I'm adding a special extra Spirituality post today.

I actually wrote this up a few years ago for a group I was facilitating on Magical thought.

I do a lot of work with Totemic spirits. I first met Bear when I went to a sun wheel in New York state back in 1984.

My shamanic teacher and two friends came with me to this weekend Native American festival and we were camping during it.

At the beginning of the festival I had realized I forgot my money and only ad a few dollars in my pocket (Thankfully meals and such were provided.). I was feeling a bit foolish but since I didn’t need for food or anything else I decided to buy myself a quartz crystal. I bought a small shard and it hummed lovingly in my hand. I knew this would be a wonderful time.

We started the festival a few minutes later with a circle of us holding hands and chanting around the Medicine wheel. As we started to channel the energy from one to another I went dead inside and got the feeling I was not wanted there.

I panicked and joined the hands of the two people I was holding hands with and ran into the woods crying. I was probably about a quarter mile away from the fest when I stopped and sat down on a log in the woods.

I took the crystal I had just purchased and said to the Great Spirit “If I’m supposed to be here and this is my path show me! I need a sign!”

I went quiet inside all of a sudden and walked back to the “Taj Mahal” (The tent my friend Eric and I were using was something like a 12 man tent. It was huge and the people around us named it the Taj.)

I lay back on my sleeping bag and listened to the sounds around me. Then it got surreal…

I was looking over to where I could see the shadows of people passing by on the side of the tent when I saw her/him there was a huge golden glowing bear image. I could see right through it but it was there none the less. As I sat there unable to believe what was happening I heard Annabelle (My teacher) and Shelly walking past the tent. I said aloud “Annabelle! Could you look in here please?”

She popped her head in and looked directly at where I was looking and said “Joe This is between the two of you. Just remember what I’ve told you about spirits.” And she shut the tent flap and walked away FAST!

Knowing that this was my destiny I got on my knees (the tent was still to low to stand in for my 6’2” frame and crawled over to the bear. He/she opened it’s arms and we melted into one another. From that moment in my life I have always known I was to be a healer and walk the path of BEAR.

And yes this is the true story with no deviations.

My 20’s or How did my life get so wonderful and so crappy all at the same time?

After high school I drifted, I was severely depressed, Mom was dying from cancer, we had no money for me to go to college even if I had the test scores, and worst of all, the D&D group had broken up leaving me with no life whatsoever. Eric was dating a chic named Sheila so I became a 3^rd wheel and I was inwardly starting to want to suck a cock for the first time. I still couldn’t get myself to say the gay word to myself. I was frustrated and needed something to distract me.

Enter an old school friend Shelly. She had gotten involved with a group of gamers that was connected with Temple University’s Ambler campus. Called the Adventurers of Ambler they were just what I needed. I instantly developed a crush on the gang’s main instigator named Jim. Eric and I were invited to a party thrown at one of the members houses and the first thing that happened as I walked through the door was Jim planting a big wet drunk off his ass kiss on me. I honestly thought I would pass out right then and there. At the party I wound up dancing with this beautiful woman and (I think) we made out a little but the night is very blurry to me now.

The A of A was the best group of people I could ever have hoped to meet. I still love many of them with all my heart and soul. Barb, Tom, Bob, Jay, there are a lot of people. I placed myself as a sort of yenta setting up members and helping others with their relationships. I figured it was the closest I would ever get to having a relationship of my own, I should have known I wasn’t fooling anyone when Kurt came to me one day and slyly said, “You know Joe it’s strange, they say 10% of people are gay and yet there seem to not be any in the A of A.” I should point out before I tell you what I answered that Kurt pressed so many of my buttons and all in good ways, Tall furry, bearded, yum! Anyway, I said to him “Yeah it’s weird” and left it at that. I really wanted to ask him if he was coming out to me but I was too chicken.

During this time Annabelle and I started working as Tarot readers at the Pennsylvania Ren faire. One year (1985) was the strangest n record for me. My sexuality was driving me crazy. I needed actual physical contact with some one. All of my friends were seeing people and I was so lonely I just couldn’t stand it any more. I had to come out of the closet. I called Annabelle, Eric, Tom and Barb and asked them to meet me at Barb’s house. I told them I had something to tell them. We all got together and after a lot of hemming and hawing I came out to them. I expected them to disown me, after all that what I heard would happen from movies like Boys in the Band and such. They all were very supportive and told me they all knew for a long time and wondered when I was going to figure it out. (They actually called each other after I had called them and figured what I was going to tell them ahead of time the bitches.)

