Recently an out-of-town buddy of mine came to Seattle for a conference. While here he booked a two-hour session with me and afterwards we grabbed dinner while we debriefed about the session and caught up on our individual lives. On the way to dinner he asked me to describe to him how I was in high-school. I immediately erupted in laughter, a) because I found the question timely yet completely out of left field, and b) because the mere thought of the boy I was 15 years prior is starkly different than the man I am now.
Wholeness comes in various shapes and sizes. Part of that healing requires looking at those things that we find aversive and discovering why those aversions exist. Some aversions are "admirable" such as an aversion to murder, rape, pillaging, war, etc. Others, however, could stand some healthy and objective scrutiny.
In doing this work towards the healing and integration of people's bodies and spirits we, as gay men, in the course of our training and practice, have had the honor and privilege of working with several vulvas, vaginas, and breasts. Often when we share this fact with friends of ours, a mutual laugh is had by all company - not that vulvas, vaginas, and breasts are comical in nature, but because the chasm between the penis and the vagina in the LGBT community is often such a divisive (and yet unspoken) reality.
Religion, Spirituality, and the Body
In our practice, it has become abundantly clear that several of the major hurdles towards physical and spiritual healing and wholeness are the constraints that many of our Christian traditions have placed upon our bodies and our minds. We have been chained and imprisoned by the very thing that was supposed to free us! For many of us, we grew up with a warped view that the body was inherently evil and destined for some fiery hereafter. However, Spirit, in creating a physical body to house its essence, unequivocally and irrevocably deemed the body "good." It is the temple of us. We are spirits housed in a physical shell. Or, as C.S. Lewis once stated, "We are physical, spiritual hybrids." We posses the best of what is seen and what is not seen - what is eternal and what is passing away.
