Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

From Deeper Dating to Depth Psychology Dating: The Divine Androgyne

Dating and the pursuit of the perfect partner — it's the Holy Grail of modern urban life, straight or gay. It's why there are so many organized meet-uo dating events out there. Deeper Dating is one of the best. Because it takes people beyond the snap judgement of appearance to a really deeper place. But in the ad for a British online dating site below, it gets down to the depth of Jungian psychology and archetype:

The image is of two people sliced together brings to mind the image of the Divine Androgyne (or for those less psychologically inclined, the half man/half woman carnival attractions of yore) found in alchemical texts. These texts were coded instructions to opening up to the inner feminine in order to experience divine unity within. Shel Silverstein made the point in his brilliant little book for adults and children alike, The Missing Piece, that one doesn't find completion in a partner, but within. And the mystic's path in many traditions, has emphasized this search for the Lost Princess that can only be found in one's own heart.

Heterosexual men seek this in the project of their inner feminine on the women they love. Gay men may take in their inner feminine and be open to a spirtuality that takes them deep quickly. But since our culture denigrates the feminine, divine and human, it is equally easy for a gay man to manifest the Demonic feminine, or celebrate it (hence the love of Joan Crawford). Or just as a straight man does, a gay man may project his inner feminine out and in order to integrate it, find himself attracted to men who are fey. Or there is the inner homophobia and misogyny that leads men to an almost Spartan celebration of the masculine to the obliteration of feminine qualities.

Then there is the whole issue of drag as a spiritual path that celebrates the inner feminine -- and drag as misogyny where performance of comedic femininity reinforces division rather than unity. I will write about this dynamic later this week in the review of a new film about the most politically astute and influential drag queen of the last 100 years.

See what happens when a gay Jungian Jewish Buddhist advertising copywriter sees an ad for a dating service in a British newspaper. Now if I could only get a date.

Predictions for 2009

What does 2009 hold? These predictions from a bletological clairvoyant give a good indication...

Sexy Gay Brazilian Men Vs. An Alien Female Predator

Okay, perhaps that's a little dramatic, but then, this ad, from MixBrasil, the lgbt film festival in Sao Paolo features a hot gay couple poolside, staring at a woman that is clearly not human. Now this could perhaps be seen as homosexual gynophobia projected out visually. But the campaign speaks to the sense many queer folk have of being seen as alien, other. Thus, the theme line: What is weird for you?

Obviously, to those of us who live very queer lives, suburban soccer moms can seem weird. It is all in who is doing the looking. And while that may be the point of the ad campaign, I am not sure how it works to get people to go to this film festival — or whether they are seeking an audience above and beyond the usual lgbt film fest crew. Perhaps some alients. Don't know. Or maybe Grace Jones, since I have to admit, the woman in this ad looks like Grace Jones to me, and I've always suspected she wasn't quite human. You can see the rest of this odd campaign at adsoftheworld.

Random drag in advertising: Renault

Please explain to me how this spot sells the car to its target market.

Queer Product Watch: Saks Fifth Avenue Ruby Slipper Collection...

Today's New York Times had an ad for a new collection of shoes from Saks: the Ruby Slipper Collection. Yes, you can see one of the original pair of pumps that graced St. Judy's feet in The Wizard of Oz — they're on display tomorrow through Sunday, September 14th.

And you can buy modern "reinterpretations" of this classic by a number of big name fashion folks (see Jimmy Choo's right). I don't think clicking your heels in them will get you anywhere. Well, they won't get you to Kansas, but then, who wants to go there anyway? They might get you onstage at Comix, where last night, along with an excellent set by Keith Price there was a less than excellent set by Hedda Lettuce (drag and volume is not enough, but maybe some red shoes to go with the green dress might have helped, then again, maybe not).

Which leads me to the question, will there be more gay men buying shoes at this show than straight women?

Beyond gender: The secret name of God as a clue to the divine androgyne and the union of opposites

Judaism is a non-dual religion. However, many people believe that the deity of the Hebrew Bible is masculine rather than beyond gender — inclusive of both male and female and thus both and neither. Rabbi Mark Sameth is advancing an interesting theory about the Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew 4 letter name of God that is never spoken. 

