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, December 26, 2019

With Every Breath

"Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern of taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating the first creation of Adam. And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe. In a way, every exhalation is a "little dying" as you pay the price of inspiriting the world. Your simple breathing models your entire vocation as a human being. Like Christ, you are an incarnation of matter and spirit operating as one.This, more than anything we believe or accomplish, is how all of us continue the mystery of incarnation in space and time--either knowingly and joyfully or not."

--from Fr. Richard Rohr's daily meditation for December 26

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Good to Meet You

Last Saturday, I was standing at one end of "The Barns," the repurposed streetcar repair sheds that in winter months house my favourite farmer's market. I'd bought three jars of homemade jam from the reserved Mennonite woman down the row and wished her and her daughter a Merry Christmas--unsure of how strict Mennonites even feel about such greetings. The handsome son of one of the organic farmers had sold me my winter vegetables for Sunday's dinner. I'd finished my cinnamon roll and coffee listening to two women in their sixties play some wicked duets on mandolin and guitar, and joked with them about the meter still running as I chucked more change into their open instrument case. I was putting on my hat and bike helmet when a total stranger came up to me and thanked me for zeroing out my carbon footprint for the day. And we exchanged names.

"It's good to meet you."

"It's good to meet you, too."

It's a banal phrase, until it isn't. Until it's filled with the joy of a genuine connection though you share nothing more with a stranger than the miracle of being alive on a planet in desperate crisis. Until it's about genuine meeting, the "I-Thou" moment in a wider web of "all our relations" that's as close to the heart of the Mystery of our lives as we ever get.

It can happen in a market. Or a church. Or with a hookup you connected with on Grindr an hour ago. Or with someone you've lived with for twenty years. Hell, it can happen with your cat on the couch. Or a dying whale on the beach. Or in a stable at the edge of Bethlehem. None of those settings makes it any more sacred, or any less.

Saturday, December 21, 2019

At the Return of the Light

Darkness doesn't last forever.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Have a Splendid Whatever

For the first eight years after my partner Jonathan and I met, Christmas was completely off the menu. No tree. No poinsettia. No evergreen boughs. The memories were too visceral for him of growing up Jewish in New York and feeling as though the whole city, beyond the safely kosher confines of the Upper West Side, was ramming the holiday down the throats of his family and neighbours.

Christmas, on the other hand, is wired into my German Lutheran DNA. During the fifteen years that I shook the dust of homophobic organized Christianity off my feet, my alienation from the faith I’d grown up in never extended to hating the season. It always felt to me like the culturally specific version of something more or less universal--the need to celebrate light in the depths of a season of darkness. During the years of that long disaffection, the Solstice Parade that snakes every year through Kensington Market in Toronto felt like a magical expression of all that that I loved in Yuletide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMkJadFOCQc

as did the Christmas sequence from Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dasm8PlD2c

Ten years ago, hell-bent on bringing some observance of the season into the house, I was the one who searched out the hand-cast glass menorah that we’ve used every year since. Jonathan hadn’t lit one at home for the four and half decades of his adult life.Six years ago, the first winter after we changed houses, I acknowledged his ongoing reservations but finally insisted on a tree. As I unwrapped the ornaments that hadn’t been out of the box for seven years and started talking about the associations each had--the heavily oxidized remnants of my grandparents’ decorations, purchased in the 1930’s; the baroque extravaganzas my mother and I assembled from craft kits when I was in high school--he got it, and within two days announced that we needed a bigger tree next time.

Since then, we’ve taken to giving each other Christmas ornaments as Hanukkah presents. Christmas Eve, I attend midnight Mass, as I’ve done since the late 1990s when I decided once again that the wisdom embedded in the spiritual traditions of my youth were my birthright, to be claimed on my own terms. Christmas morning we unwrap presents before heading off for Chinese food and a movie.

A few years back, I went to a radical faerie Solstice party. Among the guests was a gifted counter-tenor who sang an aria from Handel’s Messiah, while a loop of digital photos on the TV screen featured partially naked people cavorting in a green landscape the previous Beltane.

I know that for many queer people who’ve cut ties with the Christianity of their upbringing as a matter of survival, the season’s associations bring up far too much of what they need to leave behind. Nonetheless, here’s my invitation: hang onto the mystery of light kindled in darkness, of the spirit of generosity towards friend and stranger, of warmth in the depths of winter. Yes, toss out what doesn’t serve you. But don’t surrender what fed you as a child, and what some corner of your heart may still long for. Make it new, make it yours.

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Learning What We Already Know

I had the privilege of spending the weekend before last encouraging ten men enrolled in a mindful masturbation workshop to pay deeper attention to what they've known, on some level, all along: that we possess within ourselves enormous capacities for pleasure and fulfillment. That we have access to a deeper realm where body and soul are one--where desire can blossom into wisdom and compassion.

Why do we need to be guided deeper into the erotic treasures we already possess?

Because for decades we've been told that sex is something we "get" rather than an energy that circulates within us and between us.

Because we need a secure and welcoming space to release the inhibitions of a lifetime.

Because we need to practice acceptance and generosity toward others in order genuinely to practice it toward ourselves.

Because we need reminders to slow down and breathe, to move our bodies, to make sound, to explore subtleties of touch, in order to become conscious of what we take for granted. Because it takes years to unlearn what many if not most of us learned at the age of fifteen--a fast, silent, tense, breathless pump-and-dump.

Because we need the experience of a community to tell us, "I see you. I've got you. You're safe. You're worthy. You're irreplaceable and sacred. This is your birthright. And sharing it is sheer joy."

Photo by Andrew Graham

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.