[Music] hi there soulseekers welcome to the best of the Oprah show on Super Soul Sunday you know it is just a joy for me to revisit these shows because in most cases the message or lesson whether it's from two years or 22 years ago is timeless and life-enriching exemplifying this is my very dear friend and Mentor Maya Angelo she is the one I still look to for strength for wisdom and comfort and courage and just a talk the sheer power sometimes of her words and insights have moved and inspired so many people and also me
that's why I wanted to share it with you my super solers it was back in 1993 I got a fresh dose of her wisdom and comfort when I made a visit to her home in North Carolina we talked as friends do about many things from Unthinkable personal tragedy to deep Soul stirring stories of profound personal Enlightenment but first my Angelou gave me the inside scoop on the famous poem that she'd recently written and performed at the inauguration of then President Bill Clinton this was a big moment lift up your hearts each new hour holds new
chances for New Beginnings do not be wedded forever to fear yolked eternally to brutishness the Horizon lean forward offering you space to place new steps of change here on the pulse of this fine day you may have the courage to look up and out and upon me The Rock The River the tree your country no less to Midas than the medicant no less to you now than the masteron then here on the pul of this new day you may have the grace to look up and out and into your sister's eyes and into your brother's
face your country and say simply very simply with hope good [Applause] morning first of all where were you in the house were you in this house yeah I was in this house phone rings the phone rang downstairs I was downstairs in the family room either coming from or going to the fitness room and the fellow said hello Miss Angelo Dr Angelo I said yes he said this is Harry Thomasson so I said oh how very nice to hear your voice um because I know his wife Linda Bloodworth Thomasson from years ago and I thought oh
boy they're going to ask me to write something for Designing Women so he said U I'm um chair of the campaign um anyway the inaugural part of the campaign and and for Mr Clinton I said yes and he said because you had no inkling nothing nothing this is it first phone call he said um Mr Clinton was reminded last week that as president-elect he could ask any poet in the country my my knees started to turn to water he said any any Po in the country to write a poem for his inauguration and uh he
said without a change of of voice he said then get May Angelo I said hold on let me sit down um that's good he said I know that nobody can ask a poet to write you know to order but could you have a poem ready in certain amount of time and and Mr Clinton said he not only wanted uh you to write the poem but he wanted you up on the platform with him to uh deliver the poem so I said oh my goodness he said what do you think I said of course but of
course that's first now um what what what do I do I mean he said well Mr Frost Robert Frost wrote a poem within so many lines and but you have no there are no uh stipulations for you oh my goodness just whatever you'd like to say didn't you want a stipulation h no no you didn't no I didn't I must be honest no I didn't so I said thank you goodbye see you see you Okie doie I I sat down there in the chair for the longest thinking oh my God be with me Lord yeah
because the idea of writing a public poem is very very serious and to write a poem about and for and to my fellow citizens about our Our Land was so serious our land who we are where we are yes our land me where we could go all everything everything what went before and who we are now and where we have yet to go and all that that's what I mean our country even for you didn't you feel a bit pressured oh I felt pressured but you see or and you see um what allows me to
go on from Darkness Into Darkness is a profound faith I am a child of God and there's a wonderful line in a 19th century song spiritual which says I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me I love that you see I just don't believe it I know that I'm a child of God and the the request from My President is a result of me being a child of God and I am up to it I come from the Creator like everybody else trailing wisps of Glory so all I have to do is
pray prepare myself pray and get centered and go to work so how did you do it every day did you work a little bit when I thought about it well I had to wait until it could get all into the marrow of my bones and into my fingernails into my hair follicles and when I finally understood what I had to do then I started writing and I took my hotel room and I went to it every morning and I sat there and wrote about my country about my own people African-Americans I wrote about Irish I
wrote about Italians I wrote about Jews I wrote about Anglo I wrote about all Asians all of us I just wrote page Reams really and then came the work of reducing reducing it it's a good poem I know that it could have been great why do you think it's not great because I didn't have enough time there's a wonderful line of a journalist journalist said to his her editor said okay here's this piece you asked for it's 20 Pages if you'd have given me another week I could have made it 10 pages really that's it
right another few months with that poem but I'll write another poem really oh yes for the country of course yeah was it one of your proudest moments Oprah it would be ungrateful of me to say it was not it was a great proud moment um sometimes people think that the public recognition is the greatest thing that can happen to one I don't know if that is so I think some private Revelations may be greater and I don't know you know the the poet also must know that all comparisons are odious so you can't say this