Enter the newly out Joe Leven, not much different than the ‘straight’ one but relieved and happier than before. Trust me when my friends can tell you the closet door shattered on my way out. Of course the very first thing to happen to me was a woman fell in love with me. Mary worked at the faire and had developed a crush on me before I had come out. At the same time a really hot guy from New York named Marc started hanging around my stall and flirting with me. He just made me melt and the attention he lavished on me was needed at the time. Nothing happened between us that year during faire but after faire had closed down we met and I’ll not go into details as my family may be reading this but I lost my virginity with a male. (Once again I cannot use the term man with marc, he was an asshole as you are about to see). The relationship, if it’s what it can be called was one sided, I did everything and Marc just took. It was a massive disaster leaving me hating myself and all people. It also made me want to hurt someone, to USE someone, and there was poor smitten Mary. Now I never intended to hurt anyone. I just needed to feel loved by someone and Mary wanted to love me.

I should have known, my gut had told me to stay away from her from the first time I met her, but I was stupid and hurt from Marc, so Mary and I went on a date. That date became one of the worst nights of my young life as she decided at the end of it that we were going to get married. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Mary and I lived together for 6 months, in that time she was able to destroy my relationship with my Mom and many of my friends, she did this knowingly. I was caught up in a nightmare and not even Eric seemed to see it. I was so depressed that all I did was sleep and work, literally. Eventually Mary made the mistake of physically hurting a friend of mine to keep her away from me and I exploded. In the middle of a crowd I told her the wedding was off and I was leaving her. She accused me of sleeping with a male friend of mine and that was that. I lost many of my friends including Annabelle who had wanted me to marry Mary. I moved back home to my family with my pride and tail between my legs but just in time to be there for my mother’s passing. Yup, 26 was a bad year for me.

Years later I found out from a mutual friend that Mary, Annabelle, Tom and some other friend of Mary’s tried to curse me using black magic. Mary’s mom died that night out of nowhere.

After Mom passed I decided to try the Sterling Forest Faire for a summer and met Mike, Mike who it turned out wanted to use me to get in good with a family I was friends with at that faire because he was apparently a member of NAMBLA and wanted their preteen boys. Yes I had lousy taste in men. That was the end of my relationship attempts until I turned 30.

One very cool thing that happened during my 20’s was Jeff. He was a kid who had gotten involved with one of the games I played in at Lehigh University. One day one of the players made a really bad homophobic statement and I countered with coming out to those people who didn’t know already. Jeff looked thunder struck and asked me to come outside the room for a minute. He then at the tender are of 13 told me he was gay and wanted to thank me for coming out and standing up to the asshole. I became his mentor in many ways and even his mother liked that that he had a strong male role model as his dad had died a few years prior. Jeff was like my son and I love him dearly even though like all parents he can’t be bothered with me now that he’s an adult.

Ok next up is Moving to Philly, Jim and Meeting the love of all my life John.

My family, my spirituality, and the weirdness that is my life.

This is a brief interlude from the gay side of my life. If i'm to be truthful in one aspect of my life I must be truthful in ALL aspects. You have been warned.

From an early age I was very different from the other kids. This has nothing to do with my homosexuality and all to do with my being a psychic intuitive.

My Mom used to tell me stories of when I was a little kid and would walk up to strangers and tell them things about themselves that I couldn’t possibly know. I remember one time where I told a woman at a department store that she had spots all over her chest. The lady started to cry as she had been diagnosed with lung cancer only days before. I never really gave it much thought until my kindergarten teacher asked me why I would draw all the colors around the people I drew. I told he it was the lights and she looked at me like I was nuts but it was the 60’s and people were starting to learn about auras and other psychic phenomena. That’s when I learned that others didn’t see the lights I could. I tried to keep it all back because I wanted to be normal, thinking if I was normal people would leave me alone.

