VENUS

Hymn to the Child of Venus

Child of Venus
Come to see us
Come to heal us
With your love

Silvery light
Branches around you
Roots in the ground
Beneath your feet

I know you feel
The wax and the wane
The pain of flesh and spirit met

Still in the water
Your reflection
In the flock
And in the leaves

Child of Venus
Time unfolding
Brings you gifts of gratitude
Some are fleeting
Some are lasting
In your clear eyes
All are true

Some are fleeting
Some are lasting
In your clear eyes
All are true

Show All Lyrics

“An Offering for Boys of Color Who Come to Heal Us”

- Adelina Anthony

Director of Hymn to the Child of Venus

Adelina Anthony, originally from the Payaya Territories (San Antonio, TX), is a critically acclaimed Two Spirit, Xicana, Lesbian artist whose entire artistic trajectory of twenty-five years has centered characters/stories from Xicana Indigenous Lesbians, LGBTQ+ Latinx, QTBIPOC, WOC feminists and other aggrieved communities. Prior to embracing filmmaking, Adelina was known as a prolific theater artist and solo performer (twice nominated for the Herb Alpert Award in Theatre).
They shifted most of their artistic energy to independent filmmaking in 2012. That year, along with Marisa Becerra, they co-founded AdeRisa Productions. The independent company has been a vehicle for Adelina and other collaborators to grow artistically as indie filmmakers. (Several of these works have been funded by the Latino Public Broadcasting Public Media Content Fund and have been part of the PBS Online Film Festival.) Since the company’s inception, they devised and have implemented a holistic production work-model, which includes having a spiritual elder on set. Their talent in front of and behind the camera always reflects the QTBIPOC characters and storylines.

Constellation Conversation

Sue Jaye Johnson

“We need permission to celebrate in the face of grief. I feel like, in so many ways, pleasure is always engaging with that question. Is it okay to feel really good, ecstatic even, is it okay to prioritize pleasure for myself when so many are suffering, when the world is spinning out of control, when climate change, when wildfires, when glaciers calving, is it okay to feel that? To me, that feels so radical to say yes to it.”
—Sue Jaye Johnson, in this edition of Constellation Conversations

Sue Jaye Johnson is a Peabody award-winning journalist, filmmaker, producer, and writer exploring the ways cultural expectations shape our public and private behavior. She is the founder and editor of The Pleasure Report, an online space that explores the intersection of politics, culture, and pleasure. As a TED Resident, she has been writing and speaking about sexuality and sense education. Her TED Talk, What We Don’t Teach Kids About Sex, has been viewed 3.5 million times and is translated into 27 languages.

suejaye.com

Who is Venus?

Venus Astronomy

Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar system and the second hottest object only to the star that we call the Sun. This is due to the high concentration of carbon dioxide in Venus’ atmosphere which produces an intense greenhouse effect with temperatures around 462 degrees Celsius.
Venus full orbit is approximately 243 Earth days. A year on Venus is 61.5% as long as a year on Earth
From Earth, Venus is the second brightest object in the sky after the Moon. The reason for this is because the clouds of Sulfuric Acid in Venus’ atmosphere make it reflective and shiny, obscuring our view of the surface. We are able to see Venus during the day if the sky is clear.
Unlike other planets Venus spins clockwise versus counterclockwise.
Venus has pressure 90 times that of Earth’s overall.

Venus Astrology

Symbolizes love, beauty, and pleasure. When prominent in the horoscope it signifies union, peace, compromise,affection, and appreciation for self-presentation.
Venus is the Goddess of Love, ruler of Taurus and Libra
Venus influences love and money within our lives.
Do we take particular pleasure in our day-to-day work and routines (Venus in the 6th house), in study and travel (Venus in the 9th house), or in taking care of our house and home (Venus in the 4th house)?
The symbol for Venus reveals Spirit (Circle) over Matter (Cross) reflecting the evaluation of experiences through embodied feelings as opposed to rational thought.

Questions for Contemplation and Discussion

Spend dedicated time looking in the mirror. Your mirror may be an actual mirror. But it may be a place, an object, a being that mirrors you to yourself (a hilltop with a vista, a tree, a living room full of family telling stories and laughing, a river, etc. It may be both. If you are not able to look with your eyes, can you use other senses than sight to “look” into the mirror? How might you carry the intention of love with you as you spend time with your reflection? When resistance to that intention arises, give yourself permission to state aloud, “I come to see, lovingly.”
Write a love letter to yourself. Write to a part of you that needs to hear a good word right about now. Or, write a love letter to a former self, a younger self, and offer them the encouragement that they might need to get through. Or, write a letter from your future self to your self right now. What does that future self want you to know? Give yourself permission to imagine into this prompt. Write by hand, if you can. And then you can give this letter to yourself and tuck it somewhere safe, or you can release it ritually. But be sure to say the words out loud one time and hear them vibrate in the air.
Write a love letter to someone in your life or someone whom you admire. Without any expectation of response, if you could offer a “praisesong” to a person what would it contain? You can decide to send it or not. The writing is the practice in this case. What does it mean to articulate the love and/or admiration you hold for others with no expectation?
Do as Sue Jaye Johnson and I did. Who is a person in your life whom you don’t know super well but you always wanted to get to know better? Reach out and ask them to schedule a short weekly phone meeting with you (they may say yes, they may say no, they may say maybe let me see about that… no expectation). Chop it up and be easy (i.e. don’t worry about outcome or “using the time well”); invest ½ hour a week to being present with another person. Neither Sue nor I “had time” for this. We made time.