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.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

A Meditation on Sacred Intimacy: A Guest Post from Rob Corbett

I'm deeply honored that playwright, performer, and teacher Rob Corbett offers this reflection on his experience of sessions we shared this spring.

Sacred Intimacy with David

Terra turns

The second shoe drops

The turned cheek is struck

It is hard

Lost

Fear, insecurity, confusion – I reach

yes

gentle and strong is your yes

Yes

YES come

On your altar

naked

bound

afraid

synapses spark through the dark

dragged willingly

waste of time

breath

useless

breath

imposition

breath

forget

breath

get on with

Breath

inhale - hold - release

Your fingers on my heart

Breath

My belly

Breath

My cock

Breath

My self

Breath

inhale - hold - release

To the edge of now

To the brink of here

A thrust

To trust

To is

To present

To my

I come

I belong

I am

I can

I come

The yes that was always mine

That is

I come for your wisdom--you bring me to my own

The sphinxes follow

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Keith Haring (American, 1958-1990). Untitled, plaster phallus sculpture with paint and ink. 15.5 in.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Procession

The drumming starts on the wide front porch of the lodge at the retreat centre. The heat’s abated since earlier in the week. It’s warm but not oppressive as the couple, heads crowned in leaves, lead off down the steps into a wide circuit around the compound’s central green. We gather up more men as we process around it and then head up the hill. Trees overhang the path, and the steep slope to our left is covered in ferns.

I look ahead and behind me at forty or fifty of us on our way to the handfasting. We’re here for the two men who’ve invited us to celebrate with them, on the last afternoon of a week-long northern California gathering. But the gift they’re giving us all is inestimable.

Celebrating with them, we’re also taking part in something that almost none of us, for a good chunk of our lives, could have imagined might ever be possible.

Somehow, we all made it.

In creating this ceremony for themselves, these two open-hearted souls have offered us all a living experience of a world where we’re fully at home. I look over my shoulder here not to make sure it’s safe, but to take in the sight of comrades behind me streaming up the hill.

We reach a circle of laurel branches and vine leaves in the shadow of a live oak. Mulitcolored fabrics hang from the branches. A line of prayer flags flutters. Behind it stands the officiant, wearing stag antlers and holding a staff. With it he casts a circle around us all. Four others take their places bearing the gifts of the cardinal directions.

One by one, he lays six cords across the grooms’ clasped hands, each a different colour, each representing an aspect of the bond they share and the pledges they make to one another. A bell rings to mark every pronouncement.

It’s a wedding, after all, so some of us cry. In joy for these two men, but some of the tears also fall in joy for us all.

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.