Sunday, March 17, 2024

Mark's Secret, Once Again


"And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and said to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan."


In 1958, Morton Smith, a scholar of ancient history at Columbia University, discovered the Greek version of that passage, copied in an eighteenth-century hand, while exploring a monastery library east of Jerusalem. It's part of an incomplete letter by an early bishop of Alexandria that doesn't otherwise survive. The letter says that an augmented version of the Gospel of Mark including those lines was circulating in some second-century communities.


Unless the letter was Morton Smith's own forgery. Or an eighteenth-century forgery. Or a copy of a fifth-century forgery. Or anything else that could save modern scholars from taking it seriously as additional verses from an authentic alternative version of the Gospel of Mark. There's no dogfight more endless than a New Testament scholars' dogfight. 


An article in the April 2024 issue of The Atlantic  gives a précis of the controversy, which has continued unresolved since shortly after Smith published his book on the subject in 1973.  The scholarly debate, however, isn't the main topic of Ariel Sabar's essay, "The 'Secret' Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus." Instead, springboarding from a recent book on the controversy by Geoffrey Smith and Brett Landau,  Sabar focuses on Morton Smith's biography as a gay Episcopal priest who broke with the Church, taught the rest of his career at Columbia, lived most of his life in the closet, held some wicked academic grudges, and committed suicide in 1991. (For a much fuller account of ongoing arguments over the passage's authenticity, the extensive Wikipedia article is a good place to start.) 


For all the accusations that have been levelled at Morton Smith's scholarly bias, the new book finally turns its attention directly on the bias of his opponents' claims in their own right, and the weakly supported arguments they've made against the letter's authenticity. (Which no one has seen in decades, since shortly after it was taken into the  "safekeeping" of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.) 


The authors of the new study argue that the letter is a forgery, but a much earlier one, occasioned by anxiety over deep bonds formed by pairs of Eastern Orthodox monks. Such friendships were often celebrated, and honored by formal ceremonies of "becoming brothers," but they also came under suspicion of carnal attachment. 


The version of the Gospel of Mark to which the letter attests has come to be generally known as the "Secret Gospel of Mark." "Secret Gospel" was Smith's translation of the phrase "mystikon euangelion," but the Greek phrase could just as easily be translated as the "mystical Gospel" or perhaps the "initiated Gospel." Those alternative translations suggest more clearly the idea of an inner teaching, accessible to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, but ignored or opposed by those who don't.


It would be great to know whether this passage really did circulate within some Christian communities in the second century. I can't deny that I hope it was. But I'm ready to assert its spiritual importance even if it was concocted in the fifth century--or indeed, in the eighteenth--by a monk whose devotional life embraced an erotic understanding of the Divine, and how a very fleshly Savior had touched his life.


Saturday, March 2, 2024

The Tie That Binds

 


Detail, Bernini, The Ecstacy of St. Teresa

Religion.


The very term is toxic for many who've survived a history of homophobic spiritual abuse. 


The brutal sundering of flesh from spirit that poisons so much Christian teaching and piety has taken its toll on queer people for centuries. (And make no mistake--Christianity is far from alone in this among the world's major religious traditions.) For many, walking away from religion has been the healthiest, most life-giving choice available, the mark of hard-won ego strength and integrity. The search for an authentic spirituality on terms one can live with then becomes the task of years or decades.


There is enormous irony in this. The origin of the word "religion" is the "binding back together" of things that have been put asunder: a re-ligation of what has come apart. (OK, there's some debate about where the Latin word first came from. But recent scholars, as well as St Augustine, have my back.) It's an enormous irony that Christianity in particular has been responsibile for so much hostility toward the flesh. How did so many adherents of a religion that begins with the assertion, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," come to fear the body, the body's desires, and the body's inborn capacities for pleasure, so vehemently?


It hasn't always and everywhere been thus. It's not always  and everywhere thus today. A different thread of erotic spirituality runs quietly through the long history of Christian thought--stretching from the Song of Songs, through the nature-embracing vision of early Celtic Christianity, through medieval rites for the binding of same-sex couples, through the eroticized devotion of Simeon the New Theologian, Aelred of Rievalux, Catherine of Siena, St John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and beyond. 


