In print: my interview with Sequoia Thom Lundy in the 50th anniversary issue of RFD
When it started out, the quarterly magazine RFD billed itself as “a country journal for gay men everywhere.” The title comes from a US Postal Service designation – “rural farm delivery” – for mail recipients who live far from streets and avenues. Early on, it became tradition that every issue came up with a new version of what RFD stands for (sort of like the opening of The Simpsons, with Bart at the blackboard writing out a different sentence repeatedly as punishment): Responsible For Dinner, Rebellion Feels Delicious, Rhymes Fiction & Dish, Radiating Fecund Dick, Rx for Dialogue, etc. I’m sure I’m not the only reader, though, who will always think of it as Radical Faerie Digest. It’s the only ongoing publication that carries news and commentary by, for, and about the extended global community of Radical Faeries, the spiritually minded if wildly anarchistic movement of mindful queers summoned into being by pioneering gay activists Harry Hay, John Burnside, and Don Kilhefner in 1979. I have been pleased to publish a number of articles in RFD over the years.
Now RFD is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the Fall 2024 issue (Reached Fifty —Donchaknowit!), and I’m honored to be included among its pages alongside a stellar roster of gay literary luminaries, friends, colleagues, and legendary faeries. They include Franklin Abbott, Allen Young, Toby Johnson, Bo Young, Eli Andrew Ramer, Jim Jackson, Keith Gemerek, Bambi Gauthier, and Rosie Delicious. My contribution is a feature article about my friend Sequoia Thom Lundy, the Vancouver-based master yoga and massage instructor, on the occasion of publishing his memoir, Divining Desire (an excerpt from which also appears in the issue).
I’m posting my article here in the hopes that it will entice you to track down, buy, read, and pass around a copy of RFD’s 50th anniversary issue. It’s usually for sale at the best gay bookstores that carry periodicals, but you can also order it online here. I’m delighted that the issue has appeared in time for Sequoia to see and enjoy it. He’s been in treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer for a year and a half, and it seems pretty clear that his departure is imminent (we’re talking weeks, not months). If Sequoia has touched your life in any way and you’d like to reach out to him, now would be a good time.
Sequoia Thom Lundy has spent his eight decades on earth as an intrepid adventurer: a seeker of wisdom and experience, of spiritual satisfaction and sexual self-acceptance. His entertaining memoir Divining Desire chronicles his pilgrim’s progress from post-World War II Brooklyn to present-day Vancouver, from US Air Force pilot working hard to maintain a façade of butch realness to radical faerie building community around the pleasures of yoga, massage, and erotic playfulness. Along the way he was blessed to encounter a string of high-powered meditation teachers who nurtured his soul – Baba Muktananda (then head of the Siddha Yoga lineage), Ram Dass, Rudy Ballentine, Patricia Albere, Eckhart Tolle. He also formed strong bonds with kindred spirits on the Gay Soul journey who became colleagues and sometimes collaborators, including Harry Hay, James Broughton, and Joseph Kramer (founder of the Body Electric School). Meanwhile, his romantic nature led him to an abundance of lovers who educated and fed his heart.
The journey has never been especially smooth or linear. Sequoia writes honestly about the obstacles he’s had to navigate, internally and externally, as a gay man. Yet he has accumulated many tips and tools for creating a good life, and he shares them with a generosity and grace that radiates off the page.
I met Sequoia in 1992 at the First International Gay Vision Conference in Toronto, where he was one of the featured presenters. He offered his workshop “Men in Touch,” exploring intimacy through yoga and breathwork, and we bonded while standing in a naked circle at some ceremonial event. We would continue to cross paths under similar circumstances – Sacred Intimate Training with the Body Electric School at Wildwood Retreat Center in California, for instance – and we discovered that we both had cultivated serious meditation practices. I spent a few years investigating Siddha Yoga, under the leadership of Muktananda’s successor Gurumayi, and the two of us also gravitated toward Buddhist teachings.
He invited me to attend a yoga retreat he conducted on beautiful rustic Gambier Island in British Columbia, and I got my first taste of his cozy home temple in Vancouver. We kept in touch, and years later when I returned to Vancouver for a high-dose psychedelic adventure, he kept me company afterwards, which was when I met his partner Ziji, a magical soul born on the same day as Sequoia 41 years later. What began as an apprenticeship became a true collaboration, and eventually Ziji would take over the mantle of “Men in Touch.”
For the last two years, Sequoia and I have assisted Steve Schwartzberg at the Body Electric School’s meditation-and-massage retreat “Touching the Heart of Stillness” (or as I like to call it, “Touching the Tuchus of Stillness”) at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in New Mexico. It’s a venue we both love, having taught workshops there ourselves, though Sequoia has a much longer history; he and the late great massage teacher Doug Fraser facilitated many “Men in Touch” retreats there. Just before “Heart of Stillness” last year, Sequoia was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, for which the prognosis is never good. It was touch and go as to whether he’d make it to the retreat, but not only did he surf the rapids last year, he survived to return to Jemez Springs again this year.
