Latest / Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess / Honoring Dr. Maya Angelou | Episode #382

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Honoring Dr. Maya Angelou | Episode #382 · Legacy Living with Dr. Gloria Burgess

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Hello, and welcome to today's show, Legacy Living, Make Your Life Count.
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I'm your host, Doctor Gloria. Gloria Burgess, international leadership expert and
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trusted advisor. Welcome to Legacy Living, Make your Life Count. I'm so
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delighted that you joined me today. I want to give a big thank you
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to those of you who are listening today. I also want to give a
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great, big shout out to those of you listening around the world. I'm
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delighted and so grateful that you tuned in. I hope you're enjoying a fabulous
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day and that you're having a fantastic week, because you know what, in
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the grand song of the universe, life is so very short. It's short,
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sweet, and very precious. So I hope you're making a difference in
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your own life, because when you do, you also make a difference in
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someone else's life. A lot of us, a lot of folks really want
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to make their life count for something, but they don't know how to do
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it, or it seems so big to them, they don't know where to
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start. So they ask me, doctor Gloria, how do you do that?
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How do you make your life count? Well, it's really very simple.
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Very simple. You make your life count day by day, step by
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step, moment by moment, every single day three sixty five, twenty four
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seven. You make your life count by just being there, being there for
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someone who needs to hear the sound of your voice. You can learn more
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about making your life count and about legacy living by visiting the Gloria Burgess website.
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Yes that's right, g L O R I A b U R G
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E S S dot com. And as I've mentioned before, if you love
2:37
to be inspired, you can actually subscribe to my inspirations right on my website.
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Just scroll down a little bit look on the right side bar until you
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see the place to add your email address to subscribe to my weekly inspirations.
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It's that simple. Each week you get a lovely photograph and a short quotation
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that inspires you. Or you can visit me on Facebook and that's Facebook dot
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com forward slash d R for doctor Gloria Burgess p h D forward slash.
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You can also find me on the tedex website and listen to one of my
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ted talks. Just type in my name to find me there. Now.
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Today's episode honors the legacy the life of doctor Maya Angelo like all of my
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talks, I want to inspire you to make a difference in your own life
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so that you can make a difference in the lives of others. Just like
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doctor Maya, I also want to equip you with ideas, information and resources
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that you can use in your life and so you can share the wealth with
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others. In fact, one of my goals with these episodes is to share
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the wealth so that folk in countries and in places in the US, and
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in places outside of the US where there are a few books or little access
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to them or other similar kinds of resources can listen in and get what they
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need. In my travels, I'm actually astounded to see more cell phones than
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books these days. Now I'm talking about cell phones in countries that have no
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libraries, okay, or very very distant access to libraries. But let me
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tell you something else. With a cell phone, you can listen. You
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can actually listen in to this podcast and to other podcasts and share the information
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so that you get all of these great resources. I just love technology.
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Can I get an amen? Especially when it's put to good use? Right?
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And you know what, if you are so inclined, you can share
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the wealth with the people in your circle, wherever you happen to be on
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the po it. Now back to doctor Angelo. Now, most of you
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know that she was an amazing poet and writer, but did you also know
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that she was an actress, director, filmmaker, humanitarian, mom and so
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much more. As many of you know, during the month of February in
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the United States, we celebrate Black History or Black Heritage Month. Well,
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you know me, I celebrate the lives of all people all the time,
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no matter who they are. I just love celebrations, and I especially love
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to celebrate the soulful lives of African Americans Black lives every single day three sixty
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five, twenty four to seven. So who is Maya Angelo? Well,
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as I just mentioned a few moments ago, she's an incredible poet, writer,
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actor, director, filmmaker, humanitarian, and I dare say, amazing
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human being. Miss Maya's poetry and prose shines the light on what it means
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to be human. Now, she was honored to write and share a poem
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for President Bill Clinton's inauguration to shine the light on what it means to be
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human. Doctor Angelo was also honored and blessed to write a poem to shine
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the light on the life of one of my favorite people on the planet,
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and that's Nelson Mandela, a man who also deeply understood what it means to
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be human. I want to share this poem with you because there is so
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much of Maya's life tucked into her writing, her values, what she believed,
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what she stood for, who she stood for, who she stood with,
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lessons from history and shining rays, the shining sunlight of her dreams,
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what she dreamed of for our future, for the future of human kind.
