Hello loved ones,
and welcome to week 4 of the School of Our Lorde's, Audre Lorde Resurrection Sundays.
This is a really special week
because this weekend was the Brilliance Remastered Guardian Dead
Retreat for Ancestor - led, community - accountable intellectuals.
Two of our sacred texts at the Guardian Dead retreat
were Melvin Dickson's speech "I'll Be Somewhere Listening For My Name",
and Audre Lorde's poem "To A Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On".
Audre Lorde thought this poem about the importance of honouring our ancestors
was so important she published it twice.
This poem is fairy tale answer to generations of romantic poets,
and is an emphasis on why we need to honour our ancestors
on a regular, consistent, sustainable basis.
So our gift to you this week
is a reading of "To A Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On"
along with the Guardian Dead participants enacting their postures of reverence to their own ancestors.
What it looks like for them to butter scones to nurture their ancestral relationships.
"To A Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Was Buttered On.
He, through the eyes of the first marauder
saw her, catch of bright thunder,
heaping tea and bread for her guardian dead
crunching the nut-dry words they said
and, thinking the bones were sleeping,
he broke through the muffled afternoon
calling an end to their ritual's tune
with lightning-like disorder:
'Leave the bones, Love!
Come away from these summer breads
with the flavour of hay—
your guards can watch the shards of our catch
warming our bones on some winter's day!'
Like an ocean of straws
the old bones rose
Feeling the lightning's second death;
there was little time to wonder
at the silence of bright thunder
as, with a smile of pity and stealth,
she buttered fresh scones for her guardian bones
and they trampled him into the earth."
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!
So! Your assignment for this week
is to remember what side your bread is buttered on,
what are your regular practices to honour your ancestors?
What are the tempting distractions that come along trying to drag you away from them?
If you want to write about that in the comments, you can;
if not, no worries.
And I will share with you the poem that I got
in our To A Girl Who Knew What Side Her Bread Is Buttered On oracle,
which is A Poem For The Letter G ___[cannot hear this part]___
The Poem For The Letter G is
girl, guardian, guards, guardians.
And I dedicate this week's video with so much love
to my fellow participants in the Guardian Dead retreat,
and my brilliant co-facilitator brother doctor Eric Darnell Pritchard.
If you are interested in finding out more about Brilliance Remastered
check us out at alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered/
And if you would like to have some one on one time,
explore more of the videos from other weeks, or get your own oracle poem, go to:
the School of Our Lorde website which is:
summerofourlorde.wordpress.com
And until next time, please remember that...
[ GROUP SPEAKS ] We are who we are, doing what we came to do.