White Crane Journal was created in 1989 by former Jesuit Robert Barzan who was living in San Francisco. Barzan edited, published, and distributed the publication, then called White Crane Newsletter, for just over seven years. I took over publication of the Journal at the beginning of 1997. Having recently sold the gay bookstore in Austin, Kip and I had been running for, also, about seven years, we were looking for a new project. With Issue #58, I will have been editor seven years. That seems like an appropriate term.

As I pass on the stewardship, Bo Young will become White Crane's General Editor, with Dan Vera assisting him as Associate Editor. Bo Young has been a participant in this project even before Barzan passed on the editorship. Since 1998, he's been Poetry Editor and, more recently, Associate Editor. WCJ readers will remember Bo has edited a number of issues in the last few years. He and Dan did all the editing and production for the last, highly lauded, issue on Gay Priests. I have been managing the production of this current issue on Pilgrimage. Bo and Dan will be editing the Summer '03 issue on Resistance. (There's a stirring Call for Submissions for this topic on the back cover of this issue.)

The Fall issue will feature articles on Attraction. In addition to discussion of male beauty, sexual attractiveness, and psychodynamics, like Jungian anima/animus, this topic includes the subject of gaydar. (In my new book to be released by Alyson in July 03, GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe, I explore the experience of gaydar--i.e., resonating "karmically" with other's in a way that allows us to see aspects of their soul--hypothesizing this resonance may be the "real cause" of homosexuality.)

The Winter issue, #59, will be a "Best of White Crane," re-presenting articles over the last seven years. Bo and I will be working on this one together. We would certainly love to hear from readers regarding favorite past articles in this Journal. (Contributors: you're invited and welcome to recommend your own favorites; the editors would appreciate the reminders.)

The two other topics that have been announced in advance are Youth and Elders. These are the issues of impermanence and temporality. Gay people have a natural vantage on life outside normal temporality: most of us don't have children and aren't exposed to the familial influences that cause parents to proceed with maturing. Gay men are more likely to think of themselves as "eternal boys," (the puer aeternis). Most of us likely want to stay "hip," even as we get further and further from cutting edge youth counterculture. Hopefully, the Youth issue will contain contributions from younger readers helping to explain what it's like to be a young gay man today and, especially, what it means to be a young gay spiritual seeker. Youth might also be understood to include the idea of "spiritual virginity." Meister Eckhart used the image of the "virgin" to mean the soul experiencing life fresh and new at every moment. Not an image of sexual repression, spiritual virginity is a metaphor for innocence and vitality in the present moment. The Elders issue will contain discussion of the role/identity of community elder and homage to some of the men and women who hold that role currently. With the recent passing of Harry Hay and Morris Kight this subject has a new resonance for many of us.

I asked Bo to make a few comments for this and he responded. "I am really looking forward to growing White Crane with Dan Vera's assistance and with the on-going support of the readership which has always been the core of White Crane's genius, if I can be so bold as to use that word. Dan Vera and I first met in Harry Hay's SexMagic Workshops at the Wolf Creek Sanctuary in Oregon and also have shared experiences as poetry editors, Dan for RFD and myself here at White Crane, which has occasioned an on-going conversation for some time. Dan's work with, and writing for, the Reconciling Project (an outreach to LGBT people) at the United Methodist Church was insightful and challenging and I anticipate he will bring all of these talents to bear on the content and direction of White Crane.

"For myself, I am hoping to see White Crane grow to include more and different voices and ideas as we move into the 21st Century. And I have some very specific goals in mind. We will be looking to establish White Crane as a 501(c)(3), i.e. tax-exempt, publication which will enable us to solicit funding and support from foundations and interested donors who would then derive tax-deductible benefits from supporting White Crane. The objective is to ensure White Crane's continuing survival as well as to begin paying writers and artists, even nominally. White Crane has offered intellectual and spiritual sustenance for more than a decade now and has managed to thrive without remuneration for its editors, writers, and other contributors. Nevertheless, the concept of 'right livelihood' and supporting the work of writers is of equal importance and we hope, in some small way, to be able to support writers, artists, scholars and contributors in real world ways."

As I pass White Crane to Bo Young, continuing my path as a gay community service provider a slightly different direction (one time is forcing me to look anyway), I'm turning my attention toward "gay retirement."

Oh, not retiring from being gay, of course, but retiring from work and career and identity of adult life, something all of us will do eventually. Out gay men are beginning to reach retirement age. Some of us are finding ways to "retire" early, understanding--perhaps with specifically gay per-spective--that work and career is only a small part of experience and that we need time in our lives for adventures, for travel, for contribution, for volunteer-ism, and for finding alternative ways of living. We're going to be needing to structure our lives so we are surrounded with friends and compatriots and access to gay "assisted living facilities" sometime in the future. Who'd want to have to go into a "straight" nursing home? We need new models for such services for ourselves.

I come out of the Northern Californian gay counterculture of the 1970s. Born two days before Hiroshima, I'm part of the very beginnings of the Babyboom Generation and lived in California all through the 70s. In those days we dreamed of retiring someday--"after the revolution"--with hippie friends to utopian colonies in the woods. Thirty years later many of those friends have died. And we've all moved on from being hippies. But the utopian dreams still live on. The Radical Faeries have established a style of utopian community and sanctuary in several locations in the U.S. Some of us may "retire" to such sanctuaries. Some of us may be looking for more "upscale" versions. (There's a project, for instance, announced on the Internet at www.ourtownvillages.com, to create gay and lesbian rural and urban "villages.") Some of us, myself among them, learned a vision of alternative living in monastic life. I wonder if we could somehow form "freelance monasteries," keeping the best parts of common life--eco-simplicity and cameraderie-- without the religious and authoritarian (and anti-sexual) structures.

I would be interested in hearing from White Crane readers beginning to think about and plan how to adapt their own dreams to today's--and tomorrow's--world. [My personal email address is tobyjohnso@aol.com.]

White Crane Journal is gearing up for the next seven years of interesting, provocative, and certainly non-stereotypical thinking about gay experience and gay men's roles in the spiritual evolution of planet Earth. Please continue to support this effort by subscribing (and renewing promptly, please), telling friends and strangers about the existence of a journal of gay men's spirituality, and by submitting articles, poetry, artwork, and book reviews to share your experiences of your own spiritual identity.