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This poem, My Angelo's poem from Adiba, was written to pay tribute to
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him upon his death. It is called his day is done. His day
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is done, is done. The news came on the wings of a wind
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reluctant to carry its burden, Nelson Mandela's day is done. The news expected
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and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world
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became somber, our skies were leadened. His day is done. We see
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you South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which
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no traveler returns. Our spirits reach out to you, Bantu Zulu joshah boor
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we think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one
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more wonder of the world. We send our souls to you as you reflect
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upon your David, armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath,
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your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant. Although born into the
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brutal embrace of apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned
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in the bloody maws of South African dungeons, would this man survive? Could
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the man survive? His answer strengthened men and women around the world. In
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the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden gate Bridge in San
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Francisco, in Chicago's Loop, in New Orleans Marti Gras, in New York
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City's Times Square, we watched as the Hope of Africa sprang through the prison's
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doors, his stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will, hail and hearty.
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He had not been crippled by brutes, nor was his passion for the rights
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of human beings diminished by twenty seven years of imprisonment. Even here in America,
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we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom. When Nelson Mandela took
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the seat of presidency in his country, where formerly he was not even allowed
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to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela's
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former prison guards invited courteously by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.
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We saw him except the world's ward in Norway, with the grace and
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gratitude of the solon in ancient Roman courts, and the confidence of African chiefs
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from ancient royal stools. No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise
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again and bring the dawn. Yes, Mandela's day is done. Yet we
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his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond
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generously to the cries of blacks and whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor
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who live piteously on the floor of our planet. He has offered us understanding.
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We will not withhold forgiveness, even from those who do not ask.
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Nelson Mandela's day is done. We confess it in tearful voices. Yet we
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lift our own to say thank you, thank you, our Gideon, thank
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you, our David, our great courageous man. We will not forget you.
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We will not dishonor you. We will remember and be glad that you
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lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us all.
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I just love this poem as I love Nelson Mandela, what he stood
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for, what he died for, how he gave his life to his country
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for the sake of a free South Africa, how he gave himself to the
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world really as a statesman. I remember when I was in Africa, when
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he was still alive. I traveled to Kenya and to South Africa in that
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season, and I remember asking some of the young people in Kenya because I
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was so excited to be so close to South Africa at that time. I
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asked the young people, I said, so, what do you think about
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Nelson Mandela? And they said who? And so I repeated the question because
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I thought, well, maybe they didn't quite understand what I said. I
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said, what do you think about Nelson Mandela? And they said who is
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he? And I realized that these young people really didn't know who I was
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talking about. My word, there's so much that we take for granted,
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so much that I take for granted, and one of those things is infrastructure,
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the infrastructure of information, the availability of information, the access to information.
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And what I realized is that these young people and some adults had not
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heard of this amazing man because they had little access to the kind of information
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I take for granted. That's one of the core reasons that I'm wanting to
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make this podcast available in Kenya, in South Africa and Nigeria and Ghana,
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all places I've been, and other places throughout Africa, throughout Asia and Australia,
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throughout the rural communities in the United States, in South America, Central
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America. Please, I ask you to help me. I can't do this
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on my own, so I invite you to help me. If there are
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people that you know who like this podcast, help us, help us all
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get connected. This podcast is not just for the people who have easy access,
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easy access to books, to the Internet, to other resources, but
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maybe, just maybe they have easy access to a cell phone, right,
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So help me share the wealth and spread the word. So Maya Angelo.
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Miss Maya has fans all over the world, many many millions of fans.
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She also has her critics. Now why is that? Well? Her critics
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say she writes poems with lines that are really short. Her critics say she
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uses words that are really simple. So what are they really saying? I
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say they have read, but perhaps not understood. I say they have consumed,
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but have they chewed. They've read but not sampled or savored the many,
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many lives and layers of Miss Maya. Maybe maybe they've tasted, but
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they've not digested, metabolized. They've not appreciated the very ground on which she
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stands. Miss Maya's words are poignant and powerful. In this poem that I
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just shared with you, his day is Done, she does the same thing
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as in her other poems. She pays tribute to what it means and what
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it takes to be human. Whether she's writing about women or men, or
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children, or anything else she cares about. She writes as all writers do,
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by putting the right words in the right order. At the end of
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the day, that's what poetry is, the right words in the right order.
