People, friends who come through for you in your hour of need. Who offer their help when you don’t even ask.
Friends who are genuine in their offers of helps and support.
Mutual Aid.
Like the friends who came to my rescue when I needed to move house on very short notice members little money in the bank.
These friends helped me move. And you know who you are. We became a 3 car convoy, back and forth from the old flat to the new flat, all in a few hours.
It was such a god(dess) sen. It was Black Madonna providing in my time of need. She moved with us, carrying each box or suitcase or plant.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Roche (Our Lady of the Rock), Our Lady of the Side-Eye, Black Madonna of Mayres
I think the big one here is Black Madonna showing me it was time to leave my marriage of over 20 years.
This is wisdom and insight .
I turned to my ex-husband and asked him for help. It was during the pandemic. I was struggling with how our world had been turned upside down with Covid, home schooling, pivoting with work and the brutal murder of George Floyd. I was struggling and was vulnerable and scared and in need of support.
I laid it all on the line. I was going down and needed a life-raft. My pleas fell on deaf ears. He could not help me.
So I called upon my own strength. I took the sacred act of saving myself and started to make the plans to leave. Black Madonna showed me the way, by showing me that I had to love myself. Love myself enough to save myself.
I ask the question, how do I know that this was the presence of Black Madonna in my life, showing me the way? Faith and trust. I trusted in myself enough to take the leap. I had my fears but I jumped anyway, I trusted in myself to find a way. I trusted in the universe or my ancestors or someone or something having my back.
I’m choosing to feel that this is Black Madonna. I know it’s me, I made the decision and acted upon it. but I’m not taking all the credit. There is someone or something out there who has my back.
What is spirituality if not believing in the divine, in our spirits and souls. I’m choosing to believe that God is a Black Woman. Because when God is a Black Woman, there is no conditional love. It is unconditional and unlimited. Black Madonna loves me in all my fucked up glory.
With my knapsack on my back, I went a wandering. Wandering and wondering is part of my summer field guide plans ( more to follow here with updates). It wasn’t too hot and it wasn’t too cold. It was just right.
I had a bundle of old photographs with me, probably half of my family archive of photographs, as I was going to get them photocopied for a project I’m working on ( more to follow here too).
At my local library, there are two photocopiers. I usually use the downstairs one. But this one was broken. Has been for a few weeks. So I had to go upstairs and use that one.
This photocopier upstairs is manually operated and all monies have to be given to the librarian sitting not far from it.
I asked to use the photocopier. They said yes and I started the job. As I’ve said there were a few photographs to get through and the librarian did say they were leaving momentarily, swapping out.
They stayed for the duration of the job. I paid for the copying and then I took a minute to turn around and look at the new books . Something I do from time to time.
The librarian said at the same time, I was just going to say that there are new books in if you want to have a look at them. Don’t you just love getting your hands on new books? And I had to agree with them.
And there, right in the middle of the shelf, facing me at eye level was the new book from Christena Cleveland, The Black Madonna.
You might remember that another book from Christena Cleveland has been featured on this blog. God is a Black Woman. Ring any bells?
A book I travelled with to Paris, and the outskirts as I took a mini trip to France in search of Black Madonnas.
Well, Cleveland’s next instalment is The Black Madonna, is a further reclamation of the divine feminine, part memoir, part global stories, part historical records, part invocations and rituals. Total liberation.
Part way through this book, where at the end of each chapter there is an invitation to actively allow Black Madonna into your life more fully, I’m drawn to the task of mapping Black Madonna’s loving pursuit of us. Of me throughout my life.
Cleveland presents the story that Black Madonna, is the sacred black feminine worshipped from time, from Africa. When the people of Africa were stolen, taken across the ocean to be enslaved, the sacred black feminine in the form of Osun, orisha of the Osun river begged Yemoja, Mother of all Orishas and Oceans, to let her go with them. Osun’s love for her people was limitless and she didn’t want them to think that she had forsaken them, forgotten them or stopped loving them because of their forced departure .
Yemoja granted Osun’s wish by transforming her into rain, so she could cross the ocean and be with her people who needed her most. So within the Americas, and the Caribbean, Osun crossed an ocean, transforming herself into a more light-skinned goddess so her people would recognise her in these strange new lands, where they had been enslaved and all Africanness bred and/or whipped out of them. She crossed an ocean not just out of love for us, but to empower us. Who has not heard of the slave rebellions inspired and led by Black Madonna, by black women? Who do. you think Harriet Tubman’s North Star was?