Rabbi Sameth says that the four-letter Hebrew name for God should actually be read in reverse. When the four letters are turned around he says, the new name makes the sounds of the Hebrew words for "he" and "she."

This makes God a dual-gendered deity. And after all, if as the myth says, we are made in God's image, and "male and female created he them," then clearly God is male and female even if Hebrew, as a gendered language, is incapable of expressing that directly.

Katherine Kurs, a religion scholar who teaches at New School University, who edited the amazing "Searching for Your Soul" and who is an associate minister at West-Park (Presbyterian) Church in Manhattan, was interviewed by LoHud.com, where this story first broke. And she captured it perfectly when she said: "This God is not a male or even a female but a male-female or female-male, a God that holds tension and paradox, a full-spectrum bandwidth God."

To look at it another traditionally mystic way, the divine Ayn Sof is boundless, boundaryless and thus includes all. This is not your grandfather's hairy thunderer in the sky.

Rabbi Irwin Kula wrote once that at a dinner party when challenged by an atheist about that rather punishing parental god, he said "I don't believe in the God you don't believe in either."

But a deity that transcends, includes and unifies? Beyond gender and personality? That's an expression of the divine worthy of prayer — and for me, prayer is simply singing love songs to the divine, filled with gratitude for creation. And while not a psalm, there are no finer words to express this for me than e.e cummings poem:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

The Divine Androgyne: Sex and Gender on the Gay Brain and the BBC

In many spiritual traditions, the inner union of male and female is one of the ways of knowing the Divine. Jung wrote about this union as a way towards psychological wholeness. For men this does not mean becoming feminized (which is a major fear in the gynophobic American culture) but integrating qualities we label masculine and feminine, such as logic and intuition.

As a gay man with an interest in both spirituality and Jungian psychology this subject has always interested me. In some cultures queer people are said to embody both male and female qualities in a way that brings them closer to the world of spirit. Of course, in our monotheistic culture, born of the Israelite religion that denied the Divine Feminine (Asherah/Shekhina)even while it was worshiped in the Temple, queer people are a threat — thus the spiritual world we are said to connect with is demonic.

In the world of brain science, Time magazine reported recently that Swedish scientists have concluded from brain scans of 90 gay and straight men and women  that “the size of the two symmetrical halves of the brains of gay men more closely resembled those of straight women than they did straight men.”

While I have no idea of the size of my brain I discovered yesterday that the BBC web site that, along with a number of other tests on their site they offer one called Your Sex I.D. It takes about 35 minutes to complete on line. And based on your responses they can tell you where your brain fits on the male/female continuum. Much to my surprise, I was exactly in the middle. Except I can’t say that I am enjoying the spiritual benefits of inner union. The test itself was fascinating though, and I’d be curious to see how large numbers of gay men do on it.

It is true that I find myself attracted to one of the Buddhist saints who is depicted as both male and female (though not at the same time!). Avalokiteshvara is depicted as a young man in India and Nepal — but as Buddhism moved east, in China and Japan he became a she, and is known as Kuan Yin or Kannon.

And of course, in Kabbalistic Judaism, Adam Kadmon, the original created human was an androgyne — based on the phrase in Bereshit translated as “male and female created [he] them.” Diagrams of this first human superimpose the sephirot over the body — sephirot that include Yesod, often connected to the male genitalia, and Malchut, connected to the female genitalia. However this is merely metaphoric externalization of what is really about an inner state.

Brain scientists have investigated how meditation affects communication between the left and right hemispheres.

A research team investigating the effects of meditation on the brain with the collaboration of the Dalai Llama, showed that meditators had a significant increase in activation in the left pre-frontal regions of their brain, associated with a reduction in the amount of anxiety they reported.

