason for the meeting.

There aren’t near enough shelter beds. If you are unhoused and needed a safe place, you might think about going to sit out of the rain under the awning at the corner church. Especially since the church is closed so you won’t scare any of the rich white people who attend there. If you thought this way you wouldn’t be alone. There are several churches downtown where friends of mine sleep - behind their dumpsters, in the shrubs, under the awning. Because it is well lit, clean and generally safe.

The police work for the city, which makes revenue from developers, who sell houses to rich people who do not like seeing homeless people. So the police are under a lot of pressure to “clean up” the homeless problem. The police are frustrated by the churches that have allowed people to sleep on their grounds. So, the police scare the daylights out of the church leaders, throw Martha’s death in the mix, show some scary pictures of black men and convince a goodly number of the downtown churches to put up no tresspassing signs, enabeling the police to act on those tresspass letters they wanted us to sign.

The presenters assured us they did not want to interfere with our mission - they just wanted us to help them keep us ’safe’.

I was the only one who stood up and said that our mission does not call for us to be safe - it calls for us to show extreme love and radical hospitality. I asked the people, preachers and police alike, the following question: If you are tired and hungry and alone and have no home and no hope - if you cannot go to the church, where should you go?

No one had any answers to that. The police officer told me he understood, but that was not his job.

But it is my job. It is our job. To extend grace and love to the other. Not to put up signs to keep people who don’t look like us away.

So I have spent the last few weeks telling my friends who sleep outside that churches are not safe places anymore. That the No Tresspassing signs mean they will be arrested. And when they ask me where they are supposed to go if they can’t go to church, I tell them I don’t know. And when they leave, I cry.

Love Wins. Always.

The Wikingdom of God (a sermon)

Tao Te Ching

~translated (or perpetrated) by Ron Hogan

If you toss compliments around freely,
people will waste your time
trying to impress you.
If you give things too much value,
you’re going to get ripped off.
If you try to please people,
you’ll just make them pissed.

The Master leads
by clearing the crap
out of people’s heads
and opening their hearts.
He lowers their aspirations
and makes them suck in their guts.

He shows you how to forget
what you know and what you want,
so nobody can push you around.
If you think you’ve got the answers,
he’ll mess with your head.

Stop doing stuff all the time,
and watch what happens.

Mark 9:30-37

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been listening to a lot of TED talks, Technology, Entertainment and Design, these 18 minute (or so) talks about interesting things. My favorite for a while has been about the economics of open source.

But before I tell you about the talk, I thought I’d better explain open source:

From Wikipedia: “Open source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software’s source code.” In other words, software code is provided to any developer to modify or write code off of, not for money, but generally just for good will. Then the software is generally offered to the world free.

Microsoft Office is not open source. In fact, they work really hard to NOT be open source. They pay developers to write their software, they hire those people, pay benefits, taxes, insurance, vacation time, all that stuff. Open Office, an open source product similar to Microsoft Office (which, by the way, works with Microsoft Office) is worked on by non-employees, bugs are fixed by a person here or there, most people just like the idea that they are working on something meaningful, and the product is free. There are other examples of open source: Wikipedia, for example. Or music sites where you can download music for free. Google books is another example of open source. You see where this is leading? And now there’s open source movement in politics, business, ethics, media, education, the arts. What’s an example of Open Source art? Collage, of course.

Now on to the Ted talk: Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In his Ted talk, he talks about the new open source economics.

Yochai posits first that we have had an information economy for a hundred and fifty years, since the newspaper first made its rounds. But to receive technology, you had to have an influx of capital, then the paper was printed, then paid for. He says, “Those who were producing information had to have a way of raising money to pay,” meaning they were market based.

Then another thing happened. Benkler continues:

Around June 2002, the world of supercomputers had a bombshell. The Japanese had for the first time created the fastest supercomputer — the NEC Earth Simulator… IBM Gene Blue has just edged ahead of the NEC Earth Simulator. All of this completely ignores the fact that throughout this period, there’s another supercomputer running in the world — SETI@Home — four and a half million users around the world, contributing their leftover computer cycles, whenever their computer isn’t working, by running a screen saver, and together sharing their resources to create a massive supercomputer that NASA harnesses to analyze the data coming from radio telescopes.

Benkler interprets this:

What this picture suggests to us is that we’ve got a radical change in the way information production and exchange is capitalized. Not that it’s become less capital intensive that there’s less money that’s required—but that the ownership of this capital, the way the capitalization happens, is radically distributed.

It’s open source!

Benkler goes on:

The story that most people know is the story of free or open-source software. This is market share of Apache Web server — one of the critical applications in Web-based communications. In 1995, two groups of people said, “Wow, this is really important, the Web! We need a much better Web server!” One was a motley collection of volunteers who just decided, you know, we really need this, we should write one, and what are we going to do with what — well, we’re gonna share it! And other people will be able to develop it. The other was Microsoft.

Now, if I told you that 10 years later, the motley crew of people who didn’t control anything that they produced acquired 20 percent of the market and was the red line, it would be amazing! Right? But in fact, of course, the story is it’s the 70 percent, including the major e-commerce site — 70 percent of a critical application on which web based communications and applications work is produced in this form in direct competition with Microsoft, not in a side issue — in a central strategic decision to try to capture a component of the net.

Benkler finishes here:

So essentially what we’re seeing is the emergence of a fourth transactional framework. It used to be that there were two primary dimensions along which you could divide things. They could be market based, or non-market based; they could be decentralized, or centralized. The price system was a market-based and decentralized system. If things worked better because you actually had somebody organizing them, you had firms if you wanted to be in the market — or you had governments or sometimes larger non-profits in the non-market. It was too expensive to have decentralized social production, to have decentralized action in society — that was not about society itself. It was in fact economic.