I was never much of a prognosticator but when it did happen I would listen, The prime example of this was the day my Dad died.  Woke up with a bad feeling and couldn’t shake it. The feeling got worse as the day went on and I eventually knew I had to be away from the house that night. Something bad would happen and I wouldn’t ever recover if I was home. I called my Grandmom and begged to be allowed to sleep over her house, she relented after in started crying even though it was a school night. I couldn’t tell her what was making me so scared as I didn’t know myself, it was just a feeling of dread that I couldn’t shake although it was far less once I was out of the house. I awoke in the middle of the night to see my father and another man who I learned later was his father walking into my Grandmom’s studio apartment and wake her then vanish. She woke with a scream and maybe 15 minutes later my Mom and her brother, my uncle George, were at the door to tell us that my dad had died. He was watching a Phillies game on the TV while eating a hot dog, they scored a home run and he sucked the dog down his wind pipe. The only other person there was my sister Jean who was too small to do anything to help him but call an ambulance. Mom was working at the time and Cathy was at a friend’s house. Dad had died and I knew something bad would happen. I was blaming myself and was inconsolable. dad and I had always had a distant kind of love. He was much more comfortable around Cathy but we had started making headway when I started playing basketball, which I hated but I would have done anything for him.

I went up to my parish priest and asked him why my dad had to die and he gave the old boiler plate “God wanted him by his side” line. I refused to accept that and kept asking why that was, eventually father Brown said to me “To get away from you. Now leave me alone.” I have never hated anyone like I hated him. Needless to say that was the end of my time in the Catholic Church.

Time goes on though and wounds heal as much as they can. I shut my talents down. Refused to see or hear anything outside of the normal realm and felt some relief with that. Then I got hit upside the head when I was 17.

My Mother loved me and resented me I think. She was overly protective and really ran my life as much as she was able, although I found out many years later that she considered me her favorite and even told my sister that. When I was 17 she was diagnosed with colon cancer, something she had had for a long time without letting the family know about as she didn’t want to worry us. I was devastated by the news but thankfully had Eric and a few other friends to lean on. Mom held on for 8 years before she passed, it was not a pleasant experience those last few years.

When I was in my very early 20’s I met a girl named Annabelle and she helped me to reconnect with my gifts and how to better control them. Through her I learned to listen to the world in a very different way, she opened me up to so much and for that I will always be grateful, even if she betrayed me and abandoned me when I needed my friends the most. But that’s a tale for my next post.

School Days, school days, how I hated you.

I’m not really sure how often I should post so I’m winging it for now, but on with the School years.

My sister Cathy was a hellion (but always for a just cause) and my sister Jean was the good girl. Me? I was really only thought of as the school punching bag or the “weird” kid.

From an early age I was the kid that was picked on at school. Every day was bad and some days were worse than that. I honestly thought I was cursed. The near daily torture from the seemingly endless school bullies at least made me aware of just how different I was compared to everyone around me. I couldn’t turn my back on others, some would see that as a weakness but it was strength for me. I always knew I was a part of something greater when I helped others.

As for the whole gay issue, I think I was 8 or 9 when I started to feel “different”. I went through puberty really early having started at age 10 and really getting my secondary characteristics at 12. It made me a target because I looked much older than I was. Heck I was shaving at 13 and started going bald at 14. I however am digressing from the “Gay” issue.

A few months before my dad died I had started getting these feeling for other boys. There was a kid named Michael in my class that I absolutely adored but he was a jock and never spoke to me, but he at least never hit me or called me names so that was enough. He was the first in a line of guys I would infatuate over without thinking of sex as a component. I have never been an overly sexual being, emotion and spiritual bonding is what makes a relationship for me not sex, so I would throw myself into friendships with guys as a way to be with them.

I was 13 when I met the most influential male in my life up until I met my husband John. I was a huge comic book geek (still am) as a kid and my mother knowing I had no friends worried I would turn out even more odd than I already was so one night at her single parents meeting she asked the group what to do. One of the other mothers who was recently divorced said she had the same problem with her son and they decided to introduce us. That act of kinship between concerned mothers is probably the reason I never committed suicide.

