Face Your Darkness

The following is written by Brieanna Lewis. I recently came across it on the Facebook group Soul Discovery. It seems like an appropriate piece to share as the old year ebbs and the new year dawns. . . . Wishing all my readers the very best for 2019.

Do not be afraid of the darkest aspects of yourself, for they are means to your survival. You are born from the dark, and when your time on earth is over and you slip back into the comfortable energy of the universe, you will return to the darkness from whence you came.

In order to reach out your hand and lay it upon the brow of humanity, in order to give deeply of yourself and heal the wounds of the world, you must understand the darkness that crouches within.

Will you have the courage to see what it needs, this crying demon within yourself that begs for you to nurture it; that begs for you to help it to dissolve into the wholeness that it desires . . . the wholeness of self?

Sometimes it is necessary to close your eyes and slip into that place that craves manipulation, that place where you lock away your fury, greed and indescribable blood-thirst. Journey to the underworld of your soul because that is where you will be reborn.

In order for us to know light, we must know the dark; in order for us to know pleasure, we must know pain; in order for us to know creation, we must know destruction. In these final dogged days of winter, it is time to cut away the death bramble that clings to the soles of your spirit.

It is time to lance the wound and let the poison run out, so that new skin, new life, can form in its place; tougher this time and well-versed in the negativity that exists in the world, this thicker skin will protect you so that you can go and work your light.

There is no shame in watching the train-wreck that is your shadow. There is no shame in staring at the carnage, unable to look away from the horrors that can exist in a place where you thought you’d never find them.

Look into the fire and find the truth, rise from the ashes of your fear and walk again amongst the living, forever changed and with a sturdier stride. And when you have returned, when you have faced down the monsters of your own making, and when you have risen above the flames of your own self-destruction, then you will be able to lead.

You can be a lantern in the void for those who are following behind you, you can help them to see and to know and to learn. This is where you become the light; this is when you begin to shine.

But for now, let those black waves consume you. Let them topple you over; let them pull you down into the depths of yourself because you will surface.

Just when you think that you can’t handle the pressure or the isolation, just when you think that you have filled to your capacity and that you will burst, you will break free and that first breath will taste so sweet – as if you had never breathed before at all.'

~ Brieanna Lewis

See also the previous posts:
• For the New Year
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• The Role of Reevaluation in the Gay Man's Quest for Authenticity
• Wrestling With the Angel
• Affirming Our Essential Goodness

Images: Abdiel Jacobsen, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. (Photographed by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory of the NYC Dance Project.)

In Winter Field

See also the previous posts:
• Winter Solstice
• Let the Spiral Turn and Turn
• Sol Invictus
• December Hare

Artwork: "Leaping Hare" by Lucy Grossmith.

“Downtown Heaven”

In response to the posting of the image at left to the Facebook group Queer Artists, one member of the group wrote: "One famous and very handsome American writer who I was lucky to know and who was an admirer of men’s beauty, called this particular area “downtown heaven.” Each time I’m lucky to visit that area I always remember his words of appreciation."

I too appreciate and enjoy my forays into this area of another man's bodily terrain, and always strive to make it a "heavenly" experience for both of us. There is something special indeed about both exploring and pleasuring another man's cock, balls, and hole, and surrendering one's own cock, balls, and hole to another.

The images I share today celebrate all of this. Enjoy!

See also the previous posts:
• The Body: A Holy Place of Romp and Renewal
• The Body's "Holy Hole"
• Buddies

Images: Subjects and photographers unknown.

December Hare

See also the previous posts:
• Winter Solstice
• Let the Spiral Turn and Turn
• Sol Invictus

Artwork: "December Hare" by Jemima Jameson.

Morning Light

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare Décor

See also the previous posts:
• The Christmas Leveret
• Hare's Christmas
• Hare Décor XIV

Photography: The Leveret.

To Hear His Piping

The following is written by Matthew and was first shared on the Facebook page Panopolis: Forum of the Great God Pan.

_______________________________

I've been thinking over Pan in the Homeric sense, a god of place and particular people, and in the Orphic sense as the god of "All", implied in His name. Pan has been physical and personified, iconic, allegorical, incorporeal, or invisible and speaking to mortals only through mystery.

Later authors, it seems, have even gone on to equate Pan with the Christian G_d in the shape of Father and Son. Some have called Him a tutelary deity, along with other gods merely a misunderstanding of the Divine. Others have drawn parallels with the Adversary, that He and other gods were only cloaks, disguises meant to deceive humans and lead them away from the Divine.

Finding Platonic "Truth" seems a difficult outcome, shrouded in too many layers of mystery. Perhaps that's the point, though, not really to know, but rather to search after. Maybe that's what it means to hear His piping.

See also the previous posts:
• Pan, Moonlight and Magnolias
• The Divine Masculine Principle

And on The Leveret's brother site, The Wild Reed, see:
• The Piper at the Dates of Dawn
• The Devil We (Think We) Know
• Pan's Labyrinth: Critiquing the Cult of Unquestioning Obedience
• Meeting (and Embodying) the Lover God
• Beloved and Antlered

Image 1: Photographer unknown.
Image 2: Todd Yeager.

Hare Kiss II

See also the previous posts:
• Hare Kiss
• Hares in Love
• For the First Time

Image: Artist unknown. Photo by The Leveret.

For a Seductive Student

By Jeff Mann

You're a treat, yes. You're dying to know,
I know. Don't think I haven't caught your grin,
your biceps tattoos, chest hair like dark snow.

Aren't ethics always inconvenient, saying no
to student/teacher fucking, unprofessional sin?
You're a threat. I know you'd love to know

this ache to tie you down, take your ass slow.
I'd work your nipples hard, gag your bearded grin,
lap your tattoos, your chest curl's soft snow.

I'd belt your furry ass into a grunting glow.
You're half my age, so how can we begin?
You're a threat, certainly, a boy dying to know

how Daddy would love him long, use him slow.
In class, you stretch and flex, show off young skin,
your bicep, tattoos, chest hair's dark snow.

Sweet delays are how passions grow.
When you graduate, bear kin, maybe then.
You're a threat, yes, a boy dying to know
how we'd mix tattoos, dark fur, semen snow.

See also the previous posts:
• Antinoos
• Ganymede and Zeus
• Bel Homme – January 30, 2017
• Bel Homme – September 5, 2012
• Bel Homme – August 8, 2011
• Bel Homme – May 28, 2011
• The Body: A Holy Place of Romp and Renewal
• Luminous and Safe in Vulnerability
• Mindful Lovemaking

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.