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, June 25, 2016

The Gift of a Sign

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Slow Burn

Nearly a week after the mass murder of forty-nine mostly queer, mostly brown people, and the critical injury of dozens more, I still feel numb. I need to go on parsing apart my dissociated reaction, but meanwhile, what cuts through my denial is seeing the faces of the men and women who went to Pulse wanting a night of ordinary, God-given human happiness, but whose precious and irreplaceable lives ended there.

Here’s what I’m not numb to: the spineless cowardice of the U.S. Congress in its endless deference to the gun lobby. In particular, the hypocrisy of Republicans who care more for the score of their morally shabby, backward-looking party than they do for the future of civil society and the viability of constitutional government. The desire of of xenophobes once again to lay blame on Muslims and on Islam, instead of acknowledging that the corrosive rage of deeply damaged men and contempt for sexual minorities run through American society like a cancer. And chief among them, the entitled, narcissistic buffoon who will almost certainly be named the Republican candidate for president. The refusal to acknowledge that virulent hatred and incitement to violence are in this country more often associated with right-wing Christian preachers like Baptist ministers Roger Jimenez in Sacramento, California and Steven Anderson in Tempe, Arizona, to mention only two.

For years, we’ve been marching in Pride parades more in celebration than in protest or defiance. This year, walking with queer brothers and sisters will, for many, be once again an act of courage and witness. And in the assertion, "We are Orlando," a testimony that love is stronger than death.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Other People's Gardens

Peony, poppy, bearded iris, Siberian iris, poppy, peony, peony, lilac, bearded iris, lilac.

One of the daily gifts of the short bicycle commute to my office is watching other people’s gardens burst into flowers I can’t grow in my own. Amazingly, I get to live in a place where one tiny front garden borders on the next, and it’s easy to see them not as my garden, his garden, her garden, their garden, but as the garden--the “one great garden which/ is always here” so movingly celebrated in Thom Gunn’s elegy for his aunt, “Breaking Ground.” I find myself not caring much that I can’t grow myself what somebody else has grown for all of us. And glad for the things I grow for them. Gratitude for what I receive, beyond anything I might have asked or imagined, flows into generosity flows into gratitude. You can't garden in spaces like these without having at least some awareness that you're planting and weeding and watering for other people, just as they're planting and weeding and watering for you. After a while, the very distinction between giving and receiving starts to break down in this non-zero-sum game.

(Photos offered by Hoppergrass.)

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.