SpiritHouse Inc.

We are so proud of our Egbe member Ebony Noelle Golden. And very excited to be experiencing this once in a lifetime moment together!

as the sun rises
she moves westward to sunset
awaiting rebirth

We will miss you

We love you so much Akintola Kiongozi Mapinduzi (Ibaiye) May your continued journey be filled with light ❤️

her healing reaching
past, present and tomorrow
unlocking secrets

cooling is her balm
revealed to earnest seekers
beyond each moment

timeless medicines
passed a thousand sun risings
she bigger than we

The Healer’s inspiration
“A healer needs to see beyond the present and tomorrow. He needs to see years and decades ahead. Because healers work for results so firmly that they may not be wholly visible until centuries have flown into millennia. Those willing to do this necessary work they are the healers of our people.” - Ayi Kwei Armah

2 Events we are cosponsoring this week

My plan had been to surprise Akintola Kiongozi Mapinduzi this week by using this quote from him as SpiritHouse Inc.’s haiku inspiration for the week. Today I invite you all to join me in his honor 💔

sunson teaching us
our spirits always been free
love abundantly

experience life
a glorious adventure
each turn a blessing

embodied throughlines
atmospheric energy
before and after

we free everywhere
Infinite eternity
and the beat goes on

The SunSon inspiration
"My liberation will not come through my work. My liberation will come through my living." -Akintola Kiongozi Mapinduzi

ushering new worlds
we healing ancestral wounds
prepare soft landing

we stand ten toes down
Guard, guide nurture newly born
assigned & understood

The Baldwin inspiration
“An old world is dying, and a new one, kicking in the belly of its mother, time, announces that it is ready to be born. This birth will not be easy, and many of us are doomed to discover that we are exceedingly clumsy midwives. No matter, so long as we accept that our responsibility is to the newborn: the acceptance of responsibility contains the key to the necessarily evolving skill" - James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

great gran’mama’s tongue
speaking language of lifetimes
breaking barriers

we listnin for you
inside Oya’s rumblin storm
bones overstandin

famil[y]ar cadence
hearing beneath the sound
ori be knowin

The inspiration
“Every dialect, every language, is a way of thinking. To speak means to assume a culture.” Frantz Fanon

freedom’s dreams live in
rich blood through ubilicus
pass famil[y]ar code

ancestors return
hold promise of vibrant worlds
seen through a child’s eyes

someone say Black jobs
us feeding one another
Black love infusion

The Lorde’s inspiration
“Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours? 'If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have to live long enough to grow up!' shouts the child. “ - Audre Lorde

may Black skin receive
warm auburn kindling
feel love as language

harmonizing we
weave sorrow, joy and forgiveness
love’s truths manifest

The inspiration
“We cannot endure without love and there is no other way to the return of healing, comforting, harmonizing love than through total and complete forgiveness.”- Bell Hooks

unmasked we are love
unafraid we are alive
whole people and free

The inspiration
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” - James Baldwin

great great grandmother
buried Black love in brown soil
unbothered her soul

praising mighty gods
dances between cotton rows
we will always be

The inspiration
“When I think of my ancestors who lived in chains I often wonder what sacred defiance lived in their minds. While their bodies were being dominated by another. For the field and plow and whip can certainly affect the mind but they cannot possess it.
What hidden things of old crouched in the corners of my great great great great grandmother’s consciousness as she stood in the cotton fields? What stories, dreams and beliefs about God hugged the crevices of her brain? The oppressor has no power in those deep and secret places.” - Cole Arthur Riley “This Here Flesh

Black Love’s legacy
whipped spit backs bled freedom’s dreams
sacred defiance



The inspiration
“When I think of my ancestors who lived in chains I often wonder what sacred defiance lived in their minds. While their bodies were being dominated by another. For the field and plow and whip can certainly affect the mind but they cannot possess it.
What hidden things of old crouched in the corners of my great great great great grandmother’s consciousness as she stood in the cotton fields? What stories, dreams and beliefs about God hugged the crevices of her brain? The oppressor has no power in those deep and secret places.” - Cole Arthur Riley “This Here Flesh

