Sacred Spaces Written by Sariane Leigh

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:49:08 +0100

Sacred Spaces
Written by Sariane Leigh
Contributions by Meghan Guidry, Joyce Angela Jellison, Binhakye Joy, Teisha Marie and Shondra Goudry

Poet, artist and activist, Joyce Angela Jellison sought to uncover the modern day “underground railroad” of mainstream visibility at the first Sacred Spaces Conference at the Cambridge Community Center in Boston, Massachusetts on March 27. The Sacred Spaces Conference and Community serves as an open access opportunity for creative women of color to discuss their process and methodology to create and explore sacred spaces.
What is sacred in the public and in the private realms of women’s lives? Where do women of color find the hidden transcript? Where can women of color operate outside of the mainstream?
The term sacred is often associated with something spiritual, something sanctified and reverent. Yet, many women discover their sacred spaces during or after an experience that violates their most personal sanctity. Sacred Spaces are about the hidden transcript woven between the vile and the sanctified. There, hidden between the layers, exists a platform for an inner dialogue where women create rooms for new and transformative bodies to rest. For women of color, this inner dialogue is often non- linear and layered with narratives of trauma that go unspoken, unexplored and uncovered. These inner dialogues are the next generation of sacred spaces. For women of color, entering into an arena of the unspoken unveils the observer and requires that the observer become an active participant in this space. In order to breathe life into these spaces, everyone present must be vulnerable and all must confess their compassion and prepare for the prospect of pain. Among these sacred spaces, often described as art, poetry, research, song, dance, theater or work, you will likely experience a woman’s trauma, her healing and her journey.
Sacred Space demands an interactive experience. Whether it is the compelling experience of woman describing in a short story her memory lapses after violent child hood abuse or the poetic appreciation of a stripper working on K Street in Washington DC, the goal of the sacred space is to bring you in. Bringing the “you” into “our” process. An invitation often tossed aside. Our traumas are exposed on the nightly global news, analyzed in international health reports and funded in the next federal budget line item. Yet, our methodologies for healing fearlessly play with boundaries and critically question the spaces defined by these outside forces. So we go within. We go within because the conventions designed to help us have failed, but only as long as we have let them.
Sacred Space conference participants, The Saartie Project named after the infamous South African Sarah Bartman explores the Black woman’s mody in a theater production, called “Deconstructing the Myth of the Booty”. Black women throughout the United States write and perform vignettes about their most intimate challenges with being a modern black women existing within post-colonial social construct but with the haunting memory of Sarah Baartman’s experience. What was Sarah Baartman’s inner dialogue as she was paraded throughout Europe in a cage through a violating and dehumanizing display of her womanhood? Was Sarah Bartman’s sacred space the same as a black the stripper working in a cage on K Street? Or does our emphatic plea for acknowledging her pain omit her agency? The Sacred Space is about discovering the conversational space of pain and triumph among black and brown woman. The Sacred Space is about the new forms of artistic expression that continue to push boundaries and produce new movements. Sacred Spaces are about the transformative qualities of our surroundings or environment that we can control by building sustainable creative communities that let build empathetic connections for conversion. The Sacred Space is an entry point and invites you to be a participant and witness another’s and hopefully your own and transformation.

The next Sacred Space Event will be in Washington DC 2011.
- Show quoted text -

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Joyce Angela Jellison <writeoutloudboston@gmail.com> wrote:

To My Wonderful Presenters:

Thank you all for your wonderful presentations and participation. I apologize for the low turn out and seemingly lack of organization. I tried to really bring something together special for us - but I am aware the experience was not so great for some of you. I sincerly apologize and wish you the best. If anything please feel free to host and facilitate Sacred Spaces in your respective communities - this will be a way to keep the light/discussions developing - this will keep the change happening - the connections alive.

Love and Light to you all,

J.

--
Joyce Angela Jellison
Director
Write Out Loud:Transforming Our Lives Through Writing Our Truths
writeoutloud.synthasite.com

--
Sariane Leigh
MA, Women's Studies '09
The George Washington University

This is home - Let us not depart from one another by Joyce Angela Jellison

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:44:05 +0100

I have been in Boston almost five years and in this time I have felt I have been alone, in a wilderness seeking a space to express my unique happiness, joy and rage. I have been in essence, contained. It has been an unusual containment. I have been moving freely and with purpose but often feeling displaced and mistranslated.
I wonder are we all displaced peoples seeking homes in the sacred spaces of one another’s hearts? Are we all seeking sacred space in the fickle acceptance of an unwilling society? If this is true then of course, we must build our promised lands in welcoming places. We must build our own spaces. We must transverse pain, resistance and fear to find one another.
This has been insanity and in my dreams, my visions – I dreamed of a collective, a sisterhood missing me, the link in need of the circle that binds me with others. In my dreams, I reached across waters, climbed mountains and braved heartbreak to find my sisters and in turn, they glad to have had me discover them – rejoiced.
This was of course, all in my dreams.
I am a woman of color in a lonely plac: an isolated place. There seems to be a lack of cohesiveness and community within the black communities of Boston and I starved for family, partnership and alliance have found myself in unwelcoming communities barely tolerating/acknowleging my experiences as a woman of color, writer, mother, and artist.
Sacred Space 2010 grew out of my need, my desire to connect communities, to bridge spaces that disconnected rather than united. Sacred Space 2010 was me reincarnating Harriet Tubman and leading folks to our own promised land. A place where we could unveil our truths, share our pains and reach across the scar tissue separating us to just simply hold one another.
I sent a call out for proposals for women of color to come together and create a space that holds us beautifully outside of the mainstream. I envisioned nappy headed, shiny and bright, brown faces welcoming one another in embraces, crossing salvaged tongues to meet in the middle. The challenges I experienced from the moment I sent out the call for the first proposal sent my into a spiral of varied emotions. I lost spaces, connections – regained spaces and rebuilt connections. I felt alone, I cried at my desk – I screamed. I gave up hope and I regained hope. The process brought me to the realization that building community is difficult and can be darn right, heartbreaking.
Personally, if I had to travel a thousand miles to hold just one sisters hand ,I would. Sacred Space has gained definition from this first event; some saw it as an awesome gathering of the bold, the beautiful, the pained, the healers and the healed. Others felt the distance for such a small gathering, was – well disappointing. I respond with this, how far will you go for change? What would you give to leave your imprint on another’s life? If I told you one woman walked away with a different perspective, loving herself in an entirely different, wonderful way, would that revelation shorten the distance?
We all come to sacred spaces seeking different things. I created the event in order for women of color to connect and find those differences and acceptances they seek, to allow them to carve spaces that allow them blossom beautifully.
I will not depart from my dream of building and sustaining a collective, a gathering that holds women of color beautifully outside of mainstream. There will be a next year, a year after that – come as you will. The door is eternally, infinitely open – this home and we must never depart from one another.

--
Joyce Angela Jellison
Director
Write Out Loud:Transforming Our Lives Through Writing Our Truths
writeoutloud.synthasite.com

sacred-space-blog

Sacred Spaces Written by Sariane Leigh

This is home - Let us not depart from one another by Joyce Angela Jellison