The Gate-Keeper

How opening a gate for another person changes them and can change the world!

Photo by Joana Abreu on Unsplash

All of us are looking for a hand in the darkness to guide us through and forward. All of us need someone to open a gate to us.  We all want to be invited inside. There are no exceptions. This is not something that an extrovert longs for more than an introvert. To be human is to be wanted and to be on the inside. To be human is to excavate the desire to be seen.

One of the residual effects of the global pandemic is our growing sense of isolation and loneliness.  When the world shut-down, we became the new “shut-in” generation. Now, we’re discovering that we might be the “shut-down” generation, post COVID.  It got complicated and challenging for Gwen and me because, we moved to a new city and state to re-set our lives. The “re-set” for us was put on ice because we could not connect; could not make new friends; and could not find a sense of community. Rather than a hopeful re-set, loneliness and isolation became our twin companions.  Out of that muck and mire time came a valuable lesson for us. What saved our lives in these years of the re-set was the appearance of three people that showed up; deeply welcomed us and helped us find a sense of belonging and connection.

What saved our lives was three different human beings who became, Gate-Keepers.

A Gate-Keeper is a person who stands at the gate and opens the gate and welcomes you to enter. A Gate-Keeper is a human being that assumes the role of hospitality in all of its simplicities and extravagances. A Gate-Keeper gestures and makes someone feel wanted. A Gate-Keeper is a person who takes the risk of welcoming the stranger, in spite of their own network of friends and family, because in some deep and soulish way, the Gate-Keeper knows that all of us are strangers, looking to be included. A Gate-Keeper knows that “home” is the space we share together. And, it is their intention of making a sense of home with you.

I am talking about something more than a person who shows hospitality. That is really far, far, too simplistic in our experience. I like the word “hospitality” though.  The word “hospital” is in the core of the word “hospitality.”  To be hospital is to show care.  But, in such dire and dark times of a massive life-set, an apple pie being delivered to the door doesn’t save someone’s soul—at least not mine. But, being a Gate-Keeper does!

Gate-Keepers open the gates for someone on the outside to come into the inside. Gate-Keepers are alert, astute and aware that outsiders need to be welcomed and wanted.  Gate-Keepers are not ones, who simply open new geographical spaces and places for us. They also open doors of insight and awareness, emotional connection and moments of epiphanies.

In our new world of political dividedness; racial division and  emotional isolation, there are more gates, boundaries and walls than ever before.  We tend to look at life, people and beliefs in such binary ways these days. You’re either “in” or your “out”. You’re for “him” or you’re in that camp. You’re liberal or left wing or conservative or right-wing. But, for the one who is a “Gate-Keeper”, there is another term that motivates them. It is the need to let the stranger inside. They keep opening the gates. It is called acceptance.  In my case, I did not have to show credentials of being in this camp or that camp.  But what was obvious to the Gate-Keeper, is that I was the outsider. I was new. I was the unknown. I was the pilgrim who just landed on what appeared to be foreign soil and wanted to be let in.

One of the great challenges is for us is to not forget that there really are people on the outside that want to be on the inside.  When we were all in lock-down and in survival mode, we may have lost our footing to remember the outsider. 

Remember when it was YOU who was new?  You moved; took a new job; started a new school or program, moved to a new city and you start with a blank page.  Gwen and I had that experience two times in the past three years.  Both of our attempts to start somewhere new—with a whole different crowd; in a different part of the country and leave the world we knew and loved helped us realize our own need for a Gate-Keeper. We needed another person to open a door and invite us inside.

Three Gate-Keepers in Recent Years Saved My Life

After decades of a life in Colorado, Gwen and I moved to North Carolina to re-set our life. We chose to move back to our “home-town”—which resulted in a wilderness time for me. I had expectations and illusions of starting a whole new life that just…well, it just didn’t happen for me. We both tried hard to enter back in. Honestly, it is one of the hardest things we have ever done. To start over in a place you thought you knew and with folks you “thought” would help you enter met with tremendous disappointment and disillusionment. As I look at it now, “post-Covid” (are we?) and post-shut down, is that I clearly and distinctly remember how settled everyone in the new city/church/neighborhood was. They seemed to have their circles, friends, churches and favorite walking paths, etc, etc. What we wanted was to be “included”—what we got was something different.