was greater than that I think one of the Great Moments the great moment in my life happened in 1953 I was with a teacher Frederick Wilkerson who um was a voice teacher and also a conspir teacher and he had a number of students opera singers all white and all very very welln and I was a dancer and just trying and he stayed in my house so he had these people come over his favorites come over every Saturday and we would read the Bible and read lessons in truth and it fell my turn to read I
was in my own home which was beautiful home and I read God loves me and he said read it again and I said God loves me and he said read it again and he was embarrassing me in front of all these people these older well-known I said God loves me he said now try to know it and I said God loves me Oprah Oprah it's still I'm the Skies open up I can do anything anything I want to do anything good anything helpful I can do it you see yes I that is the greatest moment
we'll be right back that is more is the [Music] greatest got to tell you one of my favorite my Angela moments was some valuable advice she gave me on something that was bothering me at the time she was a person I'd always pick up the phone and call First when somebody had written something that was untrue or that was hurtful it turned out to be one of the very best lessons I ever learned in life I got it really got it on a deep level and it helps me to this day I'm I feel like
I'm one of the most blessed people on Earth for so many reasons but one of the best gifts I ever received that was just I think more than a a gift was a was a was pleasure joy and a blessing all wrapped in one was a handwritten book see this is her actual handwriting Maya Angelo wrote To Me beginning April 6th of 1990 and they were just thoughts that Maya had that she wanted to share with me it really is a treasure and there lessons that I had learned or things that you had said to
me over the years and I think the best lesson I ever learned when people ask the question what is the thing you've learned the most out of life is a lesson you know which which one it is you're not you're not in it you're not in it yes exactly you're not in it of course I remember it and I remember also telling you that a number of times yes because no lesson is learned immediately right it took me a long time to get it didn't it yeah well you got it but you get it on
so many levels you see there's a phrase that used in West Africa deep talk meaning that you anybody will understand stand on a certain level people who are interested in really understanding more take that statement or that lesson a little deeper somebody else will take it even deeper and the West Africans suggest you can never understand completely even at 80 as far down as you take that that aphorism or as far down as you take the adage or the advice you could still go deeper if you'd live long enough so when I told you the
first time you were you called and you some newspaper tabloid tabloid had just vilified you and or or stemman or both and and you were really as close to to losing it you were so hurt by the by the erroneous and and ridiculous and cruel accusations that you were just hardly getting your breath and I said you're not not in that and you said yes but you see this is what they said and I I said yes but you are not in it yes but and then I heard you start to realize what I was
saying that that has nothing to do with you that has all and everything to do with the perpetuator right and he or she or they are going to get their living out of you getting your dying and so obviously you can't give into that because you're not in it and you know it happens I to people who are on on in every Walk of Life not just people who spend their lives like you know I do on television every day but I I hear little girls who going to school and people are talking about them
in class or when people are making fun of you or your neighbors we did this show not too long ago where there's a click in the neighborhood or a click in the office but the the lesson is always the same you're not in it true they would have done that without you this is what you have to realize and this is true of the rape victim you see it runs that that uh understanding is as broad as life is so that the rape victim so often thinks that she is in it or he is in
it that same rapist would have done somebody else another one of the things you've taught me is that I love that phrase that you said say that people will try to Peck you to death like ducks yeah not just out most people don't have the courage to just come out and and kill you and kill you they will take a little piece of your knee yeah they'll take the flange off your nostril and a bit of the lobe of your ear hoping that you didn't even notice it you see and that that's called Blow bite
and blow that means that you blow on something until it becomes anesthesized quickly bite and then blow it again and the person doesn't even know he's been bitten you see West Africans call that blow bite and blow so people do that then that's my son's phrase pecked to death by Ducks pecked to death by ducks ducks have people tried to do that to you oh many times many times I mean it hasn't stopped I'm sure that it's happened today you but the thing is I I encourage you and my I have two other people who
I consider daughters the black rose and San Francisco and a girl a woman in West Africa araba if I could have had daughters you three would have been the the three out of chosen um my encouragement is to stop it as soon as it h as soon as you hear it as soon as you sense this person wants me dead the person just walks in and says oh you're putting on weight huh you say stop it not me you don't not me Jack not me not me out get out now I have lost or left
