Once upon a time...

....my wake-up call hit me at an early age: what do you mean there's no Santy Claus? no Easter Bunny either? Why are my parents lying to me, and why can't they just tell me the way it is? It slowly dawned on me, as innocent and amusing as it was suppose to be, that when all was said and done that I had to figure things out for myself since no one seemed to want to give me a straight answer. Was I too dumb, were they hiding something, or did they just not know? Church made no sense to me either; I loved singing in the choir, but for quite a few years I imagined that Pontius Pilate worked for American Airlines...

At four years old my mother caught me and Johnny from across the street rubbing tummies, flesh to flesh!, in my bedroom closet. That didn't go over very well with her, never mind she thought it was hilarious when I rashly dressed up in her undergarments, prancing around the room. Johnny and I wised up and moved our erotic explorations to a treehouse in his backyard.

Except for Johnny, I literally had no school-age kids in my neighborhood, no rat pack to hang and socialize with. I had my buds, but for the most part it was me, my cat Kitty Crockett (named after my TV-show heartthrob, Davy Crockett), and my bevy of not-so-imaginary friends for backyard big adventures.

Me and Kitty Crockett

As I stumbled into puberty, my gayness (not even a concept to me back then!) slowly burned a whole in my heart. The sixties compass of gay liberation was still a decade away, yet my libidinous fascination with my innocent R.O.T.C. instructor worked my nerves. The fire in the belly and the cry for understanding my conflicted feelings became the impetus to begin the journey to spirit.

Forces and guidance more wise than I brought me to Denton, TX, where in my early twenties I started studying meditation in an ashram setting. This was the work that taught me about breath, balance, focus, and how to work with the energies within, a practice that continues to this day.

My inner work expanded as again I was guided to journey with Native American brothers and sisters. It was Clyde Hall who helped to open my eyes to the possibility that I can have a spirit life because I am gay, or two-spirit, not in spite of it. It is at ceremony and at the Naraya, a native dance of healing and renewal, that I have learned what it means to pray "in a good way"— which means for oneself and for the people. As a pipe carrier and the keeper of a Prayer Request email list for some 500 people, the power of prayer reveals itself.

While I keep my two "families" externally distinct, they offer a wonderful contrast-and-compare opportunity within. I keep my antenna up for the patterns of how energy moves. I marvel when I don my meditation spectacles to view my native practice; I ooh-n-ahh when I don my native spectacles to view my meditation practice. While energy will manifest in infinite ways, it emanates from the same source.

And yet the Tree of Life has blossomed again, and has brought me to my Gay Shamanism family to explore another level of coherence and revelation to the ever-burning fire in the belly that was ignited by Johnny.

I believe there is great power in our sexuality, whether gay or straight, but not for the reasons we superficially imagine. To my mind and heart, sexuality in and for itself, is not the goal. The power lies in the energy that drives sexuality, not the sexuality itself. This is what Clyde Hall calls it moves moves, the power of sexual energetics.

I believe we will move into our power and place of balance when our hara— place of inner balance and focus— shifts from a sexual-centered universe to an energetic-centered universe. It's a subtle difference with huge ramifications. When it's all about the energy, gender preference is irrelevant. The energy is now free to
move in new and interesting ways...