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.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Still Point

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Guest Post: The Lingam Puja, Dear Love Edition – July 2015

Continuing the focus of some of my recent posts on the practice of Lingam Puja as a meditative ritual honoring the sacred dimension of queer men's desire and sexuality, here is a reflection by Br. Bob on his experience of leading the Puja as a daily practice for a week this July just past. Br. Bob is a full-time minister who has explored the embodiment of spirituality for the last several years through various workshops that he's attended and at which he's assisted. What he shares below bears vivid witness that authentic ritual grows from the roots up out of the practice of a community that takes ownership of the form.

This summer I had the opportunity to assist at a week-long workshop at Easton Mountain in upstate New York: Dear Love of Comrades, which is the first-level intensive offered by the Body Electric School. Each morning, the men attending the workshop were required to choose among several meditative movement practices, which included a yoga class and a meditative hike. I had experienced the Lingam Puja meditation practice offered by David Townsend two summers ago at another Body Electric week-long intensive. I had found it then to be a good meditative practice to begin my day, so I wanted to offer it for this new group of men.

I contacted David and asked for the ritual format, which he graciously shared with me, and set about assembling the necessary supplies before I left for the workshop. It was interesting for me to learn where I could find camphor to use as incense for the ritual, as well as a few of the other items. I was excited I could bring into the ritual the singing bowl I’d acquired a few months ago and that is part of my daily personal morning practices.

Arriving the day before the workshop, I found the area around the large carved and charred wooden phallus overgrown with weeds and wild flowers. David had told me about his experience of walking on the weeds when he created the space two years ago, and how it had been a meditative process unto itself for him. So, that Sunday afternoon in the high heat and humidity, I started doing the same thing, walking clockwise in ever-growing circles to flatten out the vegetation so others would perceive it as a ritual space. In short order the meditation circle began to be as evident as my sweat-soaked clothing! Finally, I decided it was time for me to get relief and go cool off in the outdoor pool to relax.

The next day, I enlisted the help of another man who would be a participant in the workshop. We used collapsed cardboard boxes to flatten the circle better and make the space even more welcoming. Being someone whose vocation involves celebrating rituals and leading others in them, I still felt some apprehension about how participants would receive this new-to-them ritual, and how I would feel in leading it.

The next day, I awoke early before my alarm, showered, and trekked out to the remote area where the Lingam Puja circle was located to set the remaining ritual pieces in place: a sarong to decorate the lingam; small citronella garden candles for the perimeter of the circle to provide a sense of the holy – but also to help ward off the insects. I lit the candle near the lingam; chimed my singing bowl; lit a few pieces of camphor to incense the area; and set up three small vases to receive the flower offerings of the brothers who would gather.

Then I went to greet the brothers who would participate, and in silence we walked out to the Lingam Puja circle as they gathered a wildflower or two to make their offering. I welcomed them formally one by one into the circle and made a bindi on their foreheads using ritual powder obtained from an Indian grocery store near my home, where I also found the camphor. Then after being welcomed, they placed their flowers in the vases on the stump altar next to the lingam and chimed the singing bowl.

Then after an opening prayer, we took turns stating our intention for the day and having that intention bound to us by tying a red thread on our wrist. Following that, we silently walked clockwise at our own pace around the lingam until it was time to close the ritual. As we walked in meditation, men would reverence or embrace the lingam, light more camphor incense, or perform some other action meaningful to them. Once I chimed the end of our meditation time by ringing the singing bowl, we gathered arm-in-arm around the lingam and chanted Om three times to formally close the meditation and then offered each other a morning embrace.

I found that the challenge of leading the ritual and keeping track of time initially distracted me. But as the week progressed, I became more at home with it. My apprehensions decreased, and I felt more in union with the rhythm of it. I also found-- surprisingly, for I am NOT a morning person--that I would awake every day without my alarm and look forward to my solitary personal time when I would re-set the ritual space for that morning’s practice. I loved the peacefulness and connection with nature that it afforded me before I had to “be on” in exercising my leadership of the group’s practice. And I was challenged the one day when rain threatened and a brisk breeze made keeping the altar candle lit almost impossible!

I was also moved each day by the group’s practice - how different men would experience emotional connections in themselves and with the earth and with spirit through this simple yet profound action. It reminded me so much how our capacity and commitment to be “present” – fully focused and intent on an action – allows us to be connected to and become conduits of spirit. This then allows us to connect with spirit in others and in creation itself. This basic truth is something that I learn and experience and witness over and over again. It reminds me that I am always a student and learning all the time. No matter how regularly I engage in spiritual rituals or practices, there is always something new for me to be open to experiencing. I simply need to surrender to the spirit’s invitation and trust it will reveal what I need to do, if anything.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

On a California Mountaintop

A Lingam Puja at Body's Electric's Erotic Temple retreat, Wildwood, Guerneville.

Photo by Arnie Katz

Monday, August 10, 2015

Mark Doty: Homo Will Not Inherit

Here is one of our finest and most gifted gay poets, as he describes flesh ablaze with Spirit...

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173403

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.