a lot of men who um you know just in public would say something like well Maya I don't know why she wore that dress this is not the dress that looks good on her I said that's the end that's it so the man then when we get home because I start packing his clothes he says you take everything to the max I said yes because I know that once you take that flange off my nostril pull one patch out of my hair and I don't say anything the next thing you'll have me bald oh no
oh no no no no no no oh that just happened to me the other day I was someplace somebody was asking me to do something this woman I had didn't even know her and she says oh but you know me and I said but no I don't really I don't I'm not sure she says but I knew you when I knew you when you were Barefoot and you were walking back some and I was thinking oh she wants me she wants exactly she wants me dead ex she wants me this is it but I didn't
have the courage to do that I didn't have the courage to say stop it you must you do them a favor not only yourself you do them the favor of not having to do that again to somebody who will actually knock their heads off you understand yes I do you really do them a favor the best thing to do is stop them in that tracks just say stop it stop it stop it and they oh I didn't mean any harm I was a joke you can't take a joke no no stop it when did you
you have been such a teacher for me and so many people in the world when did you make the transition or have you from learner to teacher oh no I'm learning I am learning right now I am learning one of the joys for me in having you to talk to is I would I have no compunction about saying to you this is my trouble and I'm working on this and you say well I don't think so I don't think that's right and I laugh so and I thank you for it um the greater the teacher
the more apt and eager she or he is to learn sometimes when I talk to you you I think um this child talks to 20 million people every day let me pray on this and I will I say I will say I'll talk to you later and I will pray so that I am as close to right as possible I continue to learn because of the people who do listen and this is I must say that about you I love love you of course but I love the fact that you listen now you may go
on and do something Al together other but but that's what you would want me to do exact to be my own woman absolutely but you listen and I love that in you and some part of what I say resides I take it and I make it my own I can take it and make it my own I want to come back and talk about what being a woman really means when my Angelou and I get together we love to talk and share and lessons and exchange ideas and I always leave our visits Having learned something
new like how she displays such strength of spirit in everyday situations watch as she shows us that courage is in our ability to tolerate and stand up for what is just I love the way she explains this let's talk about courage because in the book that you wrote To Me I don't even have to look it up but you say that it is the best of the virtues because without it you cannot practice any of the others that's true it's true you have with no courage you can't do anything else well you can do it
erratically but not consistently you can be erratically generous you can be erratically forgiving you can be erratically merciful and even just but not consistently with without courage because what happens is suppose I decide I'm going to be um T not tolerant but understanding and generous to gays okay that's because I know it's right to be and I'm going to do it and then suddenly somebody in my job says you know this guy is gay you know what that means are somebody said well you know she's a Les and you know what that means now if
I know my job depends upon it I'm subject to say yeah but if I have courage I have to say excuse me I'm sorry you cannot insult people in front of me with my approval I'm sorry now so this person goes to the boss and says you know my Angela you know that she's soft on gay she's probably Les her herself and then suddenly the whole office turns and I'm the Pariah MH but if I have courage if I have courage I can continue to be fair H that's hard to do it's hard to do
you know why it's hard to do because most people you're right people come up and say things that you really don't approve of and most people just do that I know and they and something you see that too is killing because something dies inside you when you but I if if I were white there would be no way possible that I would sit in company any company in my family and have somebody called a or or or or Greaser or something I will not sit in my company with all black people with my family and
have anybody called a honky I will not do it I said not here you don't mm- that's poison dear heart I won't have it I have been in the house when people have said not call somebody a hunky but when people have said things that you didn't like I mean what is amazing especially in this house being as large as it is I thought you were on the other side of the room and you can hear it and go all right stop it stop it yes I've seen you do it yes it's too dangerous it
is too dangerous you see 50 years ago OA nobody would have believed that there would be one day a button you could turn and see what was happening in Paris if you'd said listen one day I'll be able to see what's happening in Bosnia and people would have put you right into the snake pit I believe that words are things someday we'll be able to know and measure as mad as it sounds we'll be able to measure the hostility or the kindness that emanates from certain words that people exude when they say certain things and
