I invite you to join us. This winter study (self-guided & online) is preparation for spring practice including invite only "Sunday" Service. It culminates with a practitioner only kick-off to our Transcend Spring Practice in Feb.
(alongside Audre Lorde's 90th birthday celebration).
learn more below
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Photo Credit: Dr. LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant
Transcend Winter Study is our major level up and a part of the Transcend Practice Space. It is for people living within driving distance of Durham who want to be in energetic/spiritual practice & community with us, transcending limits. It is for only 50 people to start & virtual only. It is for those that feel safe and steady enough and trust me (Sangodare) enough to hold space for your own growing super powers & spiritual practices that you are called to offer to community. It functions as preparation for our in-person (+ virual) Spring Practice. This Winter Study will culminate with an in-person kick-off to our Transcend Spring Practice (Feb 2024) which will coincide with the start of our 2024 celebrations of Audre Lorde's 90th birthday year.
The Winter Study is a self-guided study that includes videos that are: 1) informational & discursive as well as videos that 2) invite engagement & facilitate practice. For example, I am excited to offer us a format and standards for testimony service and making requests. For me, this is answering the call to value our traditions and move them forward as shared technologies benefitting from generations of QBIPOC leadership.
Additionally, there will be incentives, nudges (in the form of discounts, free access, exclusive invitations to "Sunday" Service(s) and other events) and asynchronous games. And if all goes according to plan, even some practices to specifically designed for the children in your household (including your inner child). We give thanks and celebrate the addition of Brandlyn to the team. Brandlyn will be supporting me to manage this space and our other projects. We give thanks!
We are sharing the cost of this offering to make it sustainable and accessible. You can register now for $200 or spread it out into three payments of $75 for 3 months ($225). Once the 50 spots are filled there will be a waitlist folks can get on but if you know you want to participate please don't wait. 50 is the max we will accommodate (plus our team who are not included in the 50).
***more details at the bottom***
Books, Text & Lists
Sangodare's Sermons (first edition publishing for Winter Study participants only)
Booklists
Playlists (audio, vidoe, podcasts, etc.)
Book Reports & Briefs
Audio, Video and Animations
Short Presentations
Guided Meditations
Variety of other meditation practices (chant, walk, sing, mirror, etc.)
Music
Movement
Dance Party (solo, friend or household activation)
Sermonics
Interactivity
Polls & Results
Virtual/Asynchronous Q&A
Curated Testimony (Service, Asynchronous)
Games, trivia, evolutionary hunt (aka scvngr hunt-like but I don't care for the "S" word)
Other
Infographics
Reminders
Introduction to Teachers, Tools, Technologies & Practices
Not ready to join? Stay in touch then. We are practicing together
in various ways worldwide. Stay connected.
Get the links to the free content and collective practices.
LOGISTICS
WHEN
A series of daily offerings to guide us through the winter study AND additional offerings based on the desires and needs we discover during our time together.
1) Self-guided Study Jan 10 - Feb 18
2) Audre Lorde 90th Birthday Celebration
3) A "Sunday" Service
("quotes" b/c it could be a different day)
WHAT
The form will consist of multiple forms of media, a few emails with updates, some interactive elements AND sharing between us that will be facilitated by the site and Brandlyn. Sharing and interactivity will look like:
1) Polls, Surveys and Results
2) Q&A and FAQ
3) Testimonies (text, audio, video)
Why?
I had the great fortune to be born into a large family of creative spiritual people. As a young child in a family of Afrocarolina ministers, preachers and pastors, I thought we were super powerful! My mother demonstrated infinite possibility from her ability to create anything be it an outfit or a couch and do anything like interior decorating or being a member of the fire brigade at a nuclear power plant.
As I got older, I was able to see the limits to my families power AND, as I learned more about the costs of our cultural, economic and monetary systems, the limits of being half in the "mainstream" of our dominant systems. Mainly, I began to see the missing due to our separation from one another into nuclear family versus the possibility of benefiting from our extended family as a structure and system to give us access to holistic sustainability.
Where I have arrived, at 44, a decade of leadership in spiritual study and spiritual practice later is at clarity. The simplest way to articulate that clarity is that our spiritual practice (or energetic practice) can not be separate from our cultural, economic and monetary systems IF we want to enjoy our inherent freedom and sustainability. It is also the separation between us (as people and Earth dwellers) and separation between our beliefs and practices that limits our infinite potential, our transcendence.