The quote
“There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt — of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 A.M., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead — while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths” - Audre Lorde

A remix
we know how it feels
to be free on Sunday mo[u]rn
loving through it all

taste bitter to sweet
we dreaming beyond longing
silenced voices rise

we know how it feels
Black joy amidst battle scars
Black life fully lived

Welcome to our 17th annual Black August 575 haiku writing practice. Each year we try to introduce exciting ways of engaging each other in this sacred practice.
This year’s theme is inspired by Audre Lorde quote “For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt…”

Each week we will share Black, brilliant freedom fighter quotes and ideas to meditate on and inspire our haiku writing.
We can’t wait to be in practice with you!!!

no new ideas cause
Black freedom is our birthright
constant and re-new

Well done Sheila Jackson Lee [Iba aye]

Sheila Jackson Lee, long-serving Democratic congresswoman and advocate for Black Americans, dies at 74 | CNN Politics Sheila Jackson Lee, a longtime Democratic congresswoman from Texas who was an outspoken advocate for Black Americans for decades, has died, according to a statement from her office. She was 74.

About last night…
We are so proud of the young men leading this work.
We’re starting slow & small with intention but if you’re interested in learning more let us know and we’ll have someone reach out.
More to come…

We have lost a great one. Rise to the bosom of your ancestors. Well done Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Well Done

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a founder of The Freedom Singers and Sweet Honey in the Rock, has died The songleader, civil rights activist and scholar died at the age of 81.

Remember this...
“There is not occupation of territory on the one hand and independence of persons on the other. It is the country as a whole, its history, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured, in the hope of a final destruction. Under these conditions, the individual's breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing.” Frantz Fanon

Ori,
May I see beyond sightedness
May I hear beneath the sound
May I seek knowledge beyond understanding
May I amplify love’s frequency
May I strengthen cosmic connection

Ase O

As we live through this period of revolution let's remember the power that exists in our prayers

Cécile Fatiman (1771-1883), was a Haitian vodou priestess, who led the rituals that ignited the Haitian Revolution.
Praying people pray

Cécile Fatiman - Wikipedia Cécile Fatiman (1771-1883), was a Haitian vodou priestess, a mambo. She is famous for her participation in the vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman, which is considered to be one of the starting points of the Haitian Revolution.

It’s always a good time for revolutionary music. Y’all got some suggestions?

Survival Bob Marley & The Wailers · Album · 1979 · 11 songs.

“Unlocked”on Netflix what do y’all think

In " The Crime Without a Name Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America" Barret Holmes Pitner we have all learned to speak through the “master slave dialect”
“When Americans talk about democracy and freedom we articulate these ideas from the perspective of the master..."
Think about that for a moment... Then ask yourself How can I embody the freedom Alexis Pauline Gumbs talks about when she says Freedom is not a secret. It’s a practice. It’s contagious. The would be infiltrators could not get the songs out of their skin. They could not resellout the places where they had internalized freedom.” - “M Archive after the end of the world”

The Black Renaissance (feat. Black Thought) Sa-Roc, Black Thought · Song · 2021

As we continue to move through Women's History Month lets take a moment to breathe.

A Meditation for Black Women A meditation for Black Women was written by Monet Marshall. Read and produced by Nia Wilson. Photo cred: Mark Poucher

🚨A virtual hearing will be held tomorrow, March 8th at 10am in our case on the racially gerrymandered NC legislature’s authority to change the state’s constitution.

This legislature cannot use its illegally obtained power to change our constitution in a way that further entrenches that power; and it cannot use that power to further target and harm Black and brown voters.

We will continue the fight to protect equal access to democracy and ensure NC voters are free from racial gerrymandering!

View the virtual hearing at the link in our bio.