Down with Pride! Up with Passion!

I feel Pride bursting my heart as I inhale
I feel shame twist my insides as I exhale 

If Gay Pride marches started as a defiant gesture towards our emotionally abusive nurturing networks, as a refusal to allow a minority socio-biologically determined feature to mark us out as pariahs, then maybe we need to explore the impact of historical societal unpleasantness on the stymieing of the spirit of joy and playfulness in our Faerie natures. 

For most of us we’ve had to brazen out the discomfort of a constant backdrop of presumed social approbation. My own response was to pull away from family and frien-emies . I had to numb my sensitivities; to seem like I didn’t give a shit. I anaesthetized my intuition and creative instincts. I stifled my feminine-sissy nature. She had already been battered and bruised over the years by the invalidation of others’ embarrassment, disapproval, and ridicule. 

Distancing myself also meant ripping myself away from the wonderfully assuring imagery, stories and understandings of a stabilising yet homophobic religious community, who had provided a basic framework around which my early spiritual growth had been flourishing. 

As I came out to a more accepting chosen family, I sensed that my male-loving masculine gender was nicely privileged. However my male-loving feminine nature was shunned. My first gay community, had not only unknowingly internalised its own homophobia but was also largely unaware of its patriarchally imposed misogyny. For lots of understandable reasons it was a spiritual wilderness too. 

As I identified a lack of spirit in my life I began to search for an accepting spiritual home. Wherever I seemed to look there would always seem to be a problem with queerness. I concluded ultimately that I would need to become the spiritual home I was searching for. I started to read daily from the book “The Essential Gay Mystics” by Andrew Harvey and slowly but gradually began the work (and play) of constructing a truly personal spiritual life where my soul would be free to dance, laugh and sing! 

In this new life I am encouraged to pursue my sexual desires and to satisfy my sexual appetites as a truly spiritual practice. My masculine-ness is honoured -as is my feminineness in a beautifully androgynous balance! By cultivating my spiritual/ sexual nature I am able to honour the 'wholeness of me' in the context of the cosmos. I can attune to the unassailable forces of inevitability. 

Rather than allowing ‘shame aversion’ to guide my actions I can now allow myself to be wholeheartedly ethically shameless following instead the discernment arising from a respect for my nature, the love of others and a joy for life. The Faeries like this! 

In Faerie community my wholeness is honoured and enjoyed. I am invited to explore my response to acceptance in social space. Do I choose to be selfish or am I generous and self-sacrificial? I learn that I am allowed to take the love I need and that I am happy to allow others to feed on the love I have to give. 

I have said goodbye to the Gay Pride/Shame binary. 
I’ve left it behind in exchange for Queer Sacred Passion. 
It’s a much more sustaining paradigm!