Gay Spirituality

Some of you may not know Jeff Altergott or his music.  Jeff’s a singer/songerwriter from the Chicago area and has been the musical guest at Between the Worlds on a couple of occasions.  His song, Brothers Beautiful, was inspired by his experience at Between the Worlds and is one of my favorite songs for a number of reasons.

Primarily, I like this song because it reminds me of the brotherhood that exists in my spiritual community.  We don’t always agree or get along but we’re still connected.  I’ve been reading a lot about the interconnectedness of all of us lately and that seems to be a theme that keeps coming back.  I think Jeff’s song in many ways captures that idea or feeling, at least it does for me.

Saturday night, my partner and I hosted a get-together of friends.  A large group of us got together and had dinner, went to see a movie and then came back to our home for dessert.   It was a beautiful night and reinforced this idea of brotherhood for me.  What was especially significant is that some of the people that attended didn’t know each other well.   And some of them have had some differences in the past.  But for one delightful evening, it seemed that everyone forgot about their differences, their disagreements and their baggage and just spent time being together.  To me that is in many ways the real essence of gay spirituality.  Just being together regardless of our differences or similarilities.

I recently read a post on a blog about the difference between goal setting and manifesting .  In the post, the author talks about how goal setting involves making a list of the things we’d like, and then creating action steps over a period of time to accomplish them.  While goal setting will get you where you want to be, it takes time.  It creates energy and purpose but not on the same level as manifesting.  Manifesting on the other hand, has to do with using your thoughts and your words to create a new reality.  In many ways, manifesting is what we in the neo-pagan community refer to as “magick”.

The reason I bring this up is that in terms of gaining our civil rights, the GLBT community seems to be focused too strongly on goal setting.  This might explain some of the setbacks we’ve had recently such as California’s adoption of proposition 8.   We seem to be taking the tactic of making a list of goals such as the right to marry and then working in baby steps toward it, suing in court, waiting on appeals and supreme court decisions, etc.  While that will eventually get us where we want to be, I think as activists for gay rights we need to focus more on manifesting.

This, to me, is really where gay spirituality and activism meet.  There are a number of stories about British witches working magick against Hitler during WWII.  Perhaps this is what the gay spiritual community should be doing to gain our gay rights.  We should be manifesting them, not waiting for the establishment to deem us worthy of having them.

So how would this work?  If you work with a gay spiritual group, spend several minutes each time your group meets visualizing gay rights.  Visualize having the ability to marry.  Visualize having the ability to serve in the military as openly gay people.  A key part of manifesting is to visualize it as if it were already so.  Claim it!  Then use positive speech and words to help make it a reality.  Go ahead and call your “partner” your “husband” or “wife”.  Hold a marriage ceremony.   There’s a saying in magick, “As above, so below”.   Celebrate your spiritual marriage and the physical, legal aspect will follow.

But don’t stop there.  While I believe that manifesting and magick will do a lot, I also believe that the gods help those that help themselves.  March in protests, write your elected officials and refuse to be silent.  We can manifest our equal rights.

I’ve decided that I’m going to start a weekly column here on my blog which I’m calling “Other Voices”.  Basically, the idea is that I’d like to present some other viewpoints on GLBT spirituality than just my own.  I know a tremendous number of GLBT spiritual practitioners so I’m interviewing a number of them and will be writing a series of profiles/interviews of different people from our vast and diverse community.  I hope that this will provide some new insights on gay spirituality.  If there’s someone you’d like to see me include in this column, please feel free to leave a comment with their name and an email address.  I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks to my good friend, Gary for pointing this one out on his blog.  Quincy Jones has begun an online petition asking incoming US President Barack Obama to appoint a Secretary of the Arts.  Many other countries have ministers for the arts but the US has never created such a position.  Tough economic times have made it very hard for artists and I believe its important to support the arts–visual, performing and other arts.

