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, March 26, 2016

each change a small death
a present resurrection
every gift received

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Weaving Together: The Stonesong Retreat

Gathering, Workshop, Retreat: they’re all labels for temporary communities gay and bi men form in search of bigger life and deeper connection. Each raises its own expectations. Advance planning from the top down, or a container held open for the community to fill spontaneously. More focus on spirituality or less. A one-off event, or a reunion of men who gather repeatedly and build up a web of continuing connections over time.

We gravitate toward the sorts of events we’ve learned from experience suit us best. Or else, we glean the full range of what feeds our hearts and souls by moving between communities. Maybe you need five days of silent meditation, and a week with faeries in the wilderness.

Speaking for myself, I want a strong sense of encounter with the Sacred. I want celebration of our spiritual paths in their mutually enriching diversity. I want reverence for the Earth and acknowledgement that we’re a part of its greater and holy life. I want rituals, both individual and communal, that rise up organically from the shared experience of those present, rituals that help us access parts of ourselves and one another that ordinary business-as-usual words and behavior can’t get at. I want heartfelt intentional communication and equally deep listening. I want freedom and safety to play and experiment with joyous abandon in the presence of others.

Those are the values I’ve brought to my conversations with Frank Dunn, an Episcopal priest and director of the DC-based men’s consciousness-raising group Jonathan’s Circle, as we’ve planned The Stonesong Retreat, four days in the company of kindred spirits in the verdant countryside of western Maryland, 18-21 August.

I invite you to ask yourself these questions: what happens in sacred space where you’re safe to come forward and give voice to the deepest longings of your body, mind, and soul? What would a community of brothers look like who commit to holding that space for each other? What spiritual practice might you be called to create for yourself as an expression of the fullness of life within you? What rituals would you build together to integrate the spiritual and erotic joys, sorrows, aspirations, and hopes of all?

If those questions call to you, then I invite you to please consider joining us. You can access more information on the retreat and registration here.

The time at Stonesong Awareness and Nature Centre will offer a short, sweet taste of what it’s like to live mindfully with spiritually and erotically alive men who have faith that what we discover together will be bigger and richer than what we can build on our own.

We’ll build a sacred community.

We’ll explore the place our human erotic lives hold in the greater life of Nature.

We’ll create personal and communal ritual.

We’ll share in heart circles.

We’ll celebrate as faeries, tricksters, and bards.

We’ll exchange our stories.

We’ll allow ourselves and one another times of simple unstructured relaxation.

In all this, we’ll weave the connections that expand the possibilties of our lives.

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.