So why aren’t gay men more like the Buddha? I would argue that many gay men in fact are — from those who volunteer their time at places like God’s Love We Deliver to those who become church choir directors we bring our gifts of creativity and compassion to society in many ways. However as a minority that has been demonized, in a culture where a man who exhibits qualities that are ascribed to women is denigrated, there is no question that many of us take on the negatives of both genders — an aggressive bitchiness for example, used as a defense.

I pray for a world where all people, male - female - intersexed - trans - are not merely free to develop their gifts, but a world where those gifts are welcomed and nurtured. Keyn Yehi Ratzon. So may it be.

If I can’t dance, it’s not my apocalypse. (The B52s, Emma Goldman & Reverend Billy)

The B52s have always made the most infectiously happy dance music in rock and roll. It was just absolutely about feeling good and celebrating — even celebrating outsider status. Oh sure, there were some songs that were vaguely political — Channel Z, Bushfire — but overwhelmingly the music just made me smile, laugh and dance.

Well, the new B52s album is out: Funplex. And the title song is as usual, something that’s hard not to move to. Except it is anything but happy. This is "it’s-the-end-of-the-world-so-I’m-going-to-dance-anyway" music.

Funplex is what happens when the B52s meet Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping. It’s a searing indictment of mindless consumerism/materialism as a drug that numbs as us all as the planet goes to hell. This is seriously depressing stuff.

This is a song about drug addiction, sex addiction, shopping addiction. And the emptiness in our hearts that these compulsive behaviors try to assuage. It’s really sad.

And here I am listening to it on my ipod, bopping my head and wanting to dance. And cry.

And celebrate. Because rock and roll is also supposed to be deeply subversive. And this song certainly is that. Will it help wake America's youth from the trance — the George Bush lie that the most patriotic thing Americans could do in the face of terror was to go shopping. Shop your fear away.

This is the way of the Jester: speak the truth in a way that is funny. That isn't threatening. Maybe people will wake up. And certainly coming out of the trance is something to celebrate, even if one wakes up to a world that doesn't exactly inspire optimism at the moment.

Yes Fred, the world is going to hell. But if I can’t dance, it’s not my apocalypse.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: Achilles and Patroclus

To call this 11 minute claymation telling of the Greek myth of Achilles and Patroclus a cartoon does not feel right, regardless of the fact that this is certainly animation. It brings together so much that I love — Greek mythology and folk tale, animation and queer representation in media. This is not for children to watch. I mean, naked men in claymation? There is a rape scene in this cartoon that is intense and horrific. It is the story of the violence of war writ small. Yet this little film is really about the love between these two men. As the narrator asks: What makes a leader of men — the armor or the heart? Made in 1996, it is narrated by Derek Jacobi and was nominated for a BAFTA award. Be patient though, because it's long it takes a little while to load, but believe me it is worth it.

Where Jewish Mysticism, Christian Mysticism and Queer Mysticism run headlong into Buddhism

Today at one of the closing sessions at the Nehirim Conference on Queer Jewish Spirituality there was a guest speaker from outside the Jewish tradition, Michael Kelly, author of Seduced By Grace and The Erotic Contemplative. What great fun. He read from St. John of the Cross, and then a passage from Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite that was beautifully mind-blowing in its Jewish and Buddhist approach to the Divine. Just as in the Kaddish, Jews affirm everyday that the Divine is beyond language and description (which includes the entire idea of a gendered character) and as the Buddhists define Nirvana only by what it is not, so too this passage read today was a radical statement of the experience that cannot be described but can only be experienced. An experience shared by all humans in all traditions.

The dialog that began in this workshop was delicious. So was the performance of the juggler Sara Felder on Friday night. As you would expect in a conference of queer folk, she crossed boundaries in so many ways — and all of them designed to elicit laughter, which erupted in gales. Her introduction to the brilliant lecture by Naomi Seidman explicating Sholem Asch's 1906 Yiddish play God of Vengeance included...well, I shouldn't say because should she do it again the surprise would be ruined.

Didn't get there this year? There will be a Nehirim conference on the west coast — and then back east next spring. So if you're a queer jew, or queer jewish-buddhist, -pagan, -taoist etc don't miss it.