Enter into my life Eric, my brother from another mother, and in many ways my first true love. Just the simple act of having someone I could talk to was enough to keep me from going over the edge. As kids we were inseparable, talking on the phone for hours, together every chance we could be. Eric unfortunately went to a different school and lived a distance away so it was hard to get to see him as much as we wanted to so the phone was our lifeline. I think because I had him in my life and my own reduced sexual urges I didn’t feel the need to be with anyone sexually for a long time. In fact I was 17 before I really started the need for sexual release and that was with a girl.

Around age 16 I started to feel attracted to women, which was a relief as I was beginning to think I might be gay. I had a massive crush on my gym teacher (a tall muscular blond bear of a man) and when I started “dating” Debbie I thought well maybe I’m not as screwed up as I thought until a group of us were all at a friends place and we were playing strip poker. The guy one of my friends was seeing had lost everything and was sitting across from me naked. I couldn’t take my eyes off his cock. I think everyone noticed, and I was mortified. I broke things off with Debbie and decided living as a hermit may be my only option. My Grandmother was worried I would turn out “funny” because I had no strong male presence in my life so she kept pushing my uncles Jack and Richard on me. Uncle Dick is a Catholic brother and a great guy, he is also exactly what I look for in a man. Spiritual, sensitive, furry, he is the whole package and while he is adopted he’s still my uncle and so off limits even if he were gay, so I had some very interesting emotional rollercoaster rides when we were together. My Uncle Jack was going through his own physical issues with a run of cancers so I didn’t want to burden him with my problems, besides he would have given me a “god loves you come back to the church” talk and I would never do that.

When I was 16 Eric and I found Dungeons and Dragons and a group had formed at my school. Thus entered my second love, Gaming! Between Eric and D&D my school years passed and I survived without doing harm to myself or others, although many, many, Orcs did see a brutal end. It would be 8 years from my first sexual encounter with a woman until I met Marc and had my first sexual connection with a male. I would like to say ‘Man” but Marc hadn’t lived up to that word.

Technical difficulties.

I'm trying to link my Youtube page to this. I guess I can't.

Ok lets see if this worked. It DID It Did work!

My early life now that the introduction is out of the way.

The 1960's and 70's were a weird and wonderful time to grow up. So many important things happened, man had reached out into space, the civil rights movement had tremendous victories, and of course there was STONEWALL.

I remember watching news footage of the riots along with my father and thinking how strange it was that these people felt they had to fight because they seemed like white people and to my 6 year old mind only black people had to fight for anything like that. I also remember feeling a strange kinship with them that I couldn't explain. I only knew one "out" gay person as a kid, my father had a friend from the army that I called Uncle Ronnie, but my mother would never let me be alone with him and never explained why. Eventually i think my mothers dislike drove him away. I need to point out that Ronnie was always just a great guy. he never tried anything with me and  if he was my father's friend that says a lot about his character, mom was kind of close minded.

The next real contact I had with a "known" gay person was my sister Cathy's friends Jim and Andy. I was going through puberty at the time and so my own sexuality was starting to come into focus left me very confused. I understand now that what I was feeling was my attraction for them but at the time I read it as them wanting to have sex with me and it scared me into being a bit of an ass.  

The only other thing I remember was that supposedly in an apartment complex near my house was a guy who "liked little kids" and we were to steer well clear of those apartments.

Next up... The School Years (bring a blanket and flashlight kids, were going into some very scary territory there.

In the interest of fairness and open dialog

I guess I'll start this out by telling you about myself.
The Early Years
I grew up in a lower middle class suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA. The youngest of three kids I have two older sisters, mom raised us as my father died when I was ten years old. Dad was a great guy and loved by everyone he met, He was raised Roman Catholic from a largish family who all loved each other very much. Mom was shy and very conservative having grown up privileged and Southern Baptist. Other important people in my live as a child and young adult were my paternal Grandmother who loved me dearly but seemed to know I would turn out gay. She actually told me once not to use the word pretty. "only girls use that word. Men don't even notice these things". I was describing a field of flowers at the time. My uncle "Brother" Richard a catholic brother and track coach for the Christian school he worked at, A great guy who I never really gave to much time to, mainly because I didn't want any other man in my life but my dad and he was already gone. The only other person who had a major impact on my life was my best friend Eric, and well get into that later.