We can practice our way toward that infinite potential, that transcendence. And our transcendence requires collective practice.
I love to have chu'ch together! I love singing and sermonics in community. However, it is meaningless to me if we are not able to make visible, tangible, measurable progress in our individual and collective lives. Therefore, this study space is leading us to a practice space that will include chu'ch, "Sunday" Service, choir practice, band practice, visual art practice, filmmaking, trade programs, entrepreneurship and more (virtual, in-person, and beyond); that is, Transcend practitioner only spaces for growth & transformation.
What will I be asked to do and what can I expect to receive?
Accompaniment
The biggest leaps and joys in my MATERIAL and SPIRITUAL life have been in the moments when I decided to put it first. Whether I spent significant time OR just literally took time, even 15 mins, BEFORE everything else. And, AND, AND!!! In those times I craved, I sought and I found something or someone to anchor me or accompany me. It has usually been a book, some online videos, a song or recorded meditation that has functioned to anchor me into something I was already committed to doing.
That's what I up this space can be, an anchor, accompaniment on a spirit practice that already exists for you.
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REQUEST: Decide where you are headed, what's on the horizon right now, and let these offerings support you on that journey.
Connection
The (w)holistic wealth and wellness that I imagine, that I dream of, can only emerge in community. There is no such thing as individual abundance or individual wealth. Like Fannie Lou Hamer taught us, Nobody is free until everybody is free. And though we know our freedom is inherent, the presence and activation of that truth is something that can realy only take root in community. Otherwise, we might enjoy periodic highs, joy, balling (aka decadent wealth), etc. it will not last and will be a fleeting feeling rather than a lasting or expanding reality.
We are in it together regardless, I am excited to be intentional about that togetherness. I am excited for it to be a space of growth & transformation and joyful all the while.
REQUEST: Relate to the space like you can and will develop supportive intergenerational relationships here.
Engagment
I now have much more capacity to receive and respond to how each of you are engaging the space. This is a dream come true because I am eager to tell all the stories my elders told me. I am eager to weave my creative practice and composing into conversation with and celebration of you!
There will be specific places where I invite your engagement AND you can reach out anytime as well.
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REQUEST: When prompted, offer your input, even if one sentence or clarifying question. Also, reach out about the practice as needed.
Sangodare
a sweet space for transformation
Priest of Sango & Orunmila in the New World Ifa-Orisa Tradition (11 yrs)
B.S. Multimedia Computer Science (UNCA, 2001)
MDiv. Candler School of Theology (Emory University, 2006)
Co-founder Black Feminist Film School (2010)
Co-founder Mobile Homecoming (2009/2010)
co-founder Loveship (2019)
Hypno-Journey Facilitator
Founder & CEO of QUIRC, a tech company connecting QBIPOC worldwide for more access to sharing our gifts with the world
Also: Preacher, composer, visual artist, filmmaker, entrepreneur
Ṣangodare is a sweet space for transformation. Ṣangodare activates Black Feminist sermonics coming from a thick legacy of Black Baptist preachers, gospel musicians and congregational singing. As co-founder of Mobile Homecoming, a national experiential archive project created with Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Ṣangodare amplifies generations of Black LGBTQ brilliance by every generative means including using multimedia and technology, building businesses and intergenerational family of choice across time and space.
Ṣangodare is a retreat organizer, filmmaker, composer and entrepreneur. Ṣangodare's 2018 art exhibition, Inherit Light: An Evolutionary Practice of Love Consciousness, was a multisensory experience with Black southern preaching and singing legacies, sound, altars, sculptures, film and elements of the natural world. In 2020 Ṣangodare and Alexis were the inaugural celebrants in residence for Northstar Church of the Arts (Durham, NC) Sunday Services. Ṣangodare was named a Southern Healing Star awardee by BEAM & Lipton in 2020/21 (BEAM - Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective). Sangodare is the founder and CEO of a tech company called QUIRC which connects QTBIPOC communities worldwide.
Sangodare has been composing since childhood and facilitating collective singing since 2002 including a stint as Minister of Music at Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Atlanta, Ga. In 2021 Sangodare began a collaboration with Toshi Reagon (rockstar and creator, along with her mother Bernice Johnson Reagon, of The Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Sower Opera) in which Toshi provided support for Sangodare to develop and present an Opera or Performance. Sangodare presented a works in progress of Transcend with Toshi and her band in 2021 and a full preview in 2023 with Sangodare's own band and choir called The Congregation.
