24 Dance the Dance of the Gay Shaman Youth!

I’m signed up to a web based feed entitled Gay Wisdom. It sends a regular email containing some gay friendly and affirming spiritual reflection.

As with most things I get a bit enthusiastic about these days, what starts off being genuinely stimulating very rapidly becomes a bit of a chore! So emails start to clog up the in-box unread and then become a reminder of how I’m not doing what I was initially very keen to do and then it’s time to clear your in-box and you’re deleting things that you haven’t even read yet.

Anyway- a couple of days ago I opened up one of these emails randomly and started reading. It was an extract from the writings of some gay author [Mark Thompson ‘Gay Myth and Meaning’]. He was reflecting on how, as gay men, we miss out on our initiation into adulthood because of a dislocation that occurs in our relationships with our fathers. There is indeed a stage during the development of most father-gay son bonds when the father realises that he’s got something other than a ‘ standard issue’ boy. At this point most fathers start to distance themselves not knowing how best to relate. Mothers and women generally tend to do a little bit better in relating to gay boys that is, of course until the hormones kick in. Then most of territorial heterosexual womankind- apart from mother- can feel slightly unsettled by the presence of a male-loving creature in their close vicinity. How confident can they be that their own man won’t be drawn towards this strange creature? How would it be possible to compete if he were to be?

So in this way older men fail to bond with gay boys and fail to introduce them to the usual ‘rights of passage’ into adulthood. Similarly older women subliminally spurn and reject sexually active gay young men.

The author was urging us to recognise this cultural vacuum we find ourselves in and to actively correct it by nurturing each other and by reclaiming the identity that more primitive but maybe more enlightened cultures bestow on their gay members- that of seer and shaman.

It is an interesting idea and, I suppose to a large extent that is the role I have found myself adopting in my own life. But, in a way, it is much easier for an elderly male to be recognised as having some wisdom to offer. I believe that the Western World could become a much more exciting place if it’s gay youth could rise up as spiritual advisors to the rest of us!

So, young men, if you would like to address the way in which you have been developmentally neglected by the older men and women in your life, STOP TRYING TO FIT IN BECAUSE THER ISN’T A SPACE FOR YOU.

Instead find a spiritual teaching which transcends the petty homophobic ranting of most of our conventional churches and start to dance the dance of the gay shaman youth and watch a space appear which embraces and affirms you in your unique special-ness.