ASCENDING WITH HETEROPHILIA, DESCENDING WITH HOMOPHILIA The sun was just beginning to descend behind the western ridge, casting golden light across the rocky plateau where Kalen O. Tolán and a small group of students had gathered. They had hiked together in silence most of the afternoon, breathing in the clarity of alpine air and the vast stillness that comes only at high elevation. Now they...
INTRODUCING THE TWO RIVERS OF SPIRIT Spiritual seekers have long moved along two great rivers of awakening. One flows upward, reaching beyond the world toward the formless, the infinite, the pure light of Spirit. The other flows downward, diving into the body, the heart, the Earth—seeing the sacred not beyond the world, but within it. Ken Wilber calls these two rivers the Ascending and Descending...
ALREADY WHOLE: THE INNER TRUTH OF BEING GAY In Soulfully Gay II, I explore a spiritual truth that may sound paradoxical in a world that still teaches queer people to doubt themselves: being gay means being already complete in yourself. This isn’t a feel-good slogan. It’s a radical spiritual insight with roots in centuries of philosophy and mystical wisdom. It’s based on the principle of self...
THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE Language is never just about precision—it’s about poetry, power, and presence. At Soulfully Gay II, we take the words we use seriously, especially when they touch on something as intimate and sacred as same-sex love and desire. And so today, I want to share a few thoughts about the terminology we’ll be using throughout this project. Let’s begin with a simple observation: our...
GAY LOVE: EXALTED OR CONFUSING? Sometimes I am asked—directly or indirectly—if my vision of gay love as sacred resonance is out of touch. Too noble. Too pure. Too disconnected from the gritty, painful, and yes, sometimes profane reality of what it means to be a gay man in the world today. And to be honest, I’ve asked that of myself. Not as an intellectual exercise, but from the ground of lived...
GAYNESS AS THE GROUND OF REALITY What if the love that a gay man feels for another is not only a personal experience, but also a key to understanding the structure of reality itself? That question has haunted me—in the best way—for many years. My work in queer theology and spirituality begins with a simple proposition: gayness, or more precisely homophilia—the love of sameness—is a metaphor for...
THE IRONY WE ALL CARRY The experience of being born homosexual in a world of heterosexual normativity and extensive homophobia is never one free of sadness. When same-sex love and desire become inescapable in teenage or adult years, homosexual feelings sometimes emerge into a gay, bisexual, or lesbian identity. At this stage in human development, gayness becomes the task of informing joy with...
INTRODUCING KALEN O. TOLAN It was a pleasant summer afternoon on the campus of a progressive theological college. The sun cast a soft glow over the gently sloping lawn, and a warm breeze carried the scent of lavender from a nearby garden. Kalen, a spiritual teacher known for their quiet wisdom and nondual teachings, sat on the upper side of the grassy slope, looking out over six students seated...
GAYNESS AND STRAIGHTNESS: THE MASTER METAPHOR OF TRANSFORMATION When I began my spiritual pilgrimage some twenty years ago, I looked for gay writers and spiritual teachers who could help me to make sense of some inner knowledge that was hidden from my own consciousness. I looked for wisdom, but nothing I read or heard satisfied my longing. It wasn’t until I started writing The Soulful...
HELLO AGAIN Tonight, I stand at the threshold of a new writing journey. Before I explain, let’s look backwards. My first step into the blogosphere took place on November 7, 2003, in a journal called The Soulful Blogger. It was accompanied by a bi-weekly LGBTQ newspaper column titled “Soulfully Gay: Spirituality from a Gay Man’s Perspective.” I created these works in the...