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That is the beauty of poetry. And we all need beauty in our
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lives. We all need beauty in our lives. We need the shimmering rays
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of beauty that comes through poems. I love what Jack Kerouac says about poetry.
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He says, don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer
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it. Use poetry and t s. Eliot says, genuine poetry can communicate
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before it's even understood. Genuine poetry can communicate before it's even under stood.
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Naomi shihab Nai is one of my favorite poets. This Palestinian American poet says,
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the real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped
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out of their own line to make the circle larger. I love that the
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real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of
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their own line to make the circle larger. At the end of the day,
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that's that's what we're here for, to step out and make the circle
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larger. In other words, we are here to love, learn and serve,
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to share beauty and to pass it on, to pass it on to
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someone else, to pass it on to the next generation. By doing so,
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we make a difference in our own lives and in the lives of others
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every single day. That's what Miss Maya did in her life. She is
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a model, an exemplar of what I mean by legacy living. Doctor Angelo
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didn't just count the days in her life. She lived each day to make
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her life count. In a New York Times article, poet Elizabeth Alexander shares
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a lovely moving story about her encounter with Miss Maya. Now, although she
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never met the elder poet, Alexander stepped into the same shoes, the same
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exact shoes, when she was named inaugural poet for President Barack Obama's election.
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She says, Maya Angelo called me on the telephone. Before she said her
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name, I recognize the voice, lustrous, deliberate, precise addiction, well
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known to me from countless elders. She spoke in the rich chest voice of
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a grandmother singing a song at bedtime. Now did she call me child?
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I felt like she did, for her words and voice drew me close.
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I was attempting to write the inaugural poem, agonizing spinning in the thickets of
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the task at hand. We spoke for a good long while. Oh,
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I really don't remember the substance of what she said, only the even reassuring
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tone of her voice that made this task seem possible. Alexander goes on and
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says, I recall a sentiment that's often attributed to doctor Angelo. If you
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have a song to sing, who are you not to open your mouth and
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sing to the world? You see singing Your song, in her world view,
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should be as natural as breathing, even if, as she did,
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you struggled to come to voice, and poetry is as close as human beings
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could get to song. At the end of their conversation, Miss Elizabeth asked
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Miss Maya if she would be coming to Washington for Inauguration Day. She says
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that Maya gave a good long laugh. Oh no, my dear, I've
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done that before. I shall turn on my television, open a bottle of
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wine, and enjoy a potage of my own preparation, and I shall laugh
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and cry and sing mum mm mmm mmm mm. There is so much weight,
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so much weight and gravity, and what Maya shared. Elizabeth Alexander breaks
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it down in her own word. She says, such exquisite formality married with
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mother Wit. This formality coupled with mother Wit, characterized her prose as well
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as her poetry. Formality that says, I have mastered the language and its
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elocution. And there are stakes in that mastery from people who were assumed to
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be unworthy of culture and of citizenship. And then Elizabeth discusses that lovely word
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potage. In fact, she is positively delighted by Maya's use of such words,
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and what a great exam of the formality. Intermingled with Angelo's mother wit,
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Miss Alexander declares, isn't potage much more interesting and unexpected than soup?
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Yes? Yes it is, indeed it is. Thank you, Thank you,
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Elizabeth Alexander. We all know that doctor Maya has crossed over to the
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other side, and as our fellow poet and sister friend Nikki Finney says,
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surely there are many many saints waiting to greet her and welcome her over to
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the other side. Even though Miss Maya has made it over, we know
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that her spirit will always be with us. In her book A Sung Flung
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Up to Heaven, don't you just love that title? A Song Flung Up
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to Heaven? Maya writes the sixth book of her autobiography, her memoir.
