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White Crane Journal #52

Spring 2002

Editor's Note: Pleasure

Feature Section: Pleasure

	Oh, Moment Javier Millan   Pleasure: A Philosophical Perspective Dennis Winstead   Bearsex and Bear Community: A Discussion Ron Suresha   The Trouble with Angels Andrew Ramer
Pleasure, Sex & Salvation John Steczynski (John Steczynski is creator of the woodblock style graphics that grace this issue, like the one to the right.)   Of Pleasure and Gay Holiness Donald L. Boisvert, Ph.D.   Some Things About Gay-Male Porn Don Shewey
	Ganymede: The Father God's Love for His Boy Chip Krolik     Orgasm John Ballew   Phallic Worship Bruce P. Grether
Poetry	Lift up your robes Perry Brass Lift up your robes, oh majesty, excite my being with y'r grasses, your plains, your air. David is singing in ecstasy, asking the rams to scamper with ewes, the birds to sweep up ahead, the heavenly voices to answer him ard all creation to nod in his path. Remove your veil of unknowing, allow me into your secret lands. I will crawl up to your nose, your eyes, your brow, your cliffs where the meadows stop at the sea, where the earth, shallow, on all sides waits and a ring ofbright angels stands. There I'll take whistles and tambourines, castanets and strings. I will dance and play such wondrous tunes and smile into the eyes of creatures who hide their gaze from belligerent men. All of this I will do to hold on to myself, now that your mysteries are too deep for my heart. But my ignorance only holds room for more: oh majesty, room after room. You have caused the skies to quicken at dawn, my eyes to open on your passing grace. Stay with me, sir, a moment more; let me linger this moment with you.   Perry Brass is an award-winning novelist, poet and commentator on gay life and culture. He lives in New York .
Dionysius in the Labyrinth Phillip Andrew Bernhardt-House   You know by the way I walk that I am All That, the pretty boy-girl, the one you want to fuck so bad it hurts. I am the King of Werewolves, and I call to every man and woman who thirsts for the sustenance of life: come seek me at the darkest edge of the wood where the river seeps down the mountainside. There you will find my labyrinthine den--come in unclad of clothes, make yourself small, and enter the earth smelling the fragrant soil, let the dirt embrace your arms and knees. . . . continued on linking page
	Pleasure and Brokenness William D. Glenn Somebody Turn on a Light! R.P.Moore

Bodhisattva Watch: All Have the Same Joys As I

Eager to escape sorrow, men rush into sorrow; from desire of happiness they blindly slay their own happiness, enemies to themselves; they hunger for happiness and suffer manifold pains; whence shall come one so kind as he who can satisfy them with all manner of happiness, allay all their pains, and shatter their delusion--whence such a friend, and whence such a holy deed?

...[such a one] will diligently foster the thought of his fellow-creatures as the same as himself. "All have the same sorrows, the same joys as I, and I must guard them like myself. The body, manifold of parts in its division of members, must be preserved as a whole; and so likewise this manifold universe has its sorrow and its joy in common. Although my pain may bring no hurt to other bodies, nevertheless it is a pain to me, which I cannot bear because of the love of self; and though I cannot in myself feel the pain of another, it is pain to him which he cannot bear because of love of self. I must destroy the pain of another as though it were my own, because it is a pain; I must show kindness to others, for they are creatures as I am myself... so I will frame a spirit of helpfulness and tenderness towards others.

from The Bodhicharyavatara of Santideva (circa 600 A.D.)

I Have a Passion for Masculine Beauty Dr. Li

 

Joseph Campbell: Precipitations of Consciousness All

 

There is still one more degree of realization... namely [of] no division, no separation between things: the analogy suggested is of a net of gems: the universe as a great spread-out net with at every joint a gem, and each gem not only reflecting all the others but itself reflected in all. An alternate image is of a wreath of flowers. In a wreath, no flower is the "cause" of any other, yet together, all are the wreath.

The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

The very great physicist Erwin Schrodinger has made the same metaphysical point in his startling and sublime little book, My View of the World. "All of us living beings belong together," he there declares, "in as much as we are all in reality sides or aspects of one single being, which may perhaps in western terminology be called God while in the Upanishads its name is Brahman."

Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

For we are all, in every particle of our being, precipitations of consciousness; as are, likewise, the animals and plants, metals cleaving to a magnet and waters tiding to the moon. . . we are to recognize in this whole universe a reflection magnified of our own most inward nature; so that we are indeed its ears, its eyes, its thinking, and its speech--or, in theological terms, God's ears, God's eyes, God's thinking, and God's Word; and, by the same token, participants here and now in an act of creation that is continuous in the whole infinitude of that space of our mind through which the planets fly, and our fellows of earth now among them.

THE ART OF POWERFUL LIVING A COACHING RETREAT FOR MEN with Coaches: Harry Faddis, Alfred DePew, Michael Cohen If you are seeking greater clarity, vision & direction in your life, this retreat is for you! Easton Mountain Retreat Easton, N.Y. July 21- 26, 2002 Toll-Free 1-800-553-8235 www.gayspiritcamp.com -- Brochure available on request -- Call 917 648-7585

Erotic Discernment: The Art of Making Good Decisions Robert Barzan

This article is a short excerpt from the booklet Erotic Discernment: The Art of Making Good Decisions, available for $3.95 from White Crane Press, 404 Patrick Lane, Modesto, CA 95350. Price includes postage and taxes.

 

Reviews

Reclaiming the Sacred by Raymond-Jean Frontain Steven LaVigne

Being Gay or Lesbian in a Catholic High School: Beyond the Uniform

by Michael Maher Jr, PhD Steven LaVigne

Love, Honor, and Respect by Rev Bob Buchanan from the Publisher

In The City Of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer Mountaine

Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker Bruce P. Grether

Creating Man by Michael G. Cornelius Toby Johnson

Sex, Orgasm, & the Mind of Clear Light: The 64 Arts of Gay Male Love

by Jeffrey Hopkins Toby Johnson

The Gay Kama Sutra by Colin Spencer Toby Johnson

Essays on Gay Tantra by William Schindler Toby Johnson

Warlock: A Novel of Possession by Perry Brass Tom Laine

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire Steven Lewis

Iris: The Movie Steven LaVigne

 

Lambda Literary Award Finalists in Religion/Spirituality

 

Letters to the Editor

 

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