From Through Painted Desserts by Don Miller

"It is true that it is a powerful occurrence to have somebody look you in the eye and say you are worth something. I was reading an issue of the Smithsonian magazine the other day and in it was an interview with the poet Maya Angelou. In the interview she talked about the time, as only and eight year old girl, that she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. She spoke about having to heal from the crime, but also about how she told on the man, and how he had gone to prison and shortly after being released was beaten to death by men in the community. Angelou believes she was the one who caused the man's death because she told about the rape. I was amazed to read that after the beating the terrified young child didn't speak for years. It was much later, during a walk with her mother, that she would find the source of her life of freedom, beauty and creativity. Walking down a street near home, Angelou said her mother stopped, turned and spoke to her.

"'Baby,' she said, looking the young woman in the eye. 'You know something? I think that you are the greatest woman I have ever met. Yes. Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, my mother, and you- and you are the greatest.' Maya Angelou said in the interview that she boarded a streetcar with tears flowing down her cheeks, stared into the wood paneling of the car and thought to herself, 'Suppose I really am somebody?'

An yes, she was and is somebody. On the bulletin board above my desk, I have a picture of Angelou in which she is delivering a poem at President Clinton's inauguration. Far from the girl who spent years living in fear and silence, the brilliant poet stood before the nation and spoke compellingly"

But today, the Rock cries out to us
clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny!

I love the line "the Rock cries out to us." I think that is beautiful, for some reason, maybe because Jesus was like Maya Angelou's mother in that he went around looking people in the eye to tell them they were beautiful, that he stood as a rock for them, a being who, for the rest of their live, they could look back to and hear in their minds, and envision in their memories, God saying to them the world had been lying, an you are indeed beautiful.