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.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Ex Voto

SEFFERINO VALDERRAMA SE QUEDO DORMiDO FUMANDO Y EN SUEÑOS SE LE PARESiO LA VIRGEN DE ZAPOPAN QUE LE DiJO—DISPiERTA HIJO QUE ESTAS EN PELiGRO Y EL DESPERTO Y ViO SU COJiBA QUE SE iNSENDiABA Y iSO JUSTO EN TiENPO PARA CORRER A LA COSiNA POR AGUA Y APAGAR EL FUEGO Y ANTE ESE PORTENTOSO MiLAGRO LO DiVULGA CON ESTA RETABLO EL 25 DE ENERO DEL AÑO DE 1943

While our own house gets painted, we’ve moved into a friend’s around the corner for two weeks. The place we’ve borrowed is nostalgic and understated, a rebuilt fisherman’s cottage on the bluff above the dunes, and here and there a little quirky: it’s full of testimonies to our friend’s eye for the beauty of small and often unassuming objects. Antique patent medicine bottles in pale sea-green glass line the mantle of the fieldstone hearth; scallop shells from the beach cover a counter in the bathroom.

Along a narrow span of wall between the stairs and an office nook hangs a vertical row of five “primitive” paintings on tin panels, each depicting a narrowly averted disaster in a naïve style that might elicit more amusement than empathy if you’re not used to seeing such pictures. Two young women sit on rocks by a stream with their feet in the water, mouths round in astonishment as three cartoonish crocodiles swim toward them. In another scene, two more women bathe in a river oblivious to the men lurking in the bushes behind them. A youth dives to the bottom of a lake where another young man lies unconscious. A man leaps from a canoe to rescue an infant. A sleeper awakes to find his bed in flames, a cigarette visible on the quilt just to the side of a blaze obligingly contained between the dreamer’s feet and knees. In an upper corner of each painting appears an image of the Virgin Mary that that looks as though it might have been incompetently sculpted out of marzipan.

And then you read the testimonial added in crude script in a blank strip at the bottom of the last of these panels: “Sefferino Valderrama fell asleep smoking and in his dreams there appeared to him the Virgin of Zapopan who said to him awake son because you are in danger and he woke up and saw the coverlet which was burning up and just in time to run to the kitchen for water and to quench the fire and in view of the portentous miracle he makes it known with this retablo on 25 January in the year 1943.”

These five panels are retablos, a deep tradition of Mexican folk art, paintings in thanksgiving for deliverance from danger. I don’t know how I feel about seeing them displayed as charming objects on par with the seashells and the glass bottles. Seventy years ago Sefferino saw his survival not as blind fortune but as miracle, and presumably hung this expression of gratitude in a local church in Mexico, alongside countless other testimonials like it. Whoever he was, he chose in the very act of offering this panel to unite himself to something larger than himself: to the Power that he saw as sustaining his life; to a community disposed to affirm the presence of the Holy in deliverance from danger, rather than chalk it up to dumb luck. He performed this act of devotion to inspire reverence in the viewer, not momentary arm’s-length pleasure.

And I find myself asking, what would it be like to claim the making of retablos for myself, as a way to reflect on what’s sustained and empowered my life? What are the events, who are the people, who’ve thrown me a lifeline when I’ve needed one most? Could I make these occasions of deliverance into visible material for further reflection? Could I, like Sefferino, choose thus to bear witness to the hand of God in my life? What would a gay man’s retablo look like? Where might it be displayed, and who might see it?

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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

Friday, March 9, 2012

Ex Voto

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