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.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Queer Men's Spirituality 101: A Five-Part Series

What is Queer Men's Spirituality? It's pretty simple. If you're reading this, you probably already believe that what happens in your body happens in your soul. Your sexuality and your spirit are an indivisible whole. It's about going deeper and claiming a bigger, freer, juicier life.

Tune up your inner life as a gay/bi/trans/queer man with this series of five 90-minute sessions, Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m., in midtown Toronto. Take stock of where you're at. Increase clarity about where you need to go. Build the personal practices that are right for you. Draw on your own inner resources for healing, liberation, and growth, in community with kindred spirits. All spiritual paths and traditions are equally welcome here.

January 27 Claiming Your Sacred Ground

Guided meditation, inventory exercises, and group conversation will help you clarify what brings you the deepest fulfilment and joy in life, and how you can invite more of it into your daily experience.

February 10 Building Your Sacred Space

Bring objects that are important to you for a "show and tell" session. Share ways to keep reminders of what really matters to you present in your everyday environment. Explore possibilities for creating and maintaining a simple home altar or shrine.

February 24 Creating Your Sacred Practices

Experiment with simple mindful routines that can help ground you in daily life. Learn more about how you can create well-designed, uncomplicated, authentic rituals for yourself that speak to your deep hopes and longings. Explore practies that can help you drop down out of your head into your heart-centered intuition.

March 10 Finding Spiritual Community

We aren't built to be happy in isolation. Explore the potentials and challenges of creating spiritually engaged queer men's community that supports and nourishes your soul.

March 24 Cultivating Erotic Spirituality

Share a safe, supportive exploration of what it means to integrate our spiritual longings with our erotic energies and sexual experiences. (Much of this session is clothing-optional.)

As leader and facilitator of this series, I bring decades of experience as a teacher, a gift for listening from the heart, a deep knowledge of spiritual resources drawn from many world traditions, and a passionate commitment to the integrity of gay, bi, and otherwise queer men's spiritual journeys.

Men have offered these appreciations of work I've shared with them:

"David Townsend is smart, articulate, and genuine, a terrific teacher, thinker and facilitator. Warm, with a good sense of humour, accessible and engaging, he is a sweet asset to our community."-Richard, San Francisco

"David is a gifted ritual leader. He combines his exquisite and unique artistic talents with a deep reverence for nature and a rich connection to spirit."-Michael, New York City

"David has a gift for creating potent, content-rich experiences. He had us diving right in, and doing so with joy."-Paul, Boston

"David brings together the varied strengths of artist, scholar, and teacher, all permeated with a deep queer spirituality. He has the rare ability to both immerse himself fully in an experience and reflect intelligently and articulately afterwards."-Robert, Rochester, NY

"David was excellent at keeping us balanced between head and heart; he addressed intellectual questions and challenges clearly and openly, kept things moving, and brought us deeper into our bodies and souls." Lee, New York City

Register by sending me an e-mail (anchorholder@gmail.com). I'll respond with the location of the sessions and explain how to make full payment of CN $100 for all five sessions by January 21. Pay by January 7 for a 20% discount on registration. You can also RSVP on the Meetup group Queer Men Building Spiritual Practice Together.

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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.

Anchorhold

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Queer Men's Spirituality 101: A Five-Part Series

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