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 25, 2019

The Longings of Our Hearts, Made Visible

On the altar, a token of what each one of us brought into five sweet days of community.

Sacred because together we chose to make it so.

Photos by David Mayes

Dedicated to the brothers of StoneSong 2019

Monday, July 22, 2019

At Play in the Temple

Photos by Hoppergrass and David Mayes

Friday, July 19, 2019

Reverence at Midsummer

Photo by Hoppergrass

Dedicated to the beautiful souls gathered at StoneSong, July 2019

Friday, July 5, 2019

Rootedness, Grace, and the Taproot Between Your Legs

When you look at a tree at the edge of the forest, you're only seeing half of it.

The truth of its life lies in its rootedness. The unseen, sustaining depth of its life is out of sight--in the tangle beneath the surface, where it's intertwined with everything that grows around it. It lives in a web of connection that you probably won't notice if you don't imagine your way, like a burrowing animal, down into the soil.

As with trees, so with us. We focus on what's happening above ground level. We fall easily into believing that we're separate from each other, that each of us sustains his own life, more or less in isolation. Although we go on drawing our sustenance from the common ground where our lives intertwine, we don't pay much attention, or any at all, to the mystery of our interconnectedness.

Our natural state is gratitude, because gratitude is an awareness that our life comes to us from outside. Our life flows into our root systems from the soil that sustains us, and from the roots of those around us. Without our rootedness in common ground, we have no life. When we forget this, we misrecognize our life and cut our awareness off from our true Source. We're alive not because of what we take for ourselves, but because of what comes to us as Gift.

True gratitude goes hand in hand with generosity, because if our life flows into us from outside, it flows through us, and out of us again into those around us.

If we choose, we can cultivate our erotic energy to live more deeply into our interconnectedness--as a way to drop down into the realm where our lives depend mutually on each other, and on the wider life of all Nature. We can join not only with each other, but with the web of Creation around us. We can choose to practice erotic gratitude, and erotic generosity.

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.