Your Inner Temple: Deepening Male Self-Pleasure

 "Self-pleasuring is the foundation of our potential to love and be loved.... Whether we are aware of it or not, whenever we play with ourselves genitally, we are worshipping the divine."

--Barnaby Barratt, Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom

I'm delighted at the prospect of co-facilitating an intimate residential workshop with Pono Stewart, at his beautiful Skyclad Retreat Centre north of Victoria BC, August 16-19. 

In a safe, confidential space of mindful mutual consent, limited to nine registrants, we’ll explore the wonders of self-pleasure and create rituals to celebrate the unity of body and spirit. If you’re a cis-gendered man who wants your experience of masturbation to be bigger and more meaningful than just physical release, this four-day journey into deeper self-awareness is for you.

Let go of inhibition in a safe and welcoming space. Trust-building exercises will establish a strong, secure container for our experience. Sharing circles, solo and paired exercises, guided meditations, and instructions in technique will open doors into a deeper realm where body and soul are one--where desire and curiosity can blossom into wisdom and compassion.

Rejoicing in the expansive pleasure we're capable of generating within ourselves is our foundational, universal birthright. It transcends divisions of age, religion, sexual orientation, cultural and ethnic origins. 

For a full description of the workshop, follow this link.

Photo by Andrew Graham

At the Full Moon

 

Pledge; Token; Warrant; Assurance; Keepsake; Proof

The other morning, I stood admiring the rug at the foot of the bed.

Its tight, even weave; the rich colors. The thought of the days or weeks of labor that went into its creation, by whatever artisan produced it before our friend G bought it. Then, the memory of where it hung on the wall of his stairwell, before he passed it on to us--along with some wonderful ceramics, when he was emptying the house he'd lovingly repaired, remodelled, and maintained with his own hands over the forty years he owned it.

It was his garden that mattered most to me. I spent a ridiculous amount having a hinoki cypress from his back courtyard transplanted. What an absurdity: I could have bought one directly from the nursery for less. And it was the best money I ever spent.

As a teenager and into my early adulthood, I endured impatiently my mother's rehearsals of the stories behind some of the objects in her house. The memories that went with them weren't my memories. Her increasingly persistent efforts to instill them into me sparked a sometimes poorly suppressed annoyance.  I came to think of these occasions as the Litany of the China Cabinet. Now I understand better what was at stake for her. She was the custodian of other people's lives. Passing on the story of who had owned what meant keeping the dead among us. And with it, a reassurance that her own memory would endure. 

When she died, I carted far more out of her house than I needed to hang onto. I realized soon enough that I had no use for the poster bed that had belonged to her aunt--whom I also knew and adored in my teens. The pegs in the sidepieces are set up for stringing ropes to support a featherbed. The frame is an inch too short for a modern double mattress. Over twenty years later, it's still the albatross around my neck--or rather, the obstacle at the side of the furnace room. What I prize most: the hickory cutting board from my grandmother's kitchen, marked by fifty years of scorching and sharp knives. What I regret most: that none of the cowslips from my mother's garden now grow in mine. By oral tradition, they were descended from ones carried by her grandparents from Stuttgart to Indiana in 1871.

As I approach the age of 70, the question is on the horizon--where does all this stuff go next? Not to a next generation by blood. Perhaps, in some few cases, to younger friends who will remember these things not because of their extended provenance, but principally because they came from me. 

When one of my undergraduate professors retired--a "confirmed bachelor" who took me under his wing in his last years of teaching--he gifted me his Greek dictionary. At my own retirement, I passed it on to one of my students. And was overjoyed when another student picked out about a hundred books fom my office library just before she packed up to move to her first full-time teaching job.

In many cultures, the history of objects is as important as the genealogy of families--histories that sometimes strengthen lines of blood relations, but sometimes cut across them to map out the web of other, equally important bonds. We've lost much of that in capiitalist society, with its commodification of nearly everything. Once, there was your grandfather's writing desk. Now, there is IKEA. 

The love of objects isn't necessarily symptomatic of greed. Sometimes, it's born of the sense that they're infused with human memory and a thick texture of relationship. They become an extension of who we are, and a tangible sign of our connection to others. Their meaning needs to keep circulating. A gift economy isn't about acquiring and relinquishing stuff. It's about the value and the bonds that are created by the act of exchange itself.

Latin has a flexible word, pignus, that sums all this up. It can mean a pledge, or a token, or an assurance, or a keepsake, or a proof. In the usage of the medieval Christian church, it came to refer to the relics of the saints. The Veil of the Virgin Mary at Chartres Cathedral (which miraculously survived a fire in 1194). The Crown of Thorns at Nôtre Dame in Paris (which survived the fire of 2019). The Shroud of Turin. Or if you will: the shawl given to Harriet Tubman by Queen Victoria, now in the African American Museum in Washington, DC, along with Nat Turner's Bible. The shamanic staff that has passed down through a lineage of mentors and apprentices. The ancestral photographs on a Mexican family ofrenda. The beads that some random beautiful boy put around your neck in the middle of Mardi Gras, when you were everything in the world to each other for three minutes, before the crowd moved on.