One of the best gifts we were given, in our trying to land in a new place and start a new life, was a couple who took on the role of the Gate-Keeper.

Leighton and Jeanie became Gate-Keepers for us in our season of trying to resettle. They were friends from an earlier life.  But somehow, they knew how to be; what to do and how to act towards us—the newbies. Leighton called me upon our arrival back in Charlotte and invited us to dinner within our first month.  I specifically remember his warm words on the phone, “Steve, Jeanie and I want to take you and Gwen out for dinner and welcome you to Charlotte—we want to ‘welcome you home.” I’ll never forget that feeling of being ‘welcomed.’ It was a soul tonic. Just the welcome and being welcomed broke ice and melted icebergs of aloneness in me. We went to dinner and in the course of a couple of hours, we found a tender and warm sense of a heart connection with them. They opened their hearts—their own gates—and we opened ours— gates, and started a circle of trust in friendship.

Further, Leighton introduced me to his own friends—people he sensed and intuited that I would have something in common with. He held me in his thoughts and as people came to mind in his own sphere of friendships, he’d text, call or email me saying, “Steve, the more I listen to you, you need to meet ‘this person’ or ‘that person’, because you two have so much in common.”

It all left me knowing I mattered; that I was not forgotten; that connections were possible.  He opened the gates of potential connection and possible friendship for me.  I’d follow up; taking the initiative with these brand new acquaintances —unsure of precisely why Leighton felt I needed to meet them. As I entered this new time of transition, COVID descended upon us all and the shut-down did its work of shutting down my honest attempts and brave efforts to find new friends. That was a time that many gates slammed shut for most of us.

During the time of shut-down, these two Gate-Keepers invited us to come over to their home and sit with them on their back porch. There we’d sit. We read poems. We talked about God. We talked about politics. We talked about anything and everything. We told our stories. We told each other secrets—things that we had not shared with others. The Celtics have a term for a deep friendship that is reciprocal and life giving. It is called: Anam Cara and it means “soul friend.” A Gate-Keeper is not just one who opens tangible gates. There is the deep sense of sharing, back-and-forth dialogue that brings a deep relief and sense of bond. Anam-Cara’s are connected—and the Gate-Keeper seeks to connect the unconnected.

Jeanie, became a Gate-Keeper for me because she always asked me questions and sat patiently awaiting for me to respond. She pursued my soul. She wanted to know me—to really know me. The more she asked—the more I shared.  Her questions were like doors that were to be open and walked through. Her questions were invitations to talk in the deep end of the pool—that place where one loses their footing and feels suspended but held and held in love and acceptance.. Her interest and acceptance of me was like an oasis of healing. She did not forget what I told her. She’s bring up what I had said on our last visit. “Steve, where are you now in light of what you told us last week?”  She held my story in her heart and seemed to sort of treasure my story as if what I was telling her actually had value and worth. I felt seen. I felt heard. I felt known and I still do to this day.

Gate-Keepers somehow recognize the dignity, worth and essence of the one before them. They use patience, charity, compassion and understanding to allow the stranger time to feel safe, wanted and welcomed.

C. S. Lewis has said it best and his words here are gate-keeping words to give understanding, dignity and honor to anyone and everyone who aspires to be a Gate-Keeper:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

The Gate-Keeper senses the weight of Glory in the outsider and of course, does what love does,—-opens the gates and welcomes, welcomes and welcomes some more.

Sadly this is so rare in our world today. In our time in Charlotte, Gwen and I were invited to meet another couple for lunch set up by the pastor of a church we were attending. We initially thought we might have much in common with this couple. The woman called herself a “spiritual director”—a title and role, we know about—so we went to have lunch. We went expectant. We left devastated. What resulted was a massive indigestion, of not only lunch, but a total catastrophe in what I thought would be a two-way—a reciprocal conversation. She did all the talking—all the talking. All-of- it, for two hours. We were not asked one question—NADA. Nothing. We walked away in despair, wondering how in the world could a human being, claiming to be a spiritual director, and be so unaware of how to really have a basic conversation. It was not dialogue. It was monologue and it was offensive. It was offensive because we were not seen; not given dignity; not listened to—not invited to show up at the lunch table. She was not a Gate-Keeper.