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In this historic book, she poses an essential and perhaps what became for her
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a perennial question. She asks, how did it happen? How did it
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happen? Lifting her voice to the ancestors and to God and to the ages,
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Doctor Angelou asks, how did it happen that we could nurse a nation
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of strangers be maids to multitudes of people who scorned us, and still walk
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with some majesty and stand with a degree of pride. Doctor Angela responds,
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we had come so far from where we started and weren't nearly approaching where we
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had to be, but we were on the road to becoming better. And
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to that I say Amen and Hallelujah and praise the Lord. Few people know
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that doctor Angelo was active in this country, in the United States and abroad,
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active in civil rights struggles and in the civil rights movement right here in
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the US. In fact, she gave her support to two giants in the
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US civil rights movement, Malcolm X and Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
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Both of these men were shot down, they were assassinated. And when that
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happened, like so many of us around the world, when Doctor King was
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assassed scinated, Angelou was devastated. It's reported that she withdrew and cocooned herself
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until activists and fellow artist and writer James Baldwin reached out to her at a
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dinner. Amidst the glimmer and shimmer of New York's literati, something steered within
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Maya, something something reawakens her passion for writing rekindles, and doctor Angelo's friends
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encourage her to write again, to begin to write about her life, and
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so she does. In the final paragraphs of her forward to I Dream a
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World, Angelou writes of black women, about our grandmothers and great grandmothers.
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But you know what, she just as well have been writing about herself.
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Miss Maya writes, the heartbreaking tenderness of Black women and their majestic strength speak
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to the heroic survival of a people who were stolen into subjugation, denied chastity,
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and refused innocence. These women have descended from grandmothers and great grandmothers who
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knew the lash first hand, and to women whom protection was a phantom known
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of but seldom experienced. Speaking of the seventy five women who like her,
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are featured in Brian Lanker's work I Dream a World, miss Maya writes,
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their faces are captured here for the ages to regard and wonder, But they
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are whole women. They are whole women. Their hands have brought children through
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blood to life, nurse the sick, and folded the winding cloths. Their
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wounds have held the promise of a race which has proven in each challenging century
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that despite threat and mayhem, it has come to stay. Their feet have
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trod the shifting swampland of insecurity, yet they have tried to step neatly on
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to the footprint of mothers who went before. They are not apparitions, They
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are not superwomen. They are not larger than life. Their humanness is evident
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in their accessibility. We are able to enter the photographs and enter the spirit
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of these women and rejoice in their courage and nearness, precious Jewels, all
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thanks thanks to their persistence, art, sublime, laughter, and love,
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we may all yet survive our grotesque history. Now again, Miss Maya is
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speaking in the forward to I dream a World. Thank you, Thank you,
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doctor Maya Angelo, for dreaming, for dreaming your world, our world.
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Born on April fourth, nineteen in Saint Louis, Missouri, born Marguerite
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Annie Johnson, she changed her name to Maya, a name given to her
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by her brother Bailey. Miss Maya, precious Jewel, that you are,
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may your mighty and well traveled and wise soul, rest in peace shalom.
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We lift you up and celebrate you. We celebrate you during Black Heritage Month
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and every single day, today and every day, we celebrate the luscious,
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marvelous, majestic, magnolia scented music of your life, and we express our
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deep and abiding gratitude. We thank you for showing us what legacy living is
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all about. As you know, I love to celebrate Black history not only
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during the month of February, but every single day three sixty five twenty four
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seven. If you missed last week's episode or any part of this week's podcast,
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you can listen to the recording at your convenience. You can even listen
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to it on the go. Check us out at Talk network Radio dot com.
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Forward Slash Hosts, Forward Slash Legacy Living. That's Talknetwork Radio dot com.
31:36
Forward Slash Hosts Forward Slash Legacy Living. You can also find me on
31:42
iTunes, Audible, Alexa, SoundCloud, iHeart, tune In, spreaker dot
31:48
com, and so many other places. Now, before I close today,
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I want to thank each of you for tuning in for allowing me to share
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a bit about my journey with what legacy living is all about, not just
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living and learning, but living and learning and serving so that you make a
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difference in your own life and in the lives of others. It's about being
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on purpose every single day. Three sixty five twenty four to seven. Legacy
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Living is a powerful way to make your life count. I'm your host,
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doctor Gloria Gloria Burgess, and this is Legacy Living. Make your life count.
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Please join me again next time right here for another podcast of Legacy Living.
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Make your life count. Don't just count the days in your life.
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Make the days in your life count. That's what legacy living is all about.
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Have a fantastic day and remember make the day days in your life count.
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God bless you. That's our show today. I'm your host, doctor
33:20
Gloria Gloria Burgess. I hope you'll join me again next time. Until then,
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don't just count the days in your life, Make the days in your
33:31
life count. That's what legacy living is all about. Here's to you.
33:37
Have a fantastic day and be sure to make it a yes kind of day.
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Remember to celebrate the music of your life. Make the days in your
33:52
life count.