The Wild God

Wild, a God dwells between our legs.

Like the Sun He rises and sets 

and rises again.

Like the Moon He grows full and wanes 

and grows full once more.

Lke the Oak in the Earth He is rooted deep within us.

Like the Oak His crown rises toward Heaven.

Like the Stag in the forest He leaps for joy and slumbers

and leaps again.

Like the River He bursts the banks.

Like the River He floods the Earth with Life.

Like the River He cannot be tamed.

At the center of the boundless temple the altar is everywhere:

Between the legs of every man.

He is the Wild God between your legs.

He is the Wild God between my legs.

He is the Wild God between our legs.

He is the Wild God who says to the Beloved,

Come away for the rains are over and past.

He is the Wild God who says,

Take and eat, take and drink.

Who says,

Become Me.

Who says,

Become what you are, become the Wild God.

Who says, 

Set Me as a seal upon your heart.

Who says,

I am the Exposed Tip of your Heart.

Who says,

I am the One who knocks and I am the Key. Open the door.

Who says,

I will transform this daylight world into the Kingdom of Moonlight.

Who says,

Set me before you as a Ladder to Heaven.

Who says,

I am the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel.

Who says,

I am the Destroyer of Illusion.

Who says,

My rod and staff will comfort you.

Who says,

I shall scatter all the Demons of Shame.

Who says, 

I am He who overcomes duality.

Who says,

I am He who teaches you that you are Not One and Not Two.

Who says, 

I am the Bridge between you.

Who says, 

Because I am in you from within you flow springs of Living Water.

Who says,

I am He who teaches you that what arises also passes away.

Who says,

I was with you from the beginning.

Who says, 

I will be with you to the end and beyond the end.

Who says,

I am the Source.

Who says, 

You are the Flowing.

Who says,

You are the bearers of Life's Longing for Itself.

Who says to the Beloved,

We are the Destination.

OM NAMA SHIVAYA 

CERNUNNOS 

SACRED COCK OF JESUS 

PRIAPUS 

PAN 

NAMA OM

Photos by Andrew Graham

Guilty as Sin

Kudos to Chris Housman

 

The Night of the Arrest

  “A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.”

            --Mark 14:51

You’ve seen him here late at night all week. He’s come up the rambles between the trees to this knoll at the top of the garden. You thought he was looking for sex when he first showed up on Sunday night, but he didn’t prowl like most of the men who linger until they’re sure it’s safe and then offer to buy you for the night, or an hour, or just a quick fuck behind the biggest, oldest olive tree. Or else keep on looking for another man as hungry for sex as they are. 

He just leaned against what’s left of the stone hut that belonged to the gardener in the old days. Aware of what was going on around him. Not horny and panicked at his own desire and the danger of the place, like most newcomers. At peace, saying yes to it all, but wanting none of it for himself. 

You wear just a linen sheet wrapped around your waist when you’re up here working the hill.

Tonight he’s back with two friends, who for hours startled at the sound of every pebble that shifted underfoot as men cruised the paths. You saw more sadness than fright in his face, until he finally went off alone to the side of the garden, kneeling as he wept. You waved a john away, wondering if you should go to him. Now his friends have dozed off.

Another john comes up, and you’ve got to make enough to eat tomorrow. But then the man turns, and your eyes lock. The john glares, shrugs, and walks off.

Without thinking, you get up and walk over to him. He’s still weeping as he reaches out to you, but by the time his arms are around you, you realize the comfort he’s offering is beyond anything you can give back. For the next five minutes, you exchange no words, only sobs, until the two of you fall into a slow, steady rhythm, rocking back and forth, your breath matched to each other's. His hand burrows under your dreadlocks to stroke the back of your neck.

Down the hill, you hear the scuffle of men scattering, as they do whenever the police barrel through. You pull back in alarm. He smiles and says, “It’s O.K. Go, get out of here.”

As you pitch down the hill, a cop grabs for you, but you leave the sheet behind, clutched in his hand, as you run on to safety.

Mark's Secret, Once Again

"And they come into Bethany. And a certain woman whose brother had died was there. And, coming, she prostrated herself before Jesus and said to him, "Son of David, have mercy on me." But the disciples rebuked her. And Jesus, being angered, went off with her into the garden where the tomb was, and straightway a great cry was heard from the tomb. And going near Jesus rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb. And straightway, going in where the youth was, he stretched forth his hand and raised him, seizing his hand. But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he returned to the other side of the Jordan."

In 1958, Morton Smith, a scholar of ancient history at Columbia University, discovered the Greek version of that passage, copied in an eighteenth-century hand, while exploring a monastery library east of Jerusalem. It's part of an incomplete letter by an early bishop of Alexandria that doesn't otherwise survive. The letter says that an augmented version of the Gospel of Mark including those lines was circulating in some second-century communities.