Two weeks ago, just a few days into Lent, I posted here the painting created by Salustiano García Cruz for Seville's official poster marking Holy Week of 2024. With it I included a link that covered the offense taken by local conservative Catholics. For them, this Jesus is too young, too beautiful, perhaps too androgynous, certainly too shamelessly at home in his flesh--in his resurrected flesh: with a hand bearing the healed yet visible mark of a nail, he points to the healed yet visible wound in his side. 


There is of course a further issue: that this Jesus is a pale-skinned European in a world where most people are not pale-skinned Europeans.  (At the same time that that needs to be acknowledged and taken seriously, it's hardly what occasioned the right-wing backlash.)


That said, García Cruz's Jesus offers me an affirmation that queer spirit belongs together with queer flesh, queer desire, and the possibility of queer sex. A binding back together, a religio, of what homophobia and hatred of the flesh have put asunder.  His painting, in my book, is as authentically religious as you can get.


If the core purpose of Lent is preparation for the observance of Easter, this Jesus is the image I choose this year for my meditations over the weeks to come.



Saturday, February 17, 2024

Holy Week in Seville

The poster commissioned for this year's Holy Week in Seville from the local artist Salustiano García Cruz, to controversy and opposition from Catholic conservatives.






Thursday, February 15, 2024

Why Aren't You Looking?

 If you don't have someone you love,

why aren't you looking?


And if you've found someone to love,

why aren't you dancing for joy?


And if your companion doesn't suit you,

why don't you become them?


And if the lute won't cry out,

why aren't you teaching it the proper way?

                            ---Jalal ad-Din Rumi, translated by Michael Chagnon

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Want It, Dream It, Believe It

 “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”


--Oscar Wilde

Friday, January 12, 2024

Your Inner Temple: Deepening Male Self-Pleasure

 "Self-pleasuring is the foundation of our potential to love and be loved.... Whether we are aware of it or not, whenever we play with ourselves genitally, we are worshipping the divine."

--Barnaby Barratt, Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom



I'm delighted at the prospect of co-facilitating an intimate residential workshop with Pono Stewart, at his beautiful Skyclad Retreat Centre north of Victoria BC, August 16-19. 




In a safe, confidential space of mindful mutual consent, limited to nine registrants, we’ll explore the wonders of self-pleasure and create rituals to celebrate the unity of body and spirit. If you’re a cis-gendered man who wants your experience of masturbation to be bigger and more meaningful than just physical release, this four-day journey into deeper self-awareness is for you.


Let go of inhibition in a safe and welcoming space. Trust-building exercises will establish a strong, secure container for our experience. Sharing circles, solo and paired exercises, guided meditations, and instructions in technique will open doors into a deeper realm where body and soul are one--where desire and curiosity can blossom into wisdom and compassion.


Rejoicing in the expansive pleasure we're capable of generating within ourselves is our foundational, universal birthright. It transcends divisions of age, religion, sexual orientation, cultural and ethnic origins. 


For a full description of the workshop, follow this link.





Photo by Andrew Graham


Monday, January 8, 2024

Not One and Not Three

 


I've been riveted by this photograph for years. I've shared it here before. I have no idea where it originated. 


Today it invites me deep into a submerged narrative. The men are photographed from an upper-floor balcony. Another man sits on a couch outside the frame, only his feet visible, with further coils of leftover rope lying scattered. The three men have been carefully, skillfully, and lovingly bound into the triad. They actively hold the outer ropes taut to complete the triangle. Did they themselves participate in tying the knots that bind them, or did they consent passively as others incorporated them into a living mandala? 


Are they erect (so beautifully erect!) with the simple excitement of being tied together nude? I choose to believe that their arousal is itself part of the ritual, even if the ritual consists in simple awareness of the object of meditation that they've become. What are they feeling and contemplating, as energy circulates among them with each small movement of an arm or leg? How many men are participating as witnesses, unseen by us, in addition to the photographer and the man on the couch? For how long have the three given themselves over to this perfection?