I think they stick on the walls they go into the upholstery they go into your clothes and finally into your very body wow I believe that I believe it too because you know you can walk into some places like you feel in this house I I was saying that this house loves people and this house your house this home is best when it's full of people it just the the the laughter and love of people vibrates in this house and there's nothing better than this house is full and we're all in here and we're laughing
so loud and our we laugh so loud our heads automatically fall back so there have been times when I walked into places where the energy was the tension the energy the jealousy or whatever was so strong I have to say not here I can't be here yes so what is that that's that scking I believe it is a tangible it's just that we can't see it and although we do touch it we don't know what we're touching and it is touching us and changing us those things that change us for the better the prayers the
kind words the sweetness the laughter when somebody says girl you're looking good and something happens you you think you're only hearing it but something is happening positively and I think this is true negatively it can happen the same way yes we'll be back in a [Music] moment I thought thought it was interesting when you said words are things when did you know that maybe I knew it long before I knew I knew it um I I was a mute for many years and words meant me so much to me I love to hear people talk
and even today I I must confess I've never heard a human voice I didn't enjoy really I've never any way people sound pleases me um I've hated some of the things they've said but the actual voice I love the human voice more than anything probably and you were mute for all almost six years about 5 and a half years meaning you just you lost your voice no I didn't I left it it didn't leave me um I had been raped and um I told at the age of seven and a half and I told the
name of the rapist to my brother who then told it to the family and the man was um put in in jail for one day he was released and about two days days later I was at my maternal grandmother's house and the police came in and said the man had been kicked to death and I thought my voice had killed him so I thought it would be wise for me not to speak that was my seven and a halfy old logic if I spoke people might die just randomly um after about a year and a
half I forgot why I stopped speaking cuz did you understand what the had been did you understand what that was well I knew I had been violated I knew that I knew I had that he had done something wrong but I also thought I had done something wrong because he used to hold me you see and I loved that and U so then I thought well maybe I I did it maybe I made him do it m um I had that unfortunately for a number of years it was 13 before I really started talking again
but I loved to listen so I would go into rooms and just think of my whole body as being an ear wow and I could just take in sound and it's that that which allows me to speak so many languages I simply open myself to sound and when I speak I have very little accent American accent certainly but my my speak Spanish and I have a Mexican accent my my Spanish is Mexican and because that's the way I love it and the way I learned it my French is good so when you wrote I know
why the Cage Bird Sings was that to was that a a a a cleansing and a proclaiming of yourself to the world I don't think so I've heard that that's what it was supposed to be you know that it was supposed to be in its own way cathartic and that I don't know about that I didn't feel that I had doed a particular mortal coil you know um I felt I had tried to write the truth and write it eloquently um but I don't know you know that I never agreed with Thomas Wolf's statement that
you can't go home again my belief is you can leave home you take it with you everywhere you go everywhere you go so uh my past is my present and everything that's happened in your past is what makes you who you are at this moment what when you wrote that did you know that it would do for me and everybody else who's ever read particularly young black girls I open that book first of all what you when you open the first page I grew up in the church raised by my grandmother doing speeches when you
open the first page and the first words are what you looking at me for didn't come to stay only came to say Happy Easter day when I I thought there is a world out there that's about me somebody knows about this it it was what it did to me oh thank you was amaz it just amaz it changed my life and because I that I think that was the first piece of black literature I read and after that I couldn't read enough I couldn't get enough I know that's why I send you the books right
there yes from that wonderful bookstore in Denver you sent it to me also and have them have some books Le bound you do yes well when you wrote it I want to know here from your mouth why you know the Cage Bird SS well there are two or maybe 2,000 reasons the Caged Bird Sings because it must it must or die it maybe it must and die die I don't know but it must sing sometimes the melody arrived at in the cage is much more fetching much more appealing much more profound much more poent than
the the melody arrived at by the bird who's on the loose the Cage Bird Sings with a fearful Trill it's song is heard on the distant Hill for the Cage Bird Sings of freedom freedom freedom let me out of here let me out of here and so there's something Universal about that song since all of us are caged in some way or another and so people can hear it and say oh yes oh Lord let that bird out U you know at least I feel for the bird I ran across in my senior m memory
