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00:00:30.000three and one. Welcome to For the Wild. I'm Ayanna Young. You're listening to Deeply Rooted,
00:00:41.700grounding practices to weather the winds of uncertainty. A series devoted to inviting
00:00:47.120stillness, balance, and abundance into our lives during these troubled times.
00:00:52.120We invite you to slow down, breathe, and connect deeply with your inner self,
00:00:57.880with community, and with earth. We've asked friends who are wise stewards of earth,
00:01:03.980spirit, community, and bodily wisdom to share grounding practices and coping tools to empower
00:01:10.160you and to nourish your inner sanctuary. Every Monday morning, you will experience guided
00:01:15.780meditations, poetry, and prose readings, questions for deep inquiry, story time,
00:01:22.080music performances, and more. Today, you'll be hearing something extraordinary from my dear
00:01:28.920friend, Bronte Velez. Bronte's work and rest is guided by the call that Black wellness is
00:01:36.060the antithesis to state violence. Mark Anthony Johnson. As a Black, Latinx, transdisciplinary
00:01:43.020artist, designer, trickster, and wig worker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections0.99
00:01:50.660of black feminist placemaking and prophetic community traditions, environmental justice,0.91
00:01:56.220and death doulaship. They are currently moved and paused by the questions, how can we allow
00:02:01.740as much room for God to flow through and between us as possible? What affirms the God of and
00:02:08.180between us? What's in the way? What ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative0.94
00:02:14.600justice, promote the memory of God, which is to say, love and freedom between us. They relate to
00:02:21.560God as the moments of divine space-time that remind us we are not separate, the moments that
00:02:27.620re-belong us to the earth. They embody this commitment to attending to Black health,
00:02:33.400imagination, commemorative justice, and hospicing systems of oppression through serving as creative
00:02:39.480director for led to life design collective at led to life.org educator for ancestral art skills
00:02:45.680and nature connection school weaving earth weaving earth.org and quotidian black queer0.77
00:02:51.660life making ever committed to humor and liberation ever marked by grief at the0.79
00:02:57.560distance made between us and all of life
00:03:09.480Hey, hey, hey. It's Bronte. I'm thinking of you wherever you are. I just lit a little candle. I hope this can feel resourcing and fun and thrilling and very Black.
00:03:29.900And I hope that supports you in this season of mystery, that we might go into some Black prophetic incantatory traditions that bring us into loving the unseen and the shadows, a.k.a. I'm a rap with you.
00:03:51.640And I pray that this chanting, this incantation, is something that can help you, support you to dance into the wild of your own breath and your lungs as a practice in grounding into your voice in this time and as a prayer that I'm extending to you as an offering.
00:04:10.820rapping for me is also how i'm moving my rage and grief and i encourage you if you can
00:04:19.040listen to this outside i also encourage you to do that if you have that option
00:04:25.980i've been thinking about what the black mary oliver would do these days
00:04:30.840or what if i was black mary oliver this is my exploration of black mary oliverhood
00:04:38.320And there's a host of other Black nature poets I could reference. June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Janice Harrington, all in their own right themselves, not Black Mary Oliver's.
00:04:51.680But this is my attempt at Black Mary Olivering and letting the soft animal of my body loves what it loves.
00:04:58.900So if dancing is a practice for you, if tracking is a practice for you, if witnessing the birds or twerking or moving that ass, drinking water, I just pray that these sounds can encourage you and support you and that you can dance to them.
00:05:19.160First, I'm going to extend opening the incantation and closing the incantation with mantras that we host through the Lead to Life practice.
00:05:30.020So you can start off grounding yourself through this prayer and then we'll move into the music and then we'll close with that closing mantra.
00:05:38.040thank you great spirit for the soil the mountains the trees the water the fire the air
00:05:50.680we honor these elements as the ingredients of our alchemy may we be in right relationship
00:05:56.960to these gifts may we celebrate your abundance never take more than we need and give ourselves
00:06:03.580back to you as a gift. We honor both the ancestors and original peoples of this land where I am the
00:06:12.080Kosmiwak people and we ask for your permissions and the lands before all else to carry out our
00:06:18.280work in peace for peace. May humility step first so as to let grace walk us down the path. May we
00:06:26.480decompose violence in ourselves before we ask it of the world. May we learn from the mushrooms what
00:06:32.480it means to carry death into new life may we remember freedom is a practice not a destination
00:06:38.760one that we must practice every day may we always be imaginative in the face of violence
00:06:45.440may we be willing to reimagine what it means to be secure may we liberate the sacred trapped inside
00:06:51.960of all weapons remembering that the gun has a source may we too surrender to source may we be
00:06:58.700diligent and discerning in our work, unending until our lands, communities, and minds are
00:07:04.880liberated from the talents of greed, hatred, and delusion. And still, may we liberate our sense
00:07:11.340of urgency, of productivity, of right and wrong, and call in the spirit that knows this will take
00:07:17.680time, that knows we cannot solve a problem with the same mind that made it, that knows beauty is
00:07:23.300not an arrival, but the way. Listening to our dreams, we remember another way is always possible.