I’ve always believed that the arts and spirituality are inextricably linked.  There’s something intensely  spiritual about creating a work of art or writing a play or song.   Also, the arts have traditionally been a field that employed a large number of the glbt population.  Queer people seem to be wired to be creative and I believe that we’re also wired to have a deep connection to the spiritual world.  A Secretary of Arts would certainly go a long way to encourage the arts and patronage of the arts in our country.

Please, sign the petition today if the arts matter to you.  Even if you’re not personally involved in the arts, consider signing it to encourage others to pursue their art.  For many, their art is also their spirituality.

I recently learned about Mission 101.  Mission 101 is the brainchild of blogger Michael Green.  You can learn more at the Misson 101 web page.  In a nutshell though, the thing that struck Michael was that a lot of people make New Year’s resolutions or to-do lists but few of them ever really accomplish the things they set out to do.  He felt that one reason was that there are usually no deadlines to complete these tasks.   The idea behind Mission 101 is that with a deadline (1001 days) people are more likely to work to accomplish their goals.  You can find examples of Mission 101 links on the web site or if you’re interested you can read my mission 101 list.

So what does this all have to do with gay spirituality you might be thinking?     I blogged recently about how our group has been struggling with how to balance supporting each other and doing community outreach work.  When I learned about Mission 101, I suggested to our group that this might be an excellent way to help each other.  We could do Mission 101 as a group.  Each member would make their list and share it with the group.  Then we could check in with each other and share our progress, our accomplishments and our struggles with the items on our lists.  Many of us in our grove have been wanting to work on self-improvement and this seemed like a good way to help each other and to hold each other accountable.  After all, real change is difficult to make.  Many of us also split our goals into categories such as physical (exercise, diet), spiritual (meditation, etc), reading and charitable work.  It seemed to me like we helped balance the internal support with the community outreach.

Are any of you doing Mission 101?  I’d love to hear if you are.  Please include a link to your Mission 101 list if you feel like sharing it.  I’d especially be interested in hearing about spiritual goals on your Mission 101 lists.  I have several on mine including more meditation and celebrating the quarter rituals every year.

My grove, the Green Faerie Grove , held its Yule meeting on December 27, 2008.  Our meetings are always interesting as we are a very involved and active group so the diversity of ideas and issues presented at our business meetings really reflects the many interests of our membership.  Our group is incorporated in Ohio as a not-for-profit corporation and we do a lot of work to support our GLBT community.  One of the biggest parts of our mission includes outreach into the greater Pagan community to demonstrate the place of GLBT practitioners in alternative spirituality.  I’m very proud of our members in this respect.  Many of us hold positions of leadership in other pagan and spiritual organizations and even in a number of mundane GLBT organizations.  From these positions, we regularly have the opportunity to be spiritual counselors and advisors to gay and bi men.  Our group began and continues to run the Between the Worlds gathering, an alternative spiritual gathering for gay and bi men.  This project has been a huge undertaking but a richly rewarding one.  We’ve created a large virtual community of gay and bi spiritual practitioners from across the nation that stay in close contact and support and encourage one another on their paths.

The issue that came up during our meeting however was one that is a bit tricky.  One of our other missions is to support our brothers in the grove in the pursuit of their own spirituality.  Some of our members felt that we’d been doing poorly in this regard.  Social functions amongst the grove members had dropped over sharply over the last year as people were busy with their lives and when the grove did meet, we were so focused on the work we do in the larger community.  It became apparent as we discussed this issue that the grove needed to strike a better balance between outreach in the the larger pagan and/or GLBT community and feeding and nourishing our own spirits within the grove.  While I certainly believe this is a possible balance to strike, I do also believe it will be a challenging one.  How do you make sure the internal needs are being met while not appearing cliquish or too isolated?  How do you minister to the greater community without burning yourselves out?  It’s definitely a tightrope to walk.  I’d love to hear from other groups that have struggled with this issue and how you resolved them.