GAY SPIRIT CAMP
A Week of Celebrating Brotherhood
Hosted by the Easton Mountain Community with Guest Facilitators
& Special Appearance by Tom Goss
Monday, August 16 - Sunday, August 22, 2010

Gay Spirit Camp is a time of celebration, growth and community for men who love men.

Rekindle your gay spirit in the splendor of Easton Mountain, as you connect with nature, yourself and a community of friends old and new. This six day gathering will be jam packed with a variety of workshops and events including gay spirituality, yoga, meditation, massage, creativity, erotic healing, nature walks, saunas, body painting, movement and dance, dating and romance, talent show, an evening fire ritual, small group sharing, dances, karaoke, and much, much more. You will experience the freedom to participate in as many or as few activities as you would like with the safety to explore your personal growing edge. Gay Spirit Camp offers men a chance to establish lasting friendships within a community of sacred brothers.

”Gay Spirit Camp was the capstone of my summer. I had finally been initiated into the world of men. Gay, strong, powerful, beautiful men! I can now live my life in a more empowered, self-determined and assured way: a gay warrior."

- Michael B., New Jersey

About the Facilitators

Tom Goss is a singer-songwriter whose muscular style and sensitive spirit has earned him a growing national following. With an acoustic guitar (and sometimes piano), Tom moves from powerful pop to beautiful ballads as he sings of love, loss and longing. The Washington, DC-based, former Catholic priest in training, has released four albums since 2006; he is just back from a 50-city US tour in support of his latest, The Politics of Love. The video for 2008’s “Rise” soared to #2 on MTV’s LOGO and the video for 2009’s “Till the End” created an instant buzz, generating more than 100,000 views on YouTube and Facebook and eventually reaching #1 on MTV’s LOGO. More information can be found on his website: www.tomgossmusic.net.

Judah Leblang is a Medford, Massachusetts-based writer and storyteller. His essays and commentaries have been broadcast on National Public Radio stations around the US, and published in various newspapers and magazines. His column, “Life in the Slow Lane,” appears regularly in Bay Windows, Boston’s gay newsweekly. His first book, Finding My Place: One Man’s Journey from Cleveland to Boston and Beyond, was published in the Fall of 2009. Workshops that have been offered by Judah at previous retreats include: Writing Workout, Memoir-Writing, and Kripalu Yoga Basis.

Jay Michaelson (www.metatronics.net) is a writer, scholar, and activist. He is the executive director of Nehirim (www.nehirim.org), a national nonprofit organization which builds spiritual community for GLBT Jews, partners, and allies, and has advocated for GLBT people from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America to the New York State Legislature. His work in this area has been published in anthologies including Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer (2004), Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (2007), and Jews and Sex (2008), and featured in the New York Times and on NPR. Jay is also a columnist for the Forward, the Huffington Post, and Reality Sandwich, and the author of three books: God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice (2006), Another Word for Sky: Poems (2007), and Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism (2009). Jay holds a J.D. from Yale, and is completing his Ph.D in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; he has held teaching positions at Boston University Law School, City College of New York, and Yale University. In 2008-09, he spent five months on silent meditation retreat, mostly in Nepal.

Karl Paulnack is an accomplished musician, educator, writer and speaker. He is also a shaman whose spiritual practice is dedicated to the care of groups and nurture of group life. He holds leadership roles in a variety of academic, spiritual and musical communities, and is keenly interested in supporting a culture of men who love men, regardless of sexual orientation.

Hunter Reynolds is a visual artist working in performance art and photography. He graduated from Otis Parsons Los Angles in 1984. He has exhibited his work at museums and galleries widely in the US and abroad. He recently exhibited at Momenta Art, Artists Space, NY; Mary Goldman Gallery, LA; and at Gavlak in West Palm Beach FL. He has been the recipient of many grants residencies including a Pollock Krasner Grant this year. As an AIDS activist, he was an early member of ACTUP and in 1989 co-founded Art Positive, an affinity group of ACT-UP, to fight homophobia and censorship in the arts. More info is available on his website at hunterwreynolds.com.

Lee Stern has been on a musical and heart journey since...he was born. He has taught and learned from children and adults of all ages (singing, writing, theatre, movement, healing touch). He is Director of Music Together of Brooklyn Heights (parent and child music and movement program), a twenty year volunteer with Camp Heartland's HIV family camp, and participant in countless Honoring Our Journey, Body Electric, and Easton Mountain workshops.

David Townsend teaches languages and literature at the University of Toronto. A writer and collage artist, he is at Easton to help create a safe, empowering, celebratory space for the healing and transformative power of deep play. His narrative collage sequence, "An Unfamiliar Garden," will be on display at Sage Cafe in Toronto beginning in early September. "Anchorhold," his blog on ritual, art, and intentional eros as expressions of gay spirituality, can be found at www.anchorholder.blogspot.com.

Joe Weston is an international workshop facilitator, author and personal life coach. Born and educated in New York, Joe lived in Amsterdam for 17 years and now lives in California. He is committed to helping others embody spirituality and supporting them on their journey towards personal fulfillment and empowerment. Joe brings a wealth of insight to his work based on many teachings, including Tai Chi Chuan and a variety of spiritual traditions—plus his experience in theater and various organizational trainings. He is currently writing a book entitled “Respectful Confrontation: the Path to Compassionate Engagement, True Power and Personal Freedom,” and writes an advice column on Real Jock. He also volunteers for the Liberation Prison Project, teaching Buddhism to inmates.

For biographical information on residents, see the staff page.