Anchorhold

Welcome to a space for the spirituality of gay and bisexual men. We have within ourselves the resources for our healing, liberation, and growth. Connecting with each other, we encounter the grace to lay hold of a richer, juicier life. Losing ourselves in deep play, we rediscover the bigger, freer, more joyous selves we're capable of becoming. Here I share my interest in personal and communal ritual, making art that expresses my inner life, and an intentional practice of erotic spirituality.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Hope and Deliverance

It’s not just that I think Rebecca Drysdale is wonderful. It’s that the world is a vastly better and richer place because Rebecca Drysdale is in it. I would become a lesbian for Rebecca Drysdale.

This is why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTQNwMxqM3E

It's her contribution to YouTube’s “It Gets Better” campaign, kicked off by Dan Savage and his partner in the fall in response to a cascade of highly publicized suicides by bullied queer teens and young adults. It’s brilliantly produced, stunningly edited music video. The lyrics are supple and brash. The choreography moves like sexy lightning.

But it’s the balance of rage, compassion, and the celebratory promise of hope that takes her video to the top of my list. An often-voiced critique of the campaign over the last months has been that too many segments–certainly not all of them, but more than a few–however well-intentioned, leave the kids who watch them in limbo, no clearer than they were before about how to survive the oppression and pain they endure daily, no clearer about how they’ll ever make it from the hell they’re living in to the safe haven they’re told awaits them. There’s no bridge from here to there, but a great gulf fixed.

What sets this video apart is that it briefly but vividly imagines individual lives and dwells on them from the inside. Rebecca doesn’t just offer herself as an example of a survivor. She stands in solidarity with the stories of half a dozen kids and presents herself as though she could be their classmate–that in some emotionally real sense, she is their classmate. The message of hope she offers doesn’t drop down out of the sky. It’s proclaimed from the midst of the virtual assembly of those who sit in something near despair and yet long for deliverance. She doesn’t just express compassion. She models it.

The rage and contempt she expresses for the perpetrators doesn’t dismiss the suffering they inflict as negligible. When she holds out survival and fulfillment down the road as the best revenge, she’s immersed in just how awful the experience kids go through can be. The solidarity implied in the anger of her lyrics is a cry for justice. And it throws out a lifeline.

No more than anyone else can she offer a roadmap to show the shortest way out of a land of darkness. But she says, pack what you need, put your shoes on your feet, and get ready to move out. Somewhere the fuck beyond this enslavement to daily misery, there’s a shore on the other side where it’s safe to sing and dance. Believe in it. Breathe it in. And along the way, remember that you’re in solidarity with a whole community of the oppressed, with whom you’ll live to celebrate together. Treat them with compassion, protect them when you need to with your righteous anger. In doing so you’ll experience compassion and protection yourself.

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Sacred Intimacy: Companionship in Spiritual and Erotic Healing

Different practitioners use the term "Sacred Intimacy" to mean different things. It's important to remember that Sacred Intimacy work is different from therapy, and can't replace therapy. I'm not a therapist. I don't claim to offer services in any officially regulated modality. (Some Sacred Intimates are also practicing therapists, but they're clear with themselves and with clients which modality they're working in.) Put simply, I offer heart-centered companionship and deep listening.

For me, first and foremost, Sacred Intimacy means that what passes between us is holy. It's filled and enlivened with the presence of the Divine. I will do my best to be as present to you, as available to you for your good, as I'm capable of being. My intention is to be open to working in whatever modality we agree will be helpful to you. A session begins with a short conversation in which you explain to me where you're at, and what you hope to take away from our time together.

The emphasis is on healing, growth, and the expansion of your life. You may, for example, have issues of erotic shame that you want to work on, or grief, or body image, or intimacy. I may ask for clarifications and make suggestions. Together we agree on the starting point for the experiential work that will follow.

A session might unfold through breathwork, guided meditation, bodywork, intentionally focused erotic interaction, creative movement, the shared creation of ritual, artistic practice, psychodynamic role playing, or some combination.

I can't hope to be of service to you unless I feel competent in the role I assume, and unless I have the sense that what we do has potential to help you move forward with your declared intention. So our initial conversation may involve some give and take around what's possible and what's useful.

It's essential for your integrity and mine that we maintain full confidentiality and respect one another's boundaries. We enter into sacred space together at the beginning of a session. We leave sacred space at the end, and what's happened within the safe container of the session remains distinct from any interactions we might have before or after the session. What happens in the session stays in the session.

Every Sacred Intimate has his own understanding of the nature of his work. Just below you'll find a series of links to the web pages of a number of Sacred Intimates working in various cities and areas.

Finding Yourself, Claiming Yourself

I invite you to celebrate who you are, and who you want to become.

Think of the times your life as a gay or bisexual man has flowed without effort.

Think of the times you’ve struggled to lay hold of your life more fully.

Maybe those times feel like opposites. But they’re parts of a single cycle: sowing and harvest, labor and rest, preparation and enjoyment. We can’t work toward a fuller life unless we already feel some trust that life will rise up to meet us. We can’t sink deeper into our present joy and satisfaction in life without being reminded that it took a long journey to get here.

Please join me in considering a place where the two halves of this cycle come together: in the safe, empowering container of ritual space and ritual time.

What's an Anchorhold?

For centuries in Europe, a handful of men and women took a vow to devote themselves to the cultivation of their inner lives and to make themselves radically available to their communities for spiritual counsel. Committing themselves to remaining in a single dwelling for the rest of their lives, they were known as anchorites; the houses in which they lived were their anchorholds. Those who needed what the official channels of the religious establishment couldn’t provide came to the anchorhold for conversation and support.

Neither priests nor monks, the spiritual practice of anchorites and their interaction with those who came to them fell outside formal control of the Church. As a result, religious authorities often viewed them with suspicion. One of the best known of these dropouts from ordinary social and religious norms was Julian of Norwich, a woman who had a near-death experience in 1373 and spent the rest of her life thinking about what it meant, for herself and for the world at large. The book she wrote about her revelation, the first in English that we know for sure was written in by a woman, is an astonishingly daring and original rethinking of Christian theology: a vision of a God in whom there is no wrath, who is both Father and Mother of Creation, and who will somehow, by a miracle beyond our ability to grasp, eventually effect the salvation of every living being.

Men and women of spirit who fell between the cracks, anchorites practiced what in its own way was a profoundly queer inner life, following the instincts of their own experience, flying under the radar of the powers that claimed to control access to the Divine.

Anchorhold

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Hope and Deliverance

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