And then personal fantasy takes over. I imagine multiple men caressing them to the point of simultaneous ejaculation: their semen becoming a sacramental substance, shared by all present.


But individually driven fantasy rarely creates a ritual structure that can serve an entire group equally. If I dial back my own wish-fulfillment to make space for others, it's enough that these men have become, for the moment, a dynamic, breathing manifestation of sexmagic. At the end of the dedication ceremony, they'll be untied with as much ritual intention as went into their binding--just as a Tibetan sand mandala is created, dedicated, and immediately swept away.


Imagine yourself in that room, chanting to the sound of a steady drumbeat, your own erection rising in acknowledgement. Or: imagine being bound together with two kindred souls into a manifestation of Sacred Eros contemplating Itself. And yet in that union, three open hearts each beautifully and uniquely remaining its own.

Monday, December 25, 2023

Christ in the Rubble



"The majesty of the Incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized."


--Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Lutheran Church of Bethlehem



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juCkshyqGN8

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Keith Haring: Art is for Everybody


 "The public has a right to art.

"The public is being ignored by most of contemporary artists.


"The public needs art and it is the responsibility of a "self-proclaimed artist" to realize the public needs art and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses.


"Art is for everybody. To think that they (the public) do not appreciate art because they don't understand and therefore become alienated from [sic] may mean that the artist is the one who doesn't understand or appreciate art and is thriving in the "self-proclaimed knowledge of art" that is actually bullshit.


"Art can be a positive influence towards a society of individuals.


"Art can be a destructive element and an aid to the take-over of the "mass-identity" society.


"Art must be considered by the artists as well as the public.


"The public will not, however, say what they want for fear of being un-educated or not understanding art. Therefore the responsibility rests..."


Keith Haring, journal page, October 1978






He was a geeky kid from small-town Pennsylviania who spent his early teen years in the Jesus Movement. At the age of twenty, he moved to New York to study art. 


He was cerebral, radically embodied, and hypersexual, all at the same time. He was, quite literally, a fucking saint.





He died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 31. His last work was an altarpiece, two versions of which are now in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.


Right now, his work is on show at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. I was lucky enough to be there when multiple school groups were coming through, in waves of excitement rolling off the kids from an alternative arts-based high school, and occasional shrieks of amazement at the unabashedly sexual imagery scattered through the exhibition. (Like they'd never seen such things on restroom walls and the back covers of textbooks--but, I'm figuring, never expected to see in a Temple of Culture.) The noisiest and most joyful gallery visit I'll ever experience.




Saturday, December 2, 2023

Eros and Time


Photo by Andrew Graham


Last week, I was blessed by a moment of unforeseeably deep connection. A few hours of blissful erotic communion, beyond anything I could reasonably expect: an opening of two discreet selves into a Third revealed between us. Without any certainty that anything like it can or will happen again. The man I shared it with lives an ocean away. When we met for coffee a few days later, just before he finished his short professional trip, we acknowledged that we may never see each other face to face again. What happened was for me (and I believe for him as well) too profound not to speak of this honestly.

It's bittersweet, holding onto the faith that experiences like the one he and I shared are just as valid, just as real, in light of their passing away. A reminder that all of life is in fact like that, and our attempts to slow or halt the flow of time are what's illusory. Longing is the foundational condition of our life. Memory is the great storehouse of the psyche where those treasures are still held. The place where sadness and joy come together to reveal a core truth of our existence.


Anne Carson would tell us this. The Buddha would tell us this. St. Augustine would tell us this. But most importantly, our own experience can tell us this.


Wednesday, November 29, 2023

The Task

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.


Walk humbly, now.


You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.


--The Talmud

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Once Again, the Queer Spirituality Podcast

A while back, I sat down with Julian Crossan-Hill to talk about the transformative power of authentic ritual, and about the deep connection that some of us feel between our erotic and spiritual lives. You can access our conversation as Episode 22 of the Queer Spirituality Podcast. Julian's series is profiled below in the post of September 20.

