Almost by accident I enter the World Pride and Power Conference in Los Angeles at the end of February, a world of queer identified folks, mostly of African descent. I came in my capacity both as a woman of transgendered experience as well as a teacher of Mindfulness and Personal Transformation. I shared a platform with Malidoma Some as well as numerous women and men of extraordinary personal and spiritual power. My friend and student Queen who first invited me to attend this conference really is a queen it turns out, a priestess trained in the ecstatic Yoruba tradition.
Malidoma describes himself as a gatekeeper, and invites those of us there who choose, to describe ourselves as gatekeepers too. As a straight man, he speaks of how queer/gay/twin-spirit same-sex loving people are and have been the gatekeepers between the spirit world, the world of the ancestors, the Earth, and the everyday world we know. He has suffered stigmatization and personal attacks both in the US and in his native Africa for doing so.
What is a gatekeeper? Someone who guides, guards, shows the way, keeps the way safe. Someone who knows the way, and who is comfortable moving into the unknown. A gatekeeper protects the integrity of the passage, defines it, explains it, hides it reveals it. Plays. Is a trickster, a healer. The gatekeeper is a map maker and a storyteller. Someone who knows that all maps are real for the one who travels by them, and that no map is fully accurate for one who seeks the truth.
Is the gatekeeper the counterpart of the modern coach, consultant, healer, therapist. Perhaps. That and something more, holding integrity with a higher level view, a higher perspective. a view that includes an awareness of deep time, the immanent presence of the ancestors and the future generations - in our bones, blood, though, and actions. I was surprised, honored, very much at home, to be included. Thanks goes also to another friend, Lawrence Ellis of Paths to Change, who did so much to organize and make the conference possible.
