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.

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Present

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Not So Complicated

Yesterday I was cranky, even by my base-line standard--which, I hate to admit, I usually reserve for those closest to me.

The night before last, the neighbours’ dude-bro guests woke me at 4:30 a.m. with a loud, drunken outdoor conversation and refused to quiet down when asked. A week sharing our small house with our own three guests had left me feeling cramped and unheard by my partner over a petty domestic disagreement. When we finally had the place to ourselves last night, we bickered over how to make the potato salad (for fuck’s sake), then over what to watch on TV later in the evening.

I woke up late this morning to make up for the dude-bros, dozed some more, finally rolled out of bed, and went to the front door to let the cat in from her morning excursion. Jonathan sat just inside at the dinner table, absorbed in e-mail.

“It’s a gorgeous morning,” I said as I walked out onto the front stoop. “And here’s a gorgeous man sitting at the table. Wearing gorgeous glasses. And a gorgeous matching blue sweatshirt.”

I’d thrown the words off lightly, playfully, without any especially deep feeling. Not expecting them necessarily to land.

But they did. Jonathan's face lit up, as it hadn't in days, with the pleasure of being seen and appreciated. That's all it took. Seeing him being seen, I felt seen in return. Yesterday's strains dropped away, and there we were in the moment, together, living on this earth.

Friday, August 18, 2017

Homage in High Summer

It began its life as a tree rooted in our Mother the earth. It has passed through fire. It's rooted in the earth once again. It rises into air. It's washed by the rains. By a thousand daily transformations, it gradually passes back into the earth once more. A sign of life's longing for itself; a reminder of our mortality.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Waiting on the Perseids

This last Saturday night, I was standing next to a bonfire with a band of brothers at StoneSong Retreat Centre in western Maryland, on the final evening of four sweet days of intentional community. My heart was full. The hearts of many of us were overflowing. After a spectacular afternoon thunderstorm that left most of us happily drenched, the sky had cleared, the stars were out. Our time around the fire was punctuated with one or another of us calling out, “There’s one!”

It was one of the peak nights of the Perseid meteor shower. The best viewing would have been just before dawn Saturday, but even if any of us had gotten up that early, there’d been cloud cover all through Friday night and most of the day leading up to the rain.

But you don’t get to order shooting stars on demand. You can’t control the conditions under which you wait for them. You can make yourself available. And that’s about it. Even when the conditions are right, you just have to let go and accept that wherever you focus your attention, you're probably watching the wrong bit of sky. You’re most likely to glimpse the streak of light only out of the corner of your eye. You may have companions to bear witness that they’ve seen it, too. Or you may have to trust, after that brief flash, that it really was there, if only for you.

What you can do is decide that the shooting star is worth waiting for, being idle for. You learn to separate hope and faith from expectation. The more often you’ve seen one, the stronger your inclination becomes to wait patiently for the next.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

(Reblogged from fuckyeahmaryoliver.tumblr.com)

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.