Some of the takeaways of our talk:


Queer spirituality is about finding the extradordinary in the middle of our ordinary life. It's not a separate dimension of our lives, but an integral part of our existience. When we embrace our queerness, we can tap more fully into what's already present in our lives that connects with the divine.


We're hardwired to be happiest when we're grateful.


What we do in and with our bodies we do with our souls. We build our spiritual life out of physical acts and gestures, out of interactions with physical objects and with each other.


(A word about words here: I acknowledge that the word "queer" doesn't work for everyone. For some of us, it still evokes the trauma of a taunt that was hurled at us for years, sometimes with physical along with verbal violence. 


If those negative connotations are a stumbling block, I apologize. Julian uses it as a way of embracing what's outside the mainstream of cultural and sexual expectations. He's affirming what sets us in the margins of heteronormative expectation--what therefore allows us a perspective that's not only authentic for us, but a resource for the rest of the world, to move the needle toward a freer, fuller life. It has the advantage of encompassing, in one syllable, shorthand for a wide range of sexual diversities, from full-on Kinsey-6 gayness, through bisexuality, polyamory, solosexuality, ace life on the gray scale, trans life, gender-fluidity, and more. 


It's less cumbersome than an endless alphabet of possibilities, and less self-parodic than QUILTBAG (Queer, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Trans, Bisexual, Asexual, Gay).


Monday, November 13, 2023

The Phony Grail of Masculine Identity

In my own life, and in the lives of men I talk to, I encounter again and again how powerfully we desire a natural solidarity with other men. We want to find our tribe. We want to find them because we experience ourselves as being somehow in exile from a core identity. We long for home, for refuge, or whatever other metaphor expresses what we feel we lost, or were shut out from, or never had. Often, it started with a sense that our fathers weren't there for us in the ways we needed them to be. Or that we were excluded somehow from the ordinary world of other boys. 

For many of us, it's hard-wired that as men-loving men we paradoxically desire what we already are. Some of us experience this as a foundational condition of our erotic (and spiritual) worlds. (Daniel Mendelsohn writes eloquently of this paradox in The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity.)


Then comes the seduction. We want to resolve the confusion over what it is we're seeking. We want to know that what we're looking for is really out there. That it has substance, solidity, a stable core that we can seek and maybe will eventually find. We get taken in by facile language about "archetypes" and core mythic structures. 


We transfer our desire for the concrete experience of community with other men onto an imaginary realm of How It Really Is--some Core Truth about what it is to be male, to be masculine, to be a man, to be among men. And then we focus our efforts on getting more deeply in touch with that Truth, as though attaining it will finally answer the longings of our hearts.


But will it? Really?


Consider the Seven of Cups: 



In this Tarot card, we see a male figure from behind, in silhouette, and thus devoid of distinguishing individual characteristics. He's confronted (as are we along with him) not with one Holy Grail as the goal of his quest, but with seven grails filled with the tokens of a whole range of possible outcomes: a perfect relationship, stability, wealth, success, a poisonous basilisk, a serpent that might represent danger but might also represent wisdom--and a glowing velied figure with hands extended.


OK, the smart money is on that last cup. The one that doesn't entirely and unambiguously reveal its contents. The one that leaves room for uncertainty. 


In any case, if the silhouetted figure is paralyzed, he's paralyzed by his own agonized compulsion to get it right. To nail it down. 


If we're uncertain about "authentic" masculine identity, it's because masculine identity is not one stable thing. Supposing that it is can easily lead us into restrictive dead ends--some of them exclusionary, some of them misogynistic, some of them simply self-punishing and counterproductive. We don't need to go off to get in touch with our inner King, our inner Warrior, our inner Whatever. We just need to hang with each other in the here and now, as we are, as butch or as nelly, as macho or as gender-fluid, as we may be. 


At some point, we need to affirm that we are already what we long to be. That we are already the older and wiser men we always wanted to meet.