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Contact Us Table of Contents Search Site Google listing of all pages on this website Site Map Toby Johnson's Facebook page Toby Johnson's YouTube channel Toby Johnson on Wikipedia Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page  Secure site at https://tobyjohnson.com  Also on this website: As an Amazon Associate
I earn from qualifying purchases. Toby Johnson's books: Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc. FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned
from Joseph Campbell: The
Myth
of the
Great Secret
III GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe
SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:
A
Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods
THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil  TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams  CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers
THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell
IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey
Books on Gay Spirituality: White Crane Gay Spirituality Series
Articles and Excerpts:
Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco" About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996 The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality Why gay people should NOT Marry The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage
Gay ConsciousnessQ&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness What Jesus said about Gay Rights Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"? Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men Waves of Gay Liberation Activity Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian? The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium Easton Mountain Retreat Center Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey
Enlightenment
Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara You're Not A WaveJoseph Campbell Talks about Aging What is Enlightenment? What is reincarnation? How many lifetimes in an ego? Emptiness & Religious Ideas Experiencing experiencing experiencing Going into the Light Meditations for a Funeral Meditation Practice The way to get to heaven Buddha's father was right What Anatman means Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva John Boswell was Immanuel Kant Cutting edge realization The Myth of the Wanderer Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss World Navel What the Vows Really Mean Manifesting from the Subtle Realms The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse The est Training and Personal Intention Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven Gay
Spirituality
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 In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America From ItselfBy John Marsh Monthly Review Press 2015 256 pages, Hard Cover, $25.00 978-1583674758 Available from amazon.com  Reviewed by Toby Johnson, author of Gay Spirituality: Gay Identity and the Transformation of Human Consciousness This book was literally a joy to read. There's just enough of the author and the familiar struggles of his personal life woven into the text to show him as insightful, kind, good-intentioned and good-hearted, and likeable. The basic concept of the book is that modern America is suffering from a general malaise about the meaning of life and the value of our lives today as modern Americans. Death, money, sex and democracy are the four themes Marsh identifies as sources of this malaise. He is a poetry professor at Penn State—and I bet he's a good teacher—and so, perhaps naturally, he looks to poetry to find solutions. Poetry is almost always a kind of "philosophical" endeavor, striving to express, intimately and evocatively, deep insights into this meaning of life. The specific poet he turns to is Walt Whitman, the Civil War era poet who established with his free verse a whole new kind of poetic style and who, in spite of being controversial, helped establish what we think of as the American mind. Whitman's poetry is mystical and in some ways highly abstract: "I sing the body electric," "I celebrate myself," etc. But it is also very physical and real: what he celebrates includes "The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine." It's the physical world shot through with mystical significance. Marsh examines Whitman's experience by following in his footsteps, taking the Brooklyn ferry, visiting Whitman's home in Camden, NJ, wandering the Civil War battlefield, at Fredericksburg, Virgina, going to a strip club to experience raw sexuality. He finds lines in Whitman's verse that explain and elaborate these experiences, applying the wisdom in the poems to our current times. The basic advice is to love life and build deep friendships and live passionately—in spite of the realities of death, the insecurities of money, the vagaries of sex and the responsibilities of living in democracy. Good advice. And it's so nicely presented, it's easy to agree. Within the discussions of these big questions are inserted two little interludes to deal with recurring issues in Whitman studies: "Was Walt Whitman Socialist?" and "Was Walt Whitman Gay?" To American patriots who'd like Walt Whitman to be All-American, apple pie and motherhood, it's something of an embarrassment that the answer to both questions is Yes. John Marsh actually concludes that we just don't know enough to answer the sexuality question affirmatively and so concludes that Whitman might not have been homosexual as such, but he certainly was what today we'd call "queer," i.e., sexually and emotionally unconventional and outside constraining definitions. The reason scholars routinely question Whitman's occasionally seemingly obvious homosexuality—besides their not wanting it to be true—is that Whitman himself said it wasn't true. Marsh is very even-handed at how he deals with this question, beginning, of course, with the anachronism in the question: the very notion of "gay" didn't exist in the mid-19th century, especially of homosexuality as a fundamental, unchangeable character trait and a reason to organize and fight for human rights. The section opens with a story from Marsh's life as a teacher of Whitman about a young woman student asking this very question. He tells us that he is a "dyed-in-the-wool liberal, in love with tolerance," and says he'd love it if Whitman were "gay" and a good role model for young homosexuals, because he is such a good role model for human beings in general. Whitman is so positive and life-affirming about sexuality and physicality—this is what young men and women discovering their sexuality need to discover about their own self-identities. But, he says, unfortunately, it's not that simple, and then goes on to unravel the arguments in favor of Whitman's homosexuality. As a writer myself about gay consciousness, I found this section of the book particularly thought provoking, and in this review I want to share an observation about gay consciousness that, I think, even, or especially, our best straight allies and the most "dyed-in-the-wool liberals" likely don't understand. One of Whitman's most outright denials of homosexuality is in response to a letter from the British literary critic and early writer about sexual orientation, John Addington Symonds. Whitman wouldn't have thought of himself as "homosexual" anyway, because that word didn't exist yet either. There were no words, there was no concept. Symonds was one of the people who helped create that concept. Marsh quotes from the Englishman's letter to Whitman: "I have pored for continuous hours over the pages of Calamus [the most gay section in Leaves of Grass] (as I used to pore over the pages of Plato) longing to hear you speak, burning for a revelation of your more developed meaning, panting to ask—is this what you would indicate…" Symonds is asking: are you like me? In old gay slang that question always went: I'm one, are you one too? What I think John Marsh misses is how much homosexuals dislike other homosexuals. By the processes that modern gay-oriented psychotherapy calls "internalized homophobia" and projection, and which C.G. Jung referred to as The Shadow, homosexuals are understood to internalize all the same anti-homosexual messages in religion and society—and the nervous silence and absence of any positive messages—that make everybody else suspicious and uncomfortable with homosexuality, and then blame it all on other homosexuals. This is part of what, at least in the old days, caused gay people, men especially, to experience difficulty in love and relationship—how can you have a relationship with somebody who is a kind of person you don't like? And it is what has caused so many factions and so much divisiveness within the "gay community." The great effort of the gay rights and gay liberation movement has been to address this self-sabotaguing dynamic. The very notion of "gay community" is an example of this effort. And the effort has been amazingly successful. The movement changed how homosexuals thought of themselves and that's changed the whole world. The practical experience for homosexuals, at least before liberation, was that they felt different from everybody else; they were the only ones like this, and this was something wonderful and precious, even sacred, in themselves, but disgusting and reprehensible in others. I think Whitman's denials are more like protestations even of today's youth: I don't want to be labelled. I'm not like anybody else. I'm me. And, of course, that was Whitman's great declaration: I celebrate myself. It's ironic that Walt Whitman has been one of the best proponents of affirmative gay consciousness in human history. Without him the gay rights movement might never have happened. John Marsh's book is about so much more than Whitman's sexuality, and my quibble of how to portray Whitman as a gay/queer man and icon is more with ol' Walt himself for not being as liberated as he showed the rest of us the way to be. I really liked the wisdom Marsh found in Whitman, and in himself. I liked the optimism—in spite of all the evidence against it—that Marsh offers to modern America. This book demonstrates the wonderful use—and power—of poetry to discover, and create, deep meaning and a reason for living. A joy to read. To order from amazon.com In Walt We Trust: How a Queer Socialist Poet Can Save America from Itself  |
Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.
Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.
His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.
Two
Spirits is available as an
audiobook narrated by Arthur Raymond. 