book not tooo long ago my goal in the senior memory book it says take a good long look at yourself and I ran across something that I had written it said I want to be a genuine female woman strong and confident in myself because so often on the show we have psychologists every day who say you need to learn to love yourself yes it's so hard when people are filled with self self loathing yes and doubt and doubt sometimes it isn't even strong enough to be loathing which can be turned around it's just doubt it's
indecision it's confusion quite often it's just they can't even ask the question so it's very hard to get an answer but you know all the time we talk about loving our what does that mean well you can't love yourself all the time but what you can do is approve of yourself for living approve of yourself for being alive for being alive you know you can say well I'm alive and I thank God for that and so I mean I did something very dumb yesterday and I don't like that or uh I'm not seeing as profoundly
or acting as as nobly and that's a really important word it is it is yeah I I'm not acting as nobly as I know I could or should or must but I do approve of myself of Being Alive Now you see as long as you do that you leave yourself room to grow [Music] MH one of the reasons I love being in this house is that you are guaranteed the best meal you ever had in your life even if you were just here last week this meal is going to be the be best meal you
ever had something happens with you in food it's like nothing I've ever experienced what is that that goes on with you in the kitchen they won um they don't know I love they know I didn't know what a rule was to prepare food they knew I love to look at um at produce you do I love to look at it you love to look at produce yes it's gorgeous it's the Bounty of God isn't it I never thought of it but yes you're right I mean when you're going to a market and you see yellow
peppers and green peppers and cucumbers and eggplant and tomatoes and onions and I mean the range of color that gets you going it's so gorgeous it's like looking at a at a beautiful bouquet of roses or flowers rather so and or group of people I love that colors of people don't you I mean black brown blue red yellow pink white yellow Tony copper colored God I love that really um but I like to feel it I like to to hold food produce and meats and fowl and I love to cook it and prepare it and
present it to people I like I like all of that you C you have the kind of home that I mean that I hope to have one day and that is all kinds of people come to this house I mean not only just in the way they look and the countries they come from but the different backgrounds and you can on a Saturday night or a Sunday afternoon here you can put yourself in 12 different conversations as I have done many times and feel like you're a part of all of them how did that happen
well I live in this world and and I want to know um I want to be a part of people's lives and I want their lives to be you know a part of my life uh my neighbors around when I went to a birthday party given to me by my sweetheart uh a few weeks ago little bitty children some small people about that tall stood outside in the dark singing These are little white children and maybe a couple of black ones and happy birthday Dr Angelo happy birthday and um the today the children came they
come they feel U that's Dr Angelo she's a friend of mine and so the small people some blonde some brown skinned some dark some black some the Asian they come and they stand in the door and I sit on the top of the step and I said talk to me tell me what is well you see Dr Angelo here's what happened because and they feel very fine with me and I like that so I want that I want their mothers and fathers in my home that's [Music] wonderful you've taught so much you shared with us
that the greatest thing you learned which is is what I will take from here with me today I will have to ponder on that God loves me because my brain can't even hold it all my brain can't even hold it all each time I that was in 1953 that's 40 years ago each time I allow myself to say the words I am suffused with tears of gratitude and wonder and I am reestablished as a giving living full human being with every right to everything right on this Earth God loves me me me Maya me the
very person who's made all these mistakes who's blown it so many times who's been rude and unkind too many times short-tempered when the Bible asks you or suggests be patient have patience have courtesy have gentleness if a friend wants to make a or an enemy for that matter wants to make up with you you go further toward the reconciliation how many times should you forgive 7 time 70 no 70 times 70 and on and on and on and on and I know that but I blow it all the time however at the end of the
evening when I check myself out and I think well I only blew it 922 times today you okay then I asked forgiveness and I forgive myself very important I forgive myself knowing that I meant to do right and I hope tomorrow just be 899 times you see but I can do that because of the realization which I don't have to confront because it's like a light too bright I can only know a bit of it all the time I can't know that all the time I'd walk around crying all the time all the time well
I hope to know it even more God loves me yeah and I know it I mean you know I know it intellectually I know it but I think to know it means that you're dangerous you'd be dangerous in the world your light would be so bright nobody could stand it that's the goal that's the goal that's it me girl that's the goal so to you my dear Mother sister friend Maya thank you so much for sharing always with me and thank you super soulseekers for watching the vest of the Oprah show on OWN have a
great Sunday it's just getting [Music] started