As an instructor of touch, Sequoia prizes and models exquisite presence, balancing sensuality with heart-centered contact. His intimacy exercises incorporate soulful eye-gazing, the kind that could easily veer into corny, simplistic New Age platitudes. But he’s a genius at getting male-bodied people to cultivate tenderness and openness in a quest for connection. Hanging out with him in New Mexico was an opportunity to witness decades of teaching being transmitted with grace and twinkly-eyed humor.
The gravity of Sequoia’s health challenges in the last two years lit a fire under his desire to capture his life story in a memoir. We crossed paths again in Oaxaca this past February, where he worked furiously on the final stages of the book. Somewhat inspired by Ram Dass’s legendary first book Be Here Now, Sequoia envisioned a memoir strewn with graphics, illustrations, and photographs. If you’re inclined to buy a copy, I encourage you to pay the extra ten bucks for the hardcover edition. It’s a beautiful object. He’s also a big fan of hyperlinks to further reading and additional resources, but those are only available with the digital version of the book.
This summer Sequoia participated in the fifth annual Ignite Festival in Vancouver, which Ziji put together as an outgrowth of the “Men in Touch” events that the two of them created over the years. With 27 mini-workshops led by 15 facilitators from all over North America, it was an opportunity for male-identified folks to explore ways of being more vulnerable and authentically intimate with one another. As Sequoia shared in a newsletter circulated to friends, “At Sunday evening's closing, I thanked each man/person who came for their courage in showing up for such a vulnerable and authentic weekend. I asked how many had experienced their heart opening: almost every hand went up. Then I invited and challenged them to walk back into the outer world and practice keeping their heart open, using any/all of the techniques they experienced over the weekend.
“I told them how inspired I was 50+ years ago reading Ram Dass' Be Here Now, by his guru's simple, yet unfathomable instruction to ‘Love everyone, serve everyone, and remember God.’ I said those words have guided my life ever since, and I invited them to contemplate their profound wisdom. I shared about my cancer and how at last year's Ignite, I did not expect to be alive for this one, and that I greatly doubt I'll be here next year, so this is my final Ignite. Then I told them of my upcoming 80th and said being with all of them has been my best imaginable celebration. Now there is a sweet sense of completion of my journey…and a greater sense of leave-taking and farewells. It continues to feel like I'm in a slow, final decline. Emotionally there is a sense of rightness and gratitude to be granted the time and energy for all these goodbyes.”
On his 80th birthday, August 7, Sequoia was in good spirits, and we had this email exchange:
You have had an extraordinary life, which you describe in generous detail with tremendous honesty. What was it like for you to approach this task of reviewing your life in the form of a memoir?
It was surprisingly easy, having been a journal-keeper for decades. During the pandemic I simply started a longer journal about reviewing my life, with no intention of publishing. It was only after realizing how many incredible teachers and teachings I've been graced with that I began to consider that others may find my "journal" of value. Several friends who read the early draft eagerly agreed!
The running themes of your book have to do with sexuality and spirituality, the erotic and the divine. How do you understand the connection between those two powerful forces?
The short answer is they are two ends of a spectrum, depicted in yoga and Tantra as the chakras. It's all one energy at different frequencies or colors. The longer answer requires reading Divining Desire. ;-)
You had a pretty traditional American upbringing and yet you have spent a good part of your adult life living in Canada. How did that happen?
I fell in love with Canada as a kid when my family spent some summer holidays there. My love deepened when experiencing the Vancouver Expo in 1986. I was smitten with summers here, and still am! Winters are less wonderful.
You received a serious cancer diagnosis last year. How did that affect the writing and completion of the book?
It heightened my motivation. By then I had begun to view Divining Desire as my final teaching vehicle, my legacy project. Knowing I had a "deadline" really quickened my motivation.
You describe your encounters with a string of legendary teachers. You yourself have a long history of teaching. And you make it a point to offer the book not just as your life story but also as a compendium of teachings that you’ve found meaningful. How did you develop your capacity as a teacher? And what can you say about the role of teachers in life?
I first discovered that I had a gift for teaching as an Air Force and later civilian flight instructor. As I began discovering the incredible value I was receiving from practicing yoga and meditation, I felt a strong impetus to share those gifts with gay brothers. It gradually and organically unfolded from there to teaching sensual massage, then Tantric massage. The role of teachers seems essential to spread skills and wisdom from one culture and generation to another.
Divining Desire is available from most online retailers. For more information, see https://sequoia.wordpress.com/publishing/
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