Imternational Two Spirit Gathering

Pause, pray, then fly

Healing One, grant me not so much to demand everything from myself as to let others help me; nor to expect others to cure me as to my own part towards getting better; grant me not so much as to seek escape, as to face myself and learn the depths of your love.

For it is in being uncertain and not in control that we find true faith, in knowing the limits of mind and body, that we find wholeness of spirit, and in passing through death that we find life that lasts forever.

Amen.

For passengers, all it takes is a boarding pass. Services are Sunday, with Catholic Masses at 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. The interfaith service begins at 9:30 a.m. The prayer room is open from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily.

To find them, go to airport's main atrium near Security Checkpoint B. If you're heading away from ticketing, look for the Carolina Pit Barbecue and Cinnabon. Take stairs to the next floor. The auditorium that holds the services is to your left. The prayer room is down the walkway to the right. There's also a terrace, rocking chairs included, with a view of the atrium and planes.

All found time between the ticket counters and their takeoffs to climb 26 steps just past the Cinnabon in the airport's main atrium to practice their faiths.

"It is unbelievable," Steve Conti said afterward, gathering his luggage to catch an 11:30 flight. "Either we don't make church today or we have to go late tonight at home. A 30-minute Mass, and to get something out of it, fantastic."

The worship services at Charlotte/Douglas are nothing new. But the airport's larger spiritual footprint certainly is.

Sacred Rights of the International Two Spirit Gathering

Beyond the bathroom doors, men and women dance around a drum in more traditional costume—feathers, fox pelts, moccasins, beads, and bells. They’re all here for the 20th annual International Two Spirit Gathering, a celebration of and for those who feel they carry both male and female spirits.

In late August 2008, some 85 Native lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from three dozen tribes in Canada and the United States traveled to the Audubon Center of the North Woods, 90 miles north of Minneapolis.

There, communing under the tall pines, they would sit in a sweat lodge, pray together at the sacred fire, engage in a water ceremony, and dance at the powwow. They would listen to a mother talk about her son’s struggle with coming out, hear the results of a groundbreaking health study, and receive a blessing from an elder.

They would also watch Sanchez—in full drag, lip-synching his version of “I Kissed a Girl”—win the event’s annual talent contest.

“We want people who face difficulties in their day-to-day lives to be able to stop and breathe,” says Richard LaFortune, a Yupik from Minneapolis and national director of Two Spirit Press Room, sponsor of the 2008 event. “We want people to walk away with new friendships, good memories, and something to restore themselves.”

Organizers have wanted to keep out spiritual and cultural tourists who may be well intentioned but nosy. In 2008, however, they decided to allow a few media representatives, including an Utne Reader writer and photographer, to attend in order to tell their stories to a wider audience.

The Minneapolis Native community hosted the first Two Spirit Gathering in 1988. “We didn’t have a lot of places to meet and socialize except with the mainstream LGBT community, which was in bars, and those aren’t a good place for us,” says LaFortune, one of the event’s original organizers. Since then, some 3,200 people have attended the alcohol- and drug-free gathering in locales including Montreal, Vancouver, Kansas City, Eugene, Tucson, San Jose, and Butte.

The gathering

To be two

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