Unless the letter was Morton Smith's own forgery. Or an eighteenth-century forgery. Or a copy of a fifth-century forgery. Or anything else that could save modern scholars from taking it seriously as additional verses from an authentic alternative version of the Gospel of Mark. There's no dogfight more endless than a New Testament scholars' dogfight. 

An article in the April 2024 issue of The Atlantic  gives a précis of the controversy, which has continued unresolved since shortly after Smith published his book on the subject in 1973.  The scholarly debate, however, isn't the main topic of Ariel Sabar's essay, "The 'Secret' Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus." Instead, springboarding from a recent book on the controversy by Geoffrey Smith and Brett Landau,  Sabar focuses on Morton Smith's biography as a gay Episcopal priest who broke with the Church, taught the rest of his career at Columbia, lived most of his life in the closet, held some wicked academic grudges, and committed suicide in 1991. (For a much fuller account of ongoing arguments over the passage's authenticity, the extensive Wikipedia article is a good place to start.) 

For all the accusations that have been levelled at Morton Smith's scholarly bias, the new book finally turns its attention directly on the bias of his opponents' claims in their own right, and the weakly supported arguments they've made against the letter's authenticity. (Which no one has seen in decades, since shortly after it was taken into the  "safekeeping" of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.) 

The authors of the new study argue that the letter is a forgery, but a much earlier one, occasioned by anxiety over deep bonds formed by pairs of Eastern Orthodox monks. Such friendships were often celebrated, and honored by formal ceremonies of "becoming brothers," but they also came under suspicion of carnal attachment. 

The version of the Gospel of Mark to which the letter attests has come to be generally known as the "Secret Gospel of Mark." "Secret Gospel" was Smith's translation of the phrase "mystikon euangelion," but the Greek phrase could just as easily be translated as the "mystical Gospel" or perhaps the "initiated Gospel." Those alternative translations suggest more clearly the idea of an inner teaching, accessible to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, but ignored or opposed by those who don't.

It would be great to know whether this passage really did circulate within some Christian communities in the second century. I can't deny that I hope it was. But I'm ready to assert its spiritual importance even if it was concocted in the fifth century--or indeed, in the eighteenth--by a monk whose devotional life embraced an erotic understanding of the Divine, and how a very fleshly Savior had touched his life.

The Tie That Binds

 

Detail, Bernini, The Ecstacy of St. Teresa

Religion.

The very term is toxic for many who've survived a history of homophobic spiritual abuse. 

The brutal sundering of flesh from spirit that poisons so much Christian teaching and piety has taken its toll on queer people for centuries. (And make no mistake--Christianity is far from alone in this among the world's major religious traditions.) For many, walking away from religion has been the healthiest, most life-giving choice available, the mark of hard-won ego strength and integrity. The search for an authentic spirituality on terms one can live with then becomes the task of years or decades.

There is enormous irony in this. The origin of the word "religion" is the "binding back together" of things that have been put asunder: a re-ligation of what has come apart. (OK, there's some debate about where the Latin word first came from. But recent scholars, as well as St Augustine, have my back.) It's an enormous irony that Christianity in particular has been responsibile for so much hostility toward the flesh. How did so many adherents of a religion that begins with the assertion, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us," come to fear the body, the body's desires, and the body's inborn capacities for pleasure, so vehemently?

It hasn't always and everywhere been thus. It's not always  and everywhere thus today. A different thread of erotic spirituality runs quietly through the long history of Christian thought--stretching from the Song of Songs, through the nature-embracing vision of early Celtic Christianity, through medieval rites for the binding of same-sex couples, through the eroticized devotion of Simeon the New Theologian, Aelred of Rievalux, Catherine of Siena, St John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and beyond. 

Two weeks ago, just a few days into Lent, I posted here the painting created by Salustiano García Cruz for Seville's official poster marking Holy Week of 2024. With it I included a link that covered the offense taken by local conservative Catholics. For them, this Jesus is too young, too beautiful, perhaps too androgynous, certainly too shamelessly at home in his flesh--in his resurrected flesh: with a hand bearing the healed yet visible mark of a nail, he points to the healed yet visible wound in his side. 

There is of course a further issue: that this Jesus is a pale-skinned European in a world where most people are not pale-skinned Europeans.  (At the same time that that needs to be acknowledged and taken seriously, it's hardly what occasioned the right-wing backlash.)

That said, García Cruz's Jesus offers me an affirmation that queer spirit belongs together with queer flesh, queer desire, and the possibility of queer sex. A binding back together, a religio, of what homophobia and hatred of the flesh have put asunder.  His painting, in my book, is as authentically religious as you can get.

If the core purpose of Lent is preparation for the observance of Easter, this Jesus is the image I choose this year for my meditations over the weeks to come.