Coming to Lukumí

And what moves me most is that these traditions are not simply relics of the past. They are alive. Their songs are still sung. Their ceremonies are performed. Their teachings are contemplated, debated, and passed along from one generation to another.

Of these traditions, Lukumí is the one I know most intimately. It is the tradition into which I was initiated, and one to which I have devoted much of my adult life. I make no claim to being an authority on all its teachings. I remain a student of Ifá and Orisha, aware that whatever understanding I possess has come through the generosity, discipline, effort, patience, and dedication of those who traveled this road before me.

My encounter with Lukumí began long before I understood the language of its prayers or the intricacies of its ceremonies. I was drawn toward something I could not yet explain. There was a sense of recognition, a curiosity, and a feeling that something within this worldview deserved my attention.

I imagine many practitioners outside Cuba have experienced something similar. We searched for books, translations, and people willing to teach us. We listened carefully, asked questions, sometimes misunderstood, and returned to the same ideas years later with a different appreciation of their meaning.

For me, learning Spanish became an important part of that pursuit. I wanted to travel to Cuba and learn from people whose lives were immersed in the tradition. I wanted to understand not only the words being spoken, but something of the cultural experiences and relationships that gave those words meaning. Language opened doors. More importantly, it opened relationships.

My journey brought me into religious communities in California and Cuba, and into the company of elders, godparents, godbrothers, and godsisters who shaped my understanding of what it means to belong to a tradition.

In 1999, members of my religious community came together to help make my initiation into Ocha possible. Their contributions went far beyond money. They were an expression of generosity, solidarity, and faith in the continuation of something greater than any one individual. I have never forgotten that.

My later experiences in Havana, including my initiation into Ifá, deepened my appreciation for the complexity of the tradition. They also made me increasingly aware of how much I had yet to learn. Some lessons came through formal instruction. Others came through conversation, observation, participation, and the ordinary experiences of being part of a religious community.

Over time, this journey also began to influence how I understood success and what it means to live a meaningful life.

I once imagined pursuing a fairly conventional professional path. I believed I possessed the ambition and interpersonal skills to succeed in business or management. Yet my longstanding interests in anthropology, history, language, and human behavior increasingly drew me toward other pursuits.

Financial success never ceased to matter, but it was no longer the only measure by which I wanted to understand a life well lived. I became more interested in other forms of wealth: knowledge, relationships, cultural understanding, spiritual development, and the opportunity to participate in something that connected me to histories far beyond my own.

That change in perspective has raised questions about responsibility, family, material well-being, and the expectations we inherit from the societies in which we live. I have learned that people can care deeply for one another and still hold very different ideas about what is expected of them.

I have also wondered how easily our pursuit of spiritual knowledge can become entangled with the desire for recognition, status, and personal importance.

For people of African descent who have grown up in societies where African knowledge was historically marginalized, discovering the richness of ancestral cosmologies can be profoundly affirming. But recovering a sense of dignity also invites us to consider what we do with that recognition.

Does it encourage humility, responsibility, and the cultivation of character? Or do we sometimes carry old habits of competition and hierarchy into the very traditions through which we seek a different understanding of ourselves?

I ask these questions of myself as much as of anyone else.

I don’t believe that pursuing prosperity, accomplishment, or recognition is necessarily at odds with spiritual development. We have families to support, responsibilities to meet, and lives to build. But I do believe it is worth examining how we define success and what we allow to determine our sense of worth.

These are questions I continue to live with. They are also among the reasons I remain so interested in the philosophical and ethical dimensions of Lukumí.

Today, we have access to an extraordinary amount of information about African and African-diasporic traditions. Books, websites, videos, and social media have made knowledge available in ways that previous generations could scarcely have imagined.

That accessibility is exciting. It also presents challenges. Information is not always accompanied by context. Interpretations differ. Material belonging to distinct traditions or lineages may be presented as though it were interchangeable. And having access to information is not necessarily the same as developing understanding.

I have come to appreciate that there is no substitute for relationships, experience, careful study, and the willingness to listen.

I often think about the people who made it possible for me to learn, and about the generations before them who preserved these traditions under circumstances I can scarcely imagine. Whatever I have received, I have received because others chose to preserve, practice, and transmit what they knew.

My hope is to contribute, in some modest way, to that continuity. Not by claiming authority over what is not mine to claim, or sharing knowledge that belongs within particular ceremonial or religious relationships, but by approaching this inheritance with gratitude, discernment, humility, and care.

And by remaining curious.

My interests in language, history, anthropology, music, the natural world, and the many ways human beings make meaning are not separate from my experience of Lukumí. They are part of an ongoing conversation through which I try to understand myself, the people around me, and the world we inhabit.

Rue Atelier grows out of that conversation.

I hope these pages become a place for reflection, study, cultural exploration, and thoughtful questions. A place where we can examine inherited assumptions, appreciate the intellectual and creative contributions of African and African-descended peoples, and consider how ancestral knowledge continues to speak to contemporary life.

I don’t expect every question to have a simple answer. In fact, some of the most rewarding experiences of my journey have begun with questions I could not answer.

Above all, I hope to share something of the wonder that first drew me toward Lukumí, and the gratitude I continue to feel for those who made that encounter possible.

There is still so much to learn, to question, to experience, and to share.