I was so nervous the morning of my dialogue with Ken Wilber that it was hard to calm my nerves. We were slated to discuss my book Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007).

Nothing that a screwdriver wouldn’t help me get through. But once it was time for my telephone chat with Ken, I found it rather enjoyable. He’s a great conversation partner and really brought out a wide variety of different angles on my story that I wouldn’t have predicted. Pretty cool experience overall!

Here’s how Integral Naked introduced my talk:

The author of one of the most searing, courageous personal memoirs of our time shares how an Integral Approach helped him reconcile a life of fierce inner struggles with what it means to be a gay man in today’s culture, the difference between genuine spiritual experiences and psychotic episodes, and the thorny intersection of homosexuality and Christianity.

In the foreword to Soulfully Gay, Ken Wilber writes: “Joe Perez’s book is perhaps the most astonishing, brilliant, and courageous look at the interface between individual belief and cultural values that has been written in our time. By a homosexual, or a heterosexual, or any other sexual I am aware of.” Ken wrote this foreword without even having met Joe—probably one of the strongest complements one writer can give to another—and Soulfully Gay is the second offering from our Integral Books imprint at Shambhala Publications.

Joe Perez - Soulfully Gay. Part 1. Out of the Closet, Into an Integral Embrace.
(click here for free sample)

Joe Perez - Soulfully Gay. Part 2. The Power of Integral Reconciliation.

Technorati Tags: Gay, integral, Ken Wilber, Soulfully Gay

In BeliefNet’s “Integral Spirituality in Real Life”, Ken Wilber praises my first book, Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007)?

“I am in the awkward situation of writing a foreword to a book by a gay person. This is an awkward situation not because Joe Perez is gay, but because I have to point it out. I feel the same damn irritation as having to refer to, say, Edmund White as a “gay writer.” Nobody has to point out that I am heterosexual, although now I hear that I am not a heterosexual but a metrosexual, although, in fact, I have never had sex with a metro in my life. But I’m sure it is a wonderful experience.

“Nevertheless, because I have to include that information-culture today demands it, from those both for and against homosexuals-then let me say this. Joe Perez’s book is perhaps the most astonishing, brilliant, and courageous look at the interface between individual belief and cultural values that has been written in our times. By a homosexual, or a heterosexual, or any other sexual I am aware of.

“As it happens, this rather extraordinary chronicle unfolds around several conflict-inducing facts, one of which is that Joe is indeed gay; another of which is that Joe was raised Roman (homophobic) Catholic; another is that he often has authentic mystical states; and yet another is that Joe is, but only occasionally, clinically psychotic. It is the jolting collision of those items, held together by Joe’s courage in the face of all of them, that makes this chronicle so extraordinary in so many ways.

“The last item-the occasional trip into realms labeled madness-can mean, especially if you are a writer, that you are given to telling the unvarnished, brutal, searing truth, whether society likes it or not. And not the Sylvia Plath look-at-me kinds of truth, but the spiritual-seer and mad-shaman types of truth, the truths that really hurt, the truths that get into society’s craw and stick there, causing festering metaphysical sores indicative of social cancers or worse-but also the types of truth that speak to you deeply, authentically, radiantly, if you have the courage to listen.

“As it turns out, Joe is a writer, a rip-roaring wonder of a writer, and he had the courage to tell those truths, to endure them, to have them tear him apart, hospitalize him, brutalize him, kill and reassemble him, in one of the most astonishing tales of death and resurrection you are likely to find in today’s literature.

Of course, Soulfully Gay is “technically” a memoir. It contains a day-by-day journey of fourtheen months in my life. Fourteen months of soul searching, philosophizing, ruminating, and discovering repressed memories and hidden secrets. It reveals the high price I paid for the mystical connection with Agape and Thanatos, a journey that disrupted every aspect of my life and sent me to the psychiatric wards.

But it’s also the book where I lay out the case, step by step, analytically and pragmatically, why God is gay. Or, to say the same thing in a more nuanced way, why the principle of “gayness” or self-immanence is the underlying principle for understanding how homosexuality manifests in all realms of our evolving world.

In this reading (sorry for the poor production values, I’m a webcam newbie), I discuss the following passage from Soulfully Gay, and succintly answer the question: what does it mean to say “God is gay?”

God made some men gay, because He made them in His image. God made gay men to love in gay ways, because God loves in gay ways. The beauty of gay men reflects the beauty of God. The beauty of gay ways of loving reflects the beauty of God’s gay ways of loving. When someone fears and hates a gay man, he or she fears and hates God.

Audio (MP3): joeperez_sg1

Video (WMV):

You can purchase or learn more about Soulfully Gay at the Website of its publisher, Shambhala, or buy it today at Amazon.com…

Technorati Tags: Gay, God, homophilia, Soulfully Gay

Originally posted on June 22, 2007.

“Plants shape our lives more than you might think. Next time on the Beat, we take a trip to the Washington Park Arboretum. Also, Seattle author Joe Perez tells us how Harvard, Sex, Drugs and Integral Philosophy drove him crazy and brought him back to God…”

I’m on KUOW The Beat… talking about Soulfully Gay, growing up in Washington, college life, my 20s lifestyle, 30s spiritual path as a seeker, finding an integral path, giving advice to queer youth.

Honestly, I’m rather disappointed with my experience on the show. Dave Beck is a wonderful interviewer, but he wasn’t conversant with most of the book. His questions focused on my biography … with is perfectly understandable because my book is marketed, after all, as a memoir. However, 20 minutes just didn’t give me enough time to get from my early childhood experiences through Harvard and into the present. I look at the show as a good learning experience if nothing else.

Technorati Tags: Joe Perez, NPR, Soulfully Gay