Title: Spirited Bear

Gender: Male

Age: 49

Sun Sign: Virgo

Chinese Sign: Earth Boar

Location: Lutherville, MD

Spirited, fuzzy, happy bear of a Unitarian-Universalist w/ Buddhist / Mystic leanings. 

(ooh - don't be put off by Mystic - read the wikipedia article on Mysticism for a full understanding) 

Almost six month agos, I was laid off from my real estate job through no fault of my own.   I found a wonderful, challenging job with my religious denomination as a church administrator and am hoping to turn this into a life long career.  I've promised myself to spend a signifcant number of years in this particular community, learning the ropes, and deciding if church administration is the route for me or if I want to pursue ordained mininstry.  But for now, I'm just taking each day as it comes, with all it's challenges and newness, and hoping to serve the community that has hired me.  A great place - feel free to visit their website at www.pbuuc.org.  

Passions include helping people to discover their spiritual insides and how they intimately connect with work, family, other relationships, community - local, national and global.  I do this through being active in my congregation, particularly working with GLBT individuals and issues.   (feel free to take a look at http://www.uua.org/).  For those in the northern Baltimore County Area of Maryland and are looking for a spiritual home - I freely suggest my home church - Towson Unitarian-Universalist Church - http://www.towsonuuc.org/

New passions are being discovered and old passions being re-discovered.  New passions are beginning to include a comfort with my own body through healthier eating, exploring new interests, making regular room for fiber, veggies, fruits and limiting indulgences to the weekend.    Been inspired by a wonderful man who has been part of my life since December of 2006,  who is now my fiancée (we echanged engagement rings this year), who is also doing wonderful things with his health and weight loss (way to go, my sweetie !!!!)  There is a photo of Doug and I (I'm in the cowboy hat), it's my favorite!!

Enjoy working in and with the GLBT community politically and spiritually.  I think it's important that GLBT persons see themselves as potential role models and live up to their fullest, healthiest potential.  It takes time and effort, and the universe knows I've done my share of slacking when it comes to health.  But it has become an important focus in my life, and I enjoy sharing the journey with others.

A real concern for me is helping the GLBT  community to better understand itself in terms of it's common humanity with the rest of the world.   And also trying to understand where my commitment to the GLBT community needs to improve - (more personal learning and study, showing up at political functions, helping my congregation better understand issues that are faced by GLBT persons).  I  have real worries about how the gay culture has been so closely associated with promiscuity, alcohol and drugs.  Unfortunately, it is these stereotypes that get the most “airtime”, while the rest of us - who are just leading our own lives quietly - have to suffer from the indignities heaped upon us by those who think all of us are like the extremes in our community.  

I understand the fears that some folks have, and do feel that we need to call the GLBT community in accountability (particularly the behaviors of some gay males - go to any pride day celebration and their is plenty of inapporpriate behavior going on.  Guys, it's one thing to have appropriate public displays of affection - it's quite another when we are groping and fondling each other, treating each other like sexual commodities instead of the treasured huming beings that we are.   (I've seen some “pride” celebrations that are thinly disguised orgies.) 

We've become overly attached to this vision / understanding of ourselves - one that is heavily influenced by the marketing efforts of the pornography industry, and youth-oriented GLBT magazines. 

While appreciating and promotion healthy and proud self images, as well as playfulness that can come with a good sense of our own bodies, we need to be mindful of investing too much in our physical appearence, in our “sexual prowess”. 

I see a need to celebrate the sensualness of our bodies and our persons with someone special in our lives.  I see the need within individuals to appreciate the wonders of our bodies, emotions etc…..   However, i feel that the pronographic industry has taken this special part of who we are, and marketed it in a demeaning way that only profits them.  It is one thing to celebrate the sensulaity of our bodies and minds with the one special person you love.  It is quite another to give it away to anyone who comes along.   Granted, we all thirst for someone to share our deepest intimate selves with - and I remember my 20's when I just wanted SOMONE To acknowledge that I was good and wortwhile, and that sex with someone seemed like a way to do it.  Perhaps it is a right of passage with anyone who becomese sexually aware………..

That being said, I feel that a whole industry has literally taken this special sensual quality that each human being has, and used it to make a profit.  Porn cheapens who we are by reducing us to “sexual machines”, without thought or feeling for the other person who becomes an object of desire of self-fulfillment.  Real sensual love is celebration of body and spirit.   

I seek a more positive representation of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered folks - one in which what we have in common with the rest of humanity is played up more then our supposed “differences”.  One in which monogamy, committment, respect, accpetance, discipline are things that we bring to the table - and not just things that we demand from society.

At the same time, I want to help those who fear the GLBT community, to see that we are so much more then the stereotypes that seem to get all the media attention.  For me, that means being my best self - acting responsibly in public (as all humans should), and not being afraid to call the GLBT community into accoutability and challenge that values that seem so harmful, (e.g. - the explotive characteristics that appear to be intrinsic to pornography, the obsession with youth and “looking good” that possesses so many gay  men, the unsafe sexual behaviors, etc….)  We need to have public role models that show something other then the stereotypes of gay men. 

Practically - this mean being very active in my church community, being present at local GLBT events with this point of view, trying to model the kind of behavior that I think all humans are capable of, and encouraging others to do the same.  It means being a positive role model at work - being completely myself as a gay man, but showing folks that there is more to me then just my sexual orientation.

Here is a reflection by William Ellergy Channing, one of the great Unitarian-Universalists, and it sums up how I am trying to live:

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not, rich; t
o listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart;
to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently,
await occasions, hurry never;
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common–this is my symphony. (William Ellery Channing)

Well - that's just a taste of who I am - feel free to comment, if you so desire. 

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Member Since: Friday, April 21 2006

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