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.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Sex is a Finger Pointing at the Moon

The deeper you dive into the Left-Handed Path of desire, the more you run up against this inevitable truth: your monkey mind thinks it's about fulfilment, but it's not.

A well-known koan runs, Zen is the finger pointing at the moon. And the non-answer to the riddle is, "Don't look at the finger. Look at the Moon, stupid."

Don't get hung up on Zen teaching. Don't get hung up on perfecting your meditation practice. Don't get hung up even on the quest for enlightenment.

If we take desire a teacher, the stakes are high. We're pretty nearly hard-wired to imagine that the perfect fulfilment of the fantasy, the perfect connection with the perfect partner, the perfect orgasm, is what will bring us completion.

In other words, we're almost inevitably inclined to "chase the dragon," hoping for the perfect high.

If only the masseur's touch were a little firmer. Or a little lighter. If only the guy I just started dating were five years younger. Or older. If only he were more my type.

If only my abs were a little tighter. If only I could still keep it up like I did when I was twenty-five.

If only I'd come out six years earlier. Or twenty years earlier. Or fifty years earlier.

If only the surgery hadn't put an end to my ability to ejaculate. Or to my partner's sex drive.

If only I weren't actually living my life as it is, here and now, in this present moment.

When we keep staring at the finger, we miss the Moon. We miss the lightning flash of unexpected experience. We miss the magic of what we never bargained on, of what's more than we could have asked or imagined.

Your fantasies, your memories, your expectations, they're all a finger. You need them to point the way. But look at the Moon.

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Midsummer Reverence

Monday, July 26, 2021

Midsummer Reverence

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Midsummer Reverence

Friday, July 23, 2021

Midsummer Reverence

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Midsummer Reverence

If you keep an altar and are willing to share it here, send me a photo and I'll post it.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Icarus: A Reverie

We sit on the slope above the field where we go on warm, windy spring afternoons. We watch one bright purple kite fly higher than the rest. As it dives, the practiced hand of the young man holding the string lets it play out till it catches the updraft again and shoots higher. His son shouts in delight.

I turn to my daddy and we lock eyes. "You really want it, don't you?" he smiles. I just nod slowly, and we head back home.

Thirty minutes later, I'm leaning against the diamond-shaped plywood frame with its thin mattress. He's putting the restraints on my ankles, stretching one of my arms out to the side to tie it down, then the other. He unfastens the base of the diamond from the shackle that secures it to floor and hauls up on the pulley. I'm swinging in the air now. He puts one hand on my chest, gazes into my eyes, and rocks me for a few seconds from side to side.

The soft cord goes in a slipknot around my cock and balls. He wraps the other end around his forearm. His fingertips graze the underside of my erection, and I shudder. He flicks the tip of his tongue over my frenulum, and I moan.

This will go on for hours. By the time he lets me down again, I wil barely remember my own name. I'll have only a few words left, but they'll be all I need.

"Please, daddy."

"Thank you."

"Higher, daddy. Make me go higher."

"I need this so bad."

"Please let me be your fucktoy."

He tugs gently on the cord around my junk, and I sway tilted, suspended three feet off the floor.

He oils his hand and strokes the length of me, twisting so his palm rotates, gloriously and excruciatingly, over my glans. The middle finger of his other hand presses against my perineum and begins to burrow gentlly towards my pulsing hole.

He, too, will only need a few words.

"Take another deep breath for me."

"Take it in. I know you're close, but you can hold on."

"We're going to go a little higher now."

"That's my sweet boy."

"I know how full you are, but it's not time yet."

If I begin to hyperventilate: "It's OK, I've got you."

Everything will disappear but the feel of his hands and mouth. His eyes. His voice. The sight of his own erection, unreachable though just inches from my hand. The pleasure spreading from my bound, oiled cock through my whole body. Before it's over, I will forget that I am anything other than my daddy's fucktoy. I will not want to be anything, ever again, but my Daddy's fucktoy.

At last, when I've pleaded for an eternity, he will make me cum. He will bend down to taste it and then share it with me in a kiss. He will adjust the pulleys so that I'm floating horizontal, slather the rest of my semen onto his own perfect phallus, and ejaculate into my grateful open mouth.

Until then, I will look down from the sky to see Daddy expertly playing the connection between us, tethering me safely to earth as I strain towards heaven.

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.