Starbucks ¡No!, Dunkin Donuts ¡Si! ?
The Episcopal Church as a Spiritual Home for Leathermen ?
...A Reader Writes...

I got email!
Cool!
We love email in response to stuff you've read here at Singletails!

Here's the reply I dashed off...

I am *no* stranger to the excellent coffee at Dunkin Donuts. On the road, it's the place to go!

However, I'm not sure about the crowd at your Dunkin D., but the folks who tend to linger at mine are a wee bit further downby a couple of echelons. Working class? Nay. Nothing that looks like employment here. And I am and always have been the only person I've seen reading a book in a Dunkin Donuts shop. And all the cops in Doylestown are now hanging at the Starbucks. If only to keep the kids from marrauding (sp?).

I hope I didn't imply in my blog that the Episcopal Church is a place with Answers! It's all about the asking of Questions. I've never heard an answer. Not once. (The Laird be thankee.) My long held beef with the Episcopal Church is that it tends to be the preserve of literate, college educated white people from the upper tax brackets. This, in part, lead me to dabble in the Roman Church during my early twenties. I found something refreshing about sitting in the pews with... well... with thhe folks that hang out in your Dunkin Donuts. And good meat and potatoes sermons, concretizing the gorgeous formal unity of Thomistic theology (All those Answers!). No allusions to Auden's poetry here. None that go unattributed cuz the folks listening would feel that the attribution would insult their intelligence anyway. But, as it became abundantly clear that part and parcel of the moral theology was that I personally was ecluded from the Body of Christ, well... I don't stay long at parties where I'm not invited. And I've made my peace with the class issues of the Episcopal church: over-educated swells need a place where they can grow in their love of God and their brothers and sisters in Christ, too!

Preaching to a crowd of leathermen, huh? I always tote my Book of Common Prayer with me to Inferno. I'm pretty attached to Compline. Here's my fantasy: I would love--but I've never had the testicular fortitude required to make it happen--to organize saying Morning Prayer on Sunday morning. Or Evening Prayer on Saturday night. Chanting psalms with my brothers in leather... I suspect that there would be a few takers. But I totally get what you mean. I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I make sense of my S/M journey within the context of my Christian faith, and I'm sure that there are others out there who do as well, and I want us to all join together overtly in prayer and praise about it.

And thanks so much! Thoughtful responses to my writing are always welcome! Honestly, *any* response to my writing brings me joy.

Your leather brother in Christ,

Drew

---