Angel Robinson

Her essence: a weaver of the gathering

Angel weaves.

She did not open the week with a theme. She opened it with a prayer, and she asked everyone who would touch the stage to enter it with her. The artists, the speakers, the facilitators: each one agreed to bring their gifts as an offering. Then she turned to the floor and handed the same prayer to us: "And everyone who walks in from this point forward, you are a node that anchors this frequency with us. That's my invitation."

That is how she weaves. She names what she sees in each soul, out loud, in front of everyone, and then she steps aside so the gift can land. Over five days we watched her give the stage away again and again, and we watched it come back to her as love from nearly everyone who held a microphone.

The arc of her five days

Thursday · Air: the vision is spoken

Air Day began with Angel's vision. Jen, the MC, handed her the stage, and Angel's first act was to honour the one who handed it to her: "Thank you, Jen. Thank you so much for being the voice of the SolarPunk Summit. It is not a small thing to trust someone, to have a vision and then trust someone else, hand it over to them, and trust them to bring it through in a good way."

Then she gave us the practice the whole week would live inside. Love, for her, is felt rather than defined: "I don't think it matters so much the words. I think it matters the feeling. You know what that is, and then when you can anchor into that and move forward and act from that place, then magic can happen." And the one ask: "And you filter every action, every word, every step of your foot. Filter it through that love lens. What would love do? How does love show up in this moment?"

At the Opening Prayer Circle she called the firekeeper into the centre: "Freddie, will you come and offer a prayer?". That night, closing Day 1, she honoured him again: "He speaks for the ancestors, for the land, for the spirit. I call him Maestro." And she left the floor with a question instead of an answer: "What flows forth from love? You are experiencing that here tonight with us, and I hope that it feels good to you."

Friday · Earth: her work, in other voices

Her presence is in what others said from the stage. Nattali Rize: "I'm very grateful for Angel to have invited me to come all the way from Australia." Jen Lynn of Freedom Frontier: "I would love to give a shout out to Miss Angel Robinson for putting this together."

Saturday · Fire: the welcome, the song and the offering

Fire Day is the day her voice carried most. In the afternoon sun she named fire as a teacher: "It breaks down all things into their essential parts, just into the essence of what it is. And beyond that point, it's free to become anything." And for anyone who had found love hard to reach: "you are here now. You are here now. And so you're in it. You're in what love produces."

Later that afternoon she stood beside Hakeem Anwar, the day's sponsor, and thanked him across their differences. Then she sang. "We can sit by the fire / We can sit by the fire / Honoring the fire once again / We can sing about it / Around the fire" while he danced beside her.

Sunday · Water: be the tide

At sunset Joe honoured her, and she turned the honouring straight back to its source: "Thank you for honoring me, Joe, but this whole thing has been about honoring love. And I am so grateful to be one of the vessels chosen to have love flow through me." Then the Water Day blessing: "And on this water day I say, may we flow like water from this place and bring our sweetness, this beautiful sweetness, to the lands wherever we go." And the wave she asked us to become: "So no, we are the tide. We are the tide. We get to be the tide."

That evening the MC named, before 2SeaZ's first big show, the gift Angel keeps giving: "She finds people that haven't made it to the big stage yet, but they have a message, and they have magic. And she loves giving stages to those people." He answered at the end of his set: "Thank you, Angel, for making dreams come true."

After the last set she thanked Iyakuh "for the beautiful frequency that you are" and closed the summit with the whole teaching in one line: "I am you. You are me. We are we. The royal we." "I feel so held in this community. And I know that we're all holding each other because that's just the way that we operate, that we can operate, that we choose to operate." Then she sent everyone to the fire.

The gifts she gave other artists

A stage held as a prayer. Every artist came in as an offering to love, by agreement.

Being named. Jen as "the voice of the SolarPunk Summit". Joe: "I trust you and what you bring into the field and the way you hold space". Freddy as firekeeper, "Maestro". Hakeem across their differences. Iyakuh for "the beautiful frequency that you are". Haven, and the whole team, on the last night.

A first stage. Nattali flew in from Australia at her invitation. 2SeaZ played his first big show, a debut the MC credited to Angel's eye for people with "a message" and "magic".

A question to answer. Sam Bottner opened his set with it: "Angel asked me before this festival, what does the love dimension mean?" His whole set became his answer.

And the field gave it back. Sierra Marin: "I love your vision. I love your heart… it's not a thing that you have to do alone. We're in this together." Freddy: "Giving thanks for Angel one more time, for making this happen and envisioning something so beautiful." Avatara: "We love you, Angel." Ruby Chase: "a big Wopila to Angel, to the whole crew, to the team." David Starfire ended his set by calling her up for the family photo. On Fire Night the floor chanted her name.