Black Madonna. Shape-shifter. Black women. Shape-shifters.
Anyway, I thought I’d share my mapping of Black Madonna’s loving pursuit of me for the past 6 years on this blog this month as I’m in need of feeling that I am not alone.
I’m in need of feeling that I have a black divine presence in my life who’s got me. Who’s there to catch me when I fall.
I’m not religious more spiritual. And because of the white washing of religion,I would’t claim any religion as truth, as something to put my faith in. Never.
I’d much rather put my faith and trust and love into black women. God is a Blackwoman, right. And there is something about Black Madonna that keeps drawing me back to her. That gives me peace and joy when I sent eyes on her.
So who wouldn’t these feelings to continue? Who wouldn’t want to highlight and amplify these feels through difficult times?
Today has been all about being in my happy place(s).
You’ve guessed it. My happy place(s) is by the sea. Within the sea. Close to the sea. Close enough so she can hold me, when I need that non-judgmental, nourishing embrace.
My happy place(s) also involves being in Kiwi, my campervan, by the sea.
To be able to stretch out on the bed, with first morning coffee, visual journal and this view, I’m happy.
Yes I’m in Kiwi again, close to the sea, looking at the evening sun on the sand dunes, above the sea. And I’ve just sitting here watching the breeze caress the grass, parked up in my happy place(s) up the coast in Northumberland.
I don’t know about you but I love me a good book cover.
You must have chosen to read a book because of the cover, right?
That’s what I’ve just done.
I recognised the artist as Laylie Frazier. I knew her work from reading Christena Cleveland’s work The Black Madonna.
Researching up more of Laylie Frazer’s work, I found this book over for We Deserve Monuments.
A mixed race teenager with freckles and a lip piercing, defiantly holding the viewers gaze. Yes.
I had to start reading this book. Then to find out it’s a young adult book, and the main character from the cover is Avery and is gay. Yes. Then read on.
In my Summer Field Guide, which I have to fill you in on as there’s been developments, this week was earmarked for a YA read to fit in with how I’m summering like it’s 1985.
Everything is aligning. And the book does not disappoint.
Avery is uprooted from DC to her mum’s childhood home in rural Bardell, Georgia, because Mama Letty ( Avery’s grandma) is dying. The family hasn’t been back for years because of some family rift and secret, which no one will talk about. Avery makes new friends and starts to settle into her new life, even though there’s talk of one of her friend’s mum being murdered by her rich dad who’s linked to the past of slavery, slaves and plantations.
And still no one wants to talk about the past but everything is linked to the present and what happens moving forward.
Right, after sharing this with you, I continue to read now.
I stand with The Revolutionary Communist Group and anyone else who stands against every attempt to exclude trans people from public life, education, healthcare, housing, and the services and spaces people need to live with dignity.
These attacks will not be beaten by appealing to the British state’s institutions that are bringing them out. They have to be met with organisation, solidarity and struggle.
This meeting is about building that response in Newcastle.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for a war criminal.
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, born on 21 October 1949, Prime Minister of Israel, is a war criminal.
Arrest warrant issued on 21 November 2024, for alleged responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024 ( taken from the ICC website)
And it continues. The genocide and the crimes against humanity being committed.
Netanyahu is traveling to Washington DC to meet with his best friend, Fucking Trump. Criminal to criminal, no wonder they are best buddies.
I do not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu, but he is not welcome here at my house.
And if our paths ever cross, I would make a citizen’s arrest of Netanyahu. If he comes to the UK this is what our government should do, arrest him.
If we know that acts of genocide are being carried out in Gaza. Then we are complicit in the acts of genocide too.
If the British government knows that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people as it has been declared by the UN and is running it’s course through the International Court of Justice, then to continue to not call it out and to continue to trade with Israel, then the British government through it’s actions is complicit in the genocidal acts also.
Acts of genocide are being committed in Gaza and Britain is complicit in them.
In order to stop the genocide, from a British point of view, as other counties are also complicit in the genocide, we have to stand up and say:
NO more continuing to supply Israel with arms.
NO more overflying flights to give security information to Israel.
NO more use of RAF airbases for Israeli forces.
NO more manufacturing parts for F45 jets which are being used in the bombardment of Gaza.
No more. No more. No more complicity in the genocide of Palestinian people.
These are the demands we have to continue to put on the British government.
Living Wild Studios 