Sun

Hymn to Be Good

Hey can I talk to you?
Pretty clear that you’ve been blue
And I hate to see it my friend

But don’t you know?
Everybody loses sometime

So I want you to
Be good to yourself
Be kind to yourself
Be sweet to yourself
Love you for me

Hey don’t pull away from me
Like you do sometimes
I want to spend my time
With you today

Be good to yourself
Be kind to yourself
Be sweet to yourself
Love you for me

Hey see your reflection there
Oooh, you’re so fine
Why don’t you spend some time
With you my friend

Be good to yourself
Be kind to yourself
Be sweet to yourself
Love you for me

Show All Lyrics

Founder and Director of Aubin Pictures, Catherine Gund (ATEN featured performer and guest cinematographer) is an Emmy-nominated producer, director, writer, and activist. Her media work focuses on strategic and sustainable social transformation, racial justice, arts and culture, HIV/AIDS and reproductive justice, and the environment. Her films have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums, and schools; on PBS, the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. Her films include: Primera (Tribeca Film Festival), Aggie (Sundance, Doc Fortnight), Dispatches From Cleveland (CIFF, MSPIFF), and Chavela (Berlinale, Hot Docs, Ambulante). Gund currently serves on the boards of Art For Justice, Art Matters, Baldwin for the Arts, and The George Gund Foundation. She co-founded the Third Wave Foundation which supports young women and transgender youth, and DIVA TV, an affinity group of ACT UP/NY. An alumnus of Brown University and the Whitney Independent Study Program, she has four children and lives in NYC.

Learn more about Aubin Pictures at www.aubinpictures.com.

Follow us on Instagram @aubinpictures

Tenzin Gund-Morrow (ATEN featured performer) is a high school senior living in New York City. He does debate, student government, and musical theater. Out of school he loves cooking, baking, and making art. In 2016, Tenzin was part of Daniel Alexander Jones’s Duat. Ever since then, Daniel has been a mentor, advisor, and inspiration.

Constellation Conversation

Sharon Bridgforth

“People that invested with all of their might-every dream, every hope, all the promises, even though for many of them, they never received those things. And that way of being looked like laughter, it looked like dancing, it looked like Saturday night parties. And as my mom would say, “finger popping.” It looks like, joy. And for me as a spiritual seeker, I think because I just have always been so sensitive, I’ve also always been a seeker.”
—Sharon Bridgforth, in this edition of Constellation Conversations

SHARON BRIDGFORTH, a Doris Duke Performing Artist, is a writer that creates ritual/jazz theatre. A 2020-2023 Playwrights’ Center Core Member, Sharon is a New Dramatists alumnae, and has received support from Whitman Institute, Creative Capital, MAP Fund, and the National Performance Network. Her work has been featured at: New York’s SummerStage Festival; Rites and Reason Theatre’s Black Lavender Experience at Brown University, Links Hall, allgo: a Texas Statewide QPOC Organization, and The Performing Blackness Series at The University of Texas at Austin’s John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. Sharon’s dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Home – a Creative Capital – project launched in Minneapolis, MN May 2018 in partnership with Molly Van Avery, City of Lakes Community Land Trust and the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association. dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show premiered at Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis, MN in June 2018, and dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Installation premiered at allgo in Austin, TX in August 2018. dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show was featured on Twin Cities PBS, Episode #131, STREAM IT HERE.

Who is SUN?

Sun Astronomy

The Sun is 93 million miles from the Earth.
The Sun is relatively young, part of generations of stars called Population 1.
The solar interior, from the inside out, is made up of the core, radiative zone, and the convective zone. The solar atmosphere above that consists of the photosphere, chromosphere, a transition region, and the corona. Beyond that is the solar wind, an outflow of gas from the corona.
The Sun is a type of star called Yellow Dwarf approximated to be 4.5 billion years old.
The Sun’s core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit(15 million degrees Celsius) but is “only” 10 million degrees on the surface(5,555,537 degrees Celsius).
The Sun causes many forms of twilight.

Sun Astrology

The Sun symbolizes power, manifestation, and life force.
Ruler of Leo, it symbolizes the soul’s essence, enlightenment, as well as our self-expression.
To be your best self in terms of your Sun is to align your energies to work along the pathways in which they will have maximum help from planetary vibrations.
In the chart, the position of the Sun by zodiac sign represents the individual’s life purpose and the style in which they leave their mark in the world. While in the house, the Sun shows where our personality shines. The areas of life associated with that particular house reveal the types of experiences that contribute to our sense of individuality and that shape our sense of pride. These areas of life are ones in which we seek to express and focus our Sun sign qualities
The Circle of Spirit, indicating potentiality, brought to the focus of the central dot. We can see this symbol as wholeness or inner center

Invitation to Practice

On Easter, my Mom would create a kind of treasure hunt for me and my brother. We’d wake to find a trail of jelly beans next to our beds that would lead us to a note tucked under a household object. The note contained a riddle, the answer to which would be the location of the next clue. After 10 or 12 of them, we would be led to the location where the Easter basket was hidden. While I loved the candy that filled the basket, especially those weird & waxy “chocolate” hollow bunny rabbits that were wrapped in pastel foil, the thing that I remember best is the feeling of being on the adventure the Easter Bunny (aka Mom) had invited us to experience. The clues were always coded with observations about us, about our favorite books or playthings, about the spaces in our little house where we liked to sit and dream. Somehow, as we pieced together the sequence of clues, we were touching anchor points of our life experiences, and we were getting to experience a mirror of sorts held up to remind us of who we were, and that we had, and were, home in the stream of life. It was not lost on me that Mom created ceremony within the context of this holiday that was distinct from the popular markers of religion and commerce (well, except for the waxy chocolate bunnies).

So, for this week’s invitation to practice, consider someone in your life now who might benefit from being given a similar invitation. It can absolutely have a sense of play about it. Then, figure out what “basket” you will offer them (yes, candy, lol. But maybe some hard-copy prints of smartphone snapshots you’ve taken over the years, maybe a handwritten letter, maybe a book, or some fancy soap or cream, some amazing veggies from the farmer’s market–make it something fun, that represents a celebratory offering. Then, the juicy work begins, of thinking of the clues, riddles that you write to lead them from one to the next:

“Go to the place where you have heard caged birds singing, met elves and wizards, and heard the words of world leaders.”

I would go to my bookshelf where Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings sits next to The Fellowship of the Ring, sits next to Conversations with Kennedy, and, The Last Speeches of Malcolm X. And tucked among those books would be the next clue.

If you are not able to be with the person physically, maybe you can devise a series of texts that contain the questions and with each right answer you send the next and then announce the imminent arrival of a delivery of some treat. If you aren’t in a position to send material things, remember “the basket” can be a testimonial, a song, a prayer. You choose.

Altar no. 1

ATEN