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.

Creating a Personal Altar

Few things can ground self-awareness of your inner life like setting aside sacred space in your home–or in nature. If you haven’t done it before, experiment with creating a personal altar that represents your deepest values and aspirations and gives tangible form to your image of the Divine.

If you grew up in a tradition where household altars are mainstream practice (like Latin American Catholicism), creating an altar may come naturally; or it may be shot through with associations you need to get away from. If you grew up in a tradition where no one did such a thing, the novelty may appeal; or its foreignness may feel like a stumbling block. Don’t get unhelpfully tangled in prior associations. There’s no need to call what you’re building “an altar,” if you can find another word that works better for you.

Choose its location carefully. If you can’t see it in the course of your ordinary routine, it can’t call to you. But if it isn’t somehow set off from ordinary space, approaching it can’t feel like you’re answering its call. Maybe you have an alcove in the corner of the bedroom big enough for a low table. You might clear the practical objects off an eye-level shelf in the kitchen. Maybe there’s an unused fire escape just outside your living room window. Where you choose to set it up establishes a powerful center of gravity for your practice.

Include the objects that represent most intuitively what’s important in your life. Think of this practice as a kind of spiritual collage. Start by looking around you for what’s already rich with personal association: photographs of lovers, friends, family, pets. A smooth stone from your favorite beach. A matchbook from the bar where you met your first boyfriend. The prayer shawl you haven’t worn since your bar mitzvah. Once you’ve grounded yourself with objects close to home, go out and buy something fabulous to accessorize.

Presentation is everything. The way you arrange what you bring to your altar speaks volumes about what’s central in your life, and about how these objects relate to each other. Make a statement-maybe to others, but first and foremost, to yourself.

Show it ongoing reverence. A sacred space that isn’t treated with due respect doesn’t stay sacred forever on its own. You need to approach it daily with a sign of respect–one as simple as a bow when you get up in the morning; or something much more elaborate. Start simply and briefly. You heart will tell you when it’s time to experiment with adding something new. If your altar gets dusty, you know you’re in trouble.

Pay attention to what you can learn from it about yourself. Listen to your life. What you’ve brought to your altar may reveal something that you didn’t know before. Maybe you’ll feel called to add objects. Maybe you’ll take objects away. Maybe you’ll feel a sudden impulse one morning to rearrange what’s there. If you do, ask yourself why. Use these impulses to take inventory of your soul.

Don’t abandon it carelessly. Take responsibility that you’ve made the Sacred visible. If you can no longer tend it, then take it apart with as much reverence as went into putting it 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.