As Gate-Keepers, Leighton and Jeanie invited us to their favorite places for dinner, lunch and farmer markets. They showed us their favorite places and spaces. Our inner need was to get oriented to a new, massive city –one that simply was not the place we left decades earlier.

Another Gate-Keeper Shows Up for Us.

Even with such wonderful Gate-Keepers, we still found it hard to settle in and find roots. Gwen and I felt restless in Charlotte, for many reasons. We both wanted something other than what we thought.  To make life work for the two of us—we would need to uproot our shallow roots and discern a more life-giving place for us to live and to live well.

What resulted, was a pilgrimage to search, discern and explore another place. I’ve written about this in earlier posts, so look back if you’re not familiar with this.  What happened, is that, in what can only be called, the sheer grace of God, we met another Gate-Keeper in Brevard, North Carolina who stood at the gate of Brevard; welcomed us in; invited us to their church; invited us over for multiple times of sharing meals together; helped us unpack our boxes; told us which doctors to get; which dentists to get and which restaurants to enjoy.  This Gate-Keeper’s name is Martha. She is a person who we were friends with before we were married. She attended our wedding, but we had not seen Martha since our wedding day, in 1980. But, time for a Gate-Keeper, is not what matters. Hospitality matters. Opening doors matters. Love matters.

What matters to a Gate-keeper is helping the stranger and making them feel wanted; helping them by extending a sense of welcome to them.  In our first time to re-connect with Martha I texted her and said we were coming to Brevard to house hunt and would she and her husband like to meet us for a happy hour drink. She responded back and said, “We’d love to…but…we are going to our church’s contemplative service at 5pm. Why don’t you join us at the church at 5.” We did, and we have not visited another church sense. We found a “home” because one Gate-Keeper invited us into their home church. She welcomed us. She opened a gate. Our Gate-Keeper somehow signaled, a few of her own friends, and encouraged them to invite us over and get to know us.  For the first six months of our time in our new town, there was rarely a week that someone did not invite us into their home for coffee, lunch or dinner. We marveled at this kind of welcome. Actually, we relished in it. It was medicinal in the deepest way we ever could imagine.  We were drawn in—and in the being drawn in, we have a circle of friends now, that is life-giving.

Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk and spiritual writer has said, “We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another. The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image.”  Merton is right. A Gate-keeper chooses to take the risk of love—the risk of extending love—the invitation to pursue the who who does not fit in and help them fit in—to help them belong.

To me, the power of Merton’s words are an invitation for all of us to become Gate-Keepers; to become people who will risk love; who will give up on changing someone to believe like we might believe; or just accepting people who think just like we do. The Gate-Keeper, Thomas Merton is describing doesn’t twist or change people in an effort to re-shape them or fix them. The Gate-Keeper chooses to just love and let love bring what love brings: healing, connection and community.

May this become so for everyone who is an outsider!

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In recent weeks, I’ve been working on a shorter way to describe the role of the Gate-Keeper that how I just expressed it above. I’ve written a poem, called, “The Gate-Keeper.” This poem is about all who are “Gate-Keepers” but who may have never used this term to describe the kind of love that offer.

It’s just so interesting that one of the metaphors, Jesus offers those who want a whole different way of life—those who are seeking to “re-set” their own lives, is the image of being a gate or door. Jesus said he was one—a Gate-Keeper. This poem is about all who are and aspire to be Gate-Keepers and in my way, to thank them for being one!

My poems on Substack are offered to those who choose to support my work with a gift of support. In a way, your support in this way is like being a Gate-keeper to me because your support keeps opening the door here and tells me that I am welcomed to write my poems and that you actually are interested in them. It’s up to you to do this or not but as you can and do, I so, so appreciate it and welcome it. Thank you.

Here’s the poem for the “Paid Subscribers” and if you’re not one, here’s my welcome to become one. And if you can’t do the $5 subscription, just tell us at info@pottersinn.com and I’ll be the Gate-Keeper for you.