b. Michigan, 1974
fabulist. teacher. hedonic minister. existential hedgerider.
a writer, teacher, mythmaker, and ordained minister whose work explores the intersections of pleasure, ethics, embodiment, creativity, and meaning.
i am endlessly fascinated by what people become when they no longer fear being fully themselves.
my work lives in the spaces between: where philosophy meets lived experience, where desire becomes language, where ritual becomes reflection, and where human connection redraws those borders.
i believe the things that nourish us are the things that bind us.
food. knowledge. desire.
writing
my work moves through poetry, mythology, philosophy, cultural criticism, ritual, and personal reflection. Much of it returns to a single question:
how do we become more fully ourselves while remaining responsible to the people around us?
i am the author of two collections of poetry. i studied philosophy in the 1990s, where i learned to write through blue book exams, forty-page papers, and arguments that demanded precision. one of those papers was selected for presentation at the Wisconsin Philosophical Association’s annual colloquium.
since then, my work has appeared in more than a dozen literary journals. i served as the principal writer and editor for the mythology of a surreal nocturnal carnival, and have written everything from menus and business plans to essays, rituals, and liturgies.
before becoming an educator, i spent more than three decades as a chef. i continue to work leather, study symbolism, and explore the relationship between craft, ritual, and transformation.
ministry
i am an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church and the founder of the Cyrenaian Hedonic Church, an evolving philosophical and spiritual framework centered on pleasure, embodiment, consent, responsibility, and meaning.
i offer officiation for weddings, handfastings, memorials, life celebrations, and other ceremonies, with a particular commitment to serving LGBTQIA+ and alternative communities.
within negotiated ritual and power exchange, i play as Father Ridire, a liturgical persona through which i explore hierophilia: the human impulse to seek, create, and participate in experiences of the sacred.
my work is rooted in a hedonic philosophy: the belief that attentive pleasure, beauty, ritual, devotion, and consensual power exchange can become acts of witness and transformation without requiring supernatural certainty.
it is a philosophy of presence: the belief that what we experience, cultivate, and share with others shapes who we become.
i welcome thoughtful conversation about:
- philosophy and spirituality
- poetry and creative practice
- identity and transformation
- ethical non-monogamy and community
- kink, power exchange, and consent culture
- ritual, symbolism, and meaning-making
some writings are intentionally theatrical or liturgical. others are analytical or deeply personal.
what does it mean to live deliberately, beautifully, and honestly in a fractured world?
i don’t expect agreement.
i value curiosity more than certainty.
if you’ve found your way here because you’re asking difficult questions about meaning, desire, ritual, beauty, responsibility, or becoming…
pull up a chair.
first principles
- questioning what we inherit.
- challenging what we assume sacred.
- pleasure cultivated with responsibility.
- the body as a vessel of experience and transformation.
- consent as the non-negotiable recognition of another person’s sovereignty.
The Cyrenaian Hedonic church 