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.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Holy and Perishable

For over six years, my altar's been falling apart.

It was a ruin when I first adopted it--a 60's-style backyard brick hearth, long disused, cracks already opening in the mortar. I swept it clean and filled it with votive candles and incense the night of Summer Solstice. My neighbours have year after year remained quietly tolerant that every morning I ring a bell and kneel in front of an eyesore fifteen feet from their kitchen window.

Every summer, I've removed objects and added others, as I do to the indoor altar that becomes the focus of my practice September through May. This year, I've included no Christian symbolism, though every day I begin by crossing myself and reciting the formulas traditional to the monastic morning prayer of Lauds. Red, white, yellow, and black stones for the four directions surround a small Shiva Lingam. Behind that sits a small, corroded bronze Indonesian Buddha, missing an arm and part of its chest--a reminder of the transience of all things, including our understanding of the Friend who makes our lives possible and gives them meaning.

Tibetan Buddhist monks proclaim this lesson of transience by spending weeks constructing mandalas of coloured sand--which they then sweep back into chaos and pour into moving water.

The collapse of my repurposed shrine continues. Yesterday morning as I knelt, a cluster of bricks had skewed loose from the wall, wobbling under my touch. They're going nowhere for the moment, but the frosts and thaws of the coming winter will take their toll. The floor of the main chamber is already one course shorter than when I first consecrated it. The lower chamber, once the firepit, holds a compost of undisturbed garden detritus dedicated to the Goddess's endless cycle of generation, decay, and rebirth. Eventually, everything above that I've prayed over and venerated will collapse into it.

When it does, I will take it as an invitation to give thanks for the lesson and to look for the Sacred in another corner of the garden.

1 comment:

FrankSeptember 2, 2014 at 11:01 PM
A beautiful meditation on transience. We could not know the Friend whom we approach at the altar were it not that the Friend outlasts the altars we erect, could we? You inspire me to revisit the objects I have on my own altar. And more than that, the idols --forgive the loaded term--I cling to in my ego, symbols that somehow want to supplant the Friend's Presence until the Presence is absence indeed.
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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.