As co-founder of Mobile Homecoming Trust Living Library & Archive (an outgrowth of Mobile Homecoming) which exists to sustain the lives and legacies of Black feminist and Mobile Homecoming elders, their legacy bearers and caregivers, Sangodare gathers, stewards and circulates resources.
As co-founder of Black Feminist Film School, for more than 10yrs Ṣangodare has brought a black feminist approach to mediamaking and creative practice. Ṣangodare has been honored and featured in national press including being named one of Colorlines 10 LGBTQ Leaders building a new politics in 2012, in The Advocate magazines Top 40 under 40 and named a Southern Healing Star awardee by BEAM and Lipton in 2020/2021 (BEAM - Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective). Ṣangodare’s writing appears in a number of books and journals including Lambda literary Award nominated Mouths of Rain - Anew, No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies - Something Else To Be : Generations Of Black Queer Brilliance And The Mobile Homecoming Experiential Archive, Are the Women Still All White - Black Feminist Calculus Meets Nothing to Prove: A Mobile Homecoming Project Ritual Towards the PostDigital, to name a sampling.
Ṣangodare's 2018 art exhibition, called Inherit Light: An Evolutionary Practice of Love Consciousness (including a month long gallery exhibition at UMN in 2018), engages Black southern preaching and singing legacies, sound, altars, sacred implements through sculptures and installations, film and elements of the natural world. It also features small and large-scale ruminations on round sculpture and buildings - domes. The dome in Inherit Light is the multi-sensory and interactive sacred space where Ṣangodare's invocations and sermons are ignited through the site-specific exhibits.
Ṣangodare earned an undergraduate degree in Multimedia Computer Science from UNC Asheville, a Masters in Divinity from Emory University's Candler School of Theology and has completed coursework toward a Masters in Film Production at Georgia State University culminating in a MFA degree in film and media from Black Feminist Film School.
This is a space where we will study together TOWARD a practice that leads us to:
Get Clear: getting clear on our wants and desires (not just our needs)
Develop Tools: developing tools to have more access to desires including our vocational desires
Share Gifts: sharing our gifts and unique abilities with the world
Sustain Community: activating sustainability of ever expanding levels.
I will be sharing with you lessons from my teachers and my journey and offering invitations to practice in hopes of providing a first step in accompaniment—my accompaniment of you AND accompaniment among and between other practitioners in the space.
I love to have chu'ch together! I love singing and sermonics in community. However, it is meaningless to me if we are not able to make visible, tangible, measurable progress in our individual and collective lives. Therefore, this study space is leading us to a practice space that will include chu'ch, "Sunday" Service, choir practice, band practice, visual art practice, filmmaking, trade programs, entrepreneurship and more; in Transcend practitioner only spaces.
This is an opportunity to be supported to shift (and learn as we turn) toward the world we know we deserve. I believe it begins with practices that allow us to tap into our desires (which are holy) and practices that allow us to remove anything that stands in the way of actualizing those holy desires.
It's only in hindsight that I realize my upbringing set me on this divine course that has driven me to find tools and solutions to address our unrealized power and potential. This is how we get to (w)holistic wealth and wellness which are only possible collectively and not individually. All we require are the right tools and the practices to grow facility with those tools.
Sign up and Surrender.
Determine the consistency that works for you.
Discover the forms that work for you.
Offer your questions, requests and participation.
Sign up and Surrender.
Enroll now. We have 50 spots for folks in driving distance of Durham. 50 because that's what we can accommodate in a spacious "Sunday" Service space.
Determine the consistency that works for you.
You can do a daily practice, twice weekly or maybe an every other week binge. Just keep moving forward is all.
Discover the forms that work for you.
For example, test out different methods of meditation: silent vs meditation music, guided meditation vs walking/movement meditation. Maybe you prefer to read a sermon instead of watch/listen to all the hypeness or intoning of messages. Maybe you like the videos and infographics most. Whatever it is discover what works for you. And let us know too.
Offer your questions, requests and participation.
As you discover a need for more clarity, have a testimony, recommendation or even a personal question reach out and the team will answers, solutions and your contributions integrated into the space for us.
en route