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, October 30, 2024

Richard Rohr: A Loving Voice

One holy man who came to visit me recently put it this way, "We must listen to what is supporting us. We must listen to what is encouraging us. We must listen to what is urging us. We must listen to what is alive in us." I personally was so trained not to trust those voices that I think I often did not hear the voice of God speaking to me or what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature." Yes, a narcissistic person can and will misuse such advice, but a genuine God lover will flourish inside such a dialogue.

We must learn how to recognize the positive flow and to distinguish it from the negative resistance within ourselves. It can take years, if not a lifetime. If a voice comes from accusation and leads to accusation, it is quite simply the voice of the "Accuser," which is the literal meaning of the biblical word "Satan." Shaming, accusing, or blaming is simply not how God talks, but sadly, it is too often how we talk--to ourselves and to one another. God is supremely nonviolent; I've heard that from the saints and mystics that I have read and met and heard about. That many holy people cannot be wrong.

Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York, Convergent, 2019, 2021), pp. 88-89. Adapted in the Center for Action and Contemplation's daily meditation, October 21, 2024.

Monday, October 14, 2024

Two Days of Embodied Joy

Twenty-two years ago, a Body Electric workshop changed my life for good.

One spring weekend in 2002, "Celebrating the Body Erotic" worked its indelible magic on my body, heart, and soul. Twenty-two men met one another as nervous strangers at 8:45 on Saturday morning. By 7 Sunday night, we were a band united and transformed in "the dear love of comrades," as Walt Whitman might well have put it.

I learned to breathe as though making friends with my lungs for the first time. I leaned to touch myself with a level of pleasure and unashamed abandon that I wish had been available to me--as it should have been--at my adolescent awakening over thirty years earlier. I learned to share those gifts with the men with whom I'd embarked on this two-day adventure. With astonishing speed and ease, we built for each other a space of safety and unconditional acceptance, where we could all flourish. We reached out to each other with delight and respect. I experienced, with a shattering intensity, the presence of the Sacred in my own body, and in the bodies of the other men who bared their souls and flesh. It left me weeping tears of joy, at the oddest and most upredictable moments, for weeks afterwards.

For forty years, the Body Electric School has offered a precious, life-giving vessel of deep erotic wisdom, a source of healing and growth, self-discovery and community. Its mission began amidst the physical, psychological, and spiritual trauma of the AIDS crisis. In the mid-1980's, founder Joseph Kramer extended a lifeline to men struggling to affirm the wholeness of their erotic selves in the face of that threat. Over the years, its programming has widened in scope to include workshops open to multiple genders and orientations--while continuing to offer single-gender workshops that provide safe space for men who need to do the work of erotic, emotional, and spiritual self-realization with one another.

The School's centre of gravity has always been in the US, and its presence in Canada limited by comparison. Celebrating the Body Erotic was last offered in Toronto in 2016. Happily, it will return there this fall, the weekend of November 22-24.

If you've never experienced the work of Body Electric, or if you're ready to return, and if you live within traveling distance, you couldn't spend a weekend in better service to your one wild and precious life.

Sunday, October 13, 2024

Our Only Holiness

Photograph by Andrew Graham

"Our only holiness is by participation and surrender to the Body of Love, and not by any private performance."

--Richard Rohr

Saturday, October 5, 2024

The Moon Sings to the Stream

Philip Gladstone, "The Twenty"

I am the unity on high,

I am the multiple in the pond.

looking up to me from the stream

my image, my double.

I am the truth on high,

I am the fabrication in the pond

looking up to me from the stream

my image, in its fated deception.

Above--I am enwrapped in silence,

whispering, singing, in the pond.

On high I am divine,

in the stream, I am the prayer.

--Leah Goldberg (1911-1970)

Thursday, October 3, 2024

5785

LISTEN!

What do you hear?

A wake-up call at dawn?

An animal in pain?

An air-raid siren?

The cry of an injured child?

The wail of a mourner?

The sound of the world being born?

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.