Mentor (for Cheryll Greene): Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday Week #6

Launched on Nov. 17th 2013 on the 21st anniversary of Audre Lorde’s transition from an embodied warrior healer to an ancestral force, this is a weekly series of videos documenting and sharing my process of clarifying survival through a re-immersion in the words of Audre Lorde. To see all the videos so far check out: http://summerofourlorde.wordpress.com/resurrection-sundays/

This week's poem "Mentor" is dedicated to my beloved mentor Cheryll Greene who passed away this Thursday on the eve of her 70th birthday. I am so grateful for the generosity and wisdom that Cheryll brought into my life. I am one of many people who have benefitted from her loving act of choosing the correct word at the correct moment whether it was as a poet, a trusted advisor or a revolutionary editor. The poem "Mentor" is crucial to our collective survival because it reminds us that the youth of our mentors comes through the mouthful of sun, the heat of energy exchange, the urgency with which we remember them. Anyone mentored by me will know the name, the wit, the incisive excellence of Cheryll Greene.

Every week as part of my practice of resurrecting Audre Lorde in my life and in our communities I will be making an alphabetical oracle from the weekly survival poem which will consist of up to 26 new poems based on the sacred source text. If you would like to receive a custom poem as a blessing for your journey you can with a donation of your choice to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind’s School of Our Lorde! summerofourlorde.wordpress.com

================
Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
================

[ PLEASE NOTE: AUDIO/VIDEO OUT OF SYNC,
APPROXIMATELY 4 SECOND DELAY TIL 3:21 ]

Hello loved ones!

Welcome to week 6 of Resurrection Sunday.

This week's Resurrection Sunday video and poem
are dedicated to Cheryll Greene,

brilliant editor, beautiful woman,
cherished mentor.

And I was planning on dedicating
this week's video to Cheryll,

in honour of her 70th birthday,

and, um, she transitioned to join the ancestors
this past thursday on the eve of her 70th birthday,

so I know she will still hear us,
see us, in a different way.

This poem is called "Mentor".

"Scaling your words like crags
I found silence

speaking in a mouthful of sun

and I say you are young

for your lips are not stone
to the rain's fall

I say you are lovely to speak
in a mouthful of sun

nor does summer await you.

I see the midnight
heavy as windows sealed against fire

and the tears
coiled like snakes in your eyes

I see your forehead like snow
and the names of the so many winters

your fingers play over

plucking out rays of light

to anoint me home;

Yet I say you are young

and your lips are not stone
to be weathered

rather a song
learned when my Aprils were fallow.

I sing this for beacon now

lighting us home

each to our separate house."

I love this poem because I think that

Audre Lorde is teaching us about mentorship
and collective survival.

That the youth of our mentors
is in the way we remember them.

The mouthful of sun that we speak
when we honour them,

the way that we pass on that energy
to those who we will mentor,

and those that they will mentor.

And I am accountable to the eternal life
of Cheryll Greene.

And I hope that this week,
in honour of Resurrection Sunday,

...oh a butterfly just flew through!...

In honour of Resurrection Sunday,

you can think of and honour your mentors,

who are still living or who have transitioned,

and remember their youth,
the mouthful of sun that we continue to pass on,

to pass on as we share the stories,
as we exchange the energy,

and as we remember.

If you wanna see the other Resurrection Sunday videos in honour of Audre Lorde,

you should check out
summerofourlorde.wordpress.com

and you can see all sorts of
[ SOUND CUTS OUT & RE-SYNCS ]

all sorts of information about School of Our Lorde...

Email me and get your own distilled poem

of the alphabetized 26 poems
that I distilled from this poem this week.

And I hope that you and your mentors,
and your mentees,

have a divinely interconnected day and week,
and several many lifetimes.