But what we’re seeing now is the emergence of this fourth system of social sharing and exchange. Not that it’s the first time that we do nice things to each other, or for each other, as social beings. We do it all the time. It’s that it’s the first time that it’s having major economic impact. What characterizes them is decentralized authority. You don’t have to ask permission, as you do in a property-based system. May I do this? It’s open for anyone to create and innovate and share, if they want to, by themselves or with others, because property is one mechanism of coordination. But it’s not the only one.

This is where it starts, “You have a belief: stuff will flow out of connected human beings.”

What if the Kingdom of God is Open Source?

Oh, my God, I think my head might implode.

What would it mean, if the Kingdom of God is actually the Wikingdom of God?

If the Kingdom of God, the manifestation of the Church in THIS age is actually the Wiki-ngdom of God, what changes? How do we reframe it?

First, it’s a radical departure from hierarchies. Decentralization is key. (Could this mean no denominations?)

Second, it is open for anyone to create and innovate and share, if they want to. (Could this mean that we’d be more inclusive, less dogmatic?)

Third, we share in the capitalization of it. We fund it. But we don’t gain monetarily like we would if we were to capitalize it. (Could this mean that we let go of property?)

Fourth, we have no control over it. (and we give up the illusion of control, too)

Fifth, we do our part and let the Spirit go from there.

The biggest argument to me about the nature of who Jesus was is this: he came to turn the world upside down. The world’s understanding of how things work and how things are, and how things are best.

And his disciples, walking with him, were dolt-ish about the whole thing.

I can just envision this scene. The disciples are chatting together, and Jesus walks up and they all get quiet. “Whatcha’ talking about?” Jesus asks. “Nuthin.” The disciples shift nervously. Finally, they confess, “We’re drawing straws for who is going to be first in heaven.”

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

The Kingdom is not what we suppose.

Sabbath

I’m taking a break this weekend from Twitter. I’m hoping to find that it will make me more creative, more productive, and get me away from the computer.

And then, of course, it’s Friday night and I’m writing a blog post.

I thought I’d share this song from a book by Marshall Chapman, called Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller.

It doesn’t matter
Where you’re coming from
It doesn’t matter
What damage was done
We’re all on a journey
Our goal is the same
We’re gonna be happy
Like children again
So be your own parent
And treat yourself good
It’s never too late
To have a happy childhood

I used to think freedom
Meant running away
And love was a feeling
That never would stay
I searched this world over
But I never found
A big enough shoulder
To muffle the sound
So cry if you need to
It might do you good
It’s never too late
To have a happy childhood

Some never make it
Some never try
Some try to fake it
Some barely get by
Survival is easy
It’s living that’s hard
And it takes lots of courage
Just to be who you are
So do what you love
Not what they say you should
It’s never too late
To have a happy childhood

Sex Worker Rights Are Human Rights

Nine women have disappeared in a community called Rocky Mount, N.C. Six have been found. Dead. So decomposed, that investigators cannot identify how they were killed. You can read about it here.

They were sex workers.

I’m heartsick.

This is why I favor decriminalization of sex work.

On December 17, 2008, I joined nearly a hundred sex workers in a march in Washington, D.C. The march highlights the violence done to people in sex work. I heard stories.

One woman talked of having been beaten and raped by a client. Other sex workers saw what was happening. The police were called. The sex worker was given the option of having the client prosecuted. The catch? She also would be prosecuted for selling sex.

Another woman told me, “I know some day I’m going to be arrested. My hope is that I don’t have to have sex with the cop before he takes me to jail.”

The criminalization of sex work leaves sex workers without the basic protection of the law. They can’t call the cops if they’re raped. (And, yes, you can rape a sex worker. If you don’t know that, please stop reading right now. Please leave my website. Get away!) If a client robs them, they’re out of luck. Finding a safe place to ply their trade is difficult. Advertising is sketchy.

And the benefit to decriminalization? Sex workers would file their income taxes without worrying about being “found out.”

So often I have had to listen to people make presumptions about sex workers. I’d ask you, please, please, please presume the following:

She is honest.
She is determined to make it on her own.
She is kind.
She does not believe that minors should be in sex work.
He doesn’t think anyone should be forced into sex work.
She is generous.
She is loving and is loved by people.
She is intelligent.
He is deserving of kindness.
He and she both deserve human rights.

If we begin with these presumptions, perhaps there will be no more killings of sex workers.

Who Am I?

Some days, I don’t know who I am.

Audacia Ray wrote a post at Feministe this week about American Sex Worker Activist Projects and mentioned Star Light. She wrote, “There is also the now sadly defunct Starlight Ministries, an outreach ministry to exotic dancers that was totally awesome and not in any way a creepy paternalistic shaming religious group.”

Ever since I resigned from Star Light Ministries, the organization I founded as an outreach to sex workers, I have struggled with my concept of who I am. It’s not so much who I am inside, but who I am outside. What do I tell people I “do for a living?” How do I express my passion for people deemed “unacceptable” by the Church, by society at large, by whatever social circle I seem to find myself in, and still be “just a pastor.”

The church that I pastor is amazing. They are smart, funny, easy-going, committed, and so accepting. I really love being around them in a way I haven’t felt in church in a long time. And my love for them seems to grow.

And yet, there’s me. Who am I? WHO AM I?

Many, many years ago I read a story in a book of Russian fables about a student who goes to Minsk to study. But he’s miserable. So he searches out a hermit Rabbi in the woods and says, “When I was in St. Petersburg, I prayed. I read books. I studied. I was happy. Then I moved to Minsk. Here, all I can do is cry. Tears is all I have.” The Rabbi answered, “Maybe what God wants from you now is tears.”

So maybe me not knowing who I am right now is precisely what God wants from me.