Fred Buechner on Maya Angelou:
...The most moving thing that happened was when, following one of her lectures, there was a question and answer period during the course of which a man stood and said, "Ms. Angelou, tell us something about racism. Do you find it better than it was or worse? Are you more aware of it on the East Coast than on the West Coast?"
She said, "Let me tell you a story."
The story she told was this. She had been in the San Francisco area ten or fifteen years earlier for the purpose of putting on a Public Television show on African art. Before the show was to go on, she had a call from a stranger who said that he happened to have a collection of African statues of some kind which he thought might be very useful to her on this program and perhaps she would like to see them and maybe use them. Of course, she accepted the offer and saw them. They were indeed just what she wanted. He lent them to her and she used them in her program in very artful ways which were appealing to the man who lent them.
As a result of that, they started a friendship. She got to know the man and his wife. They had dinner together a number of times and got to be really good pals. When the Public Television thing was over, she went back to the East Coast.
A few years later, she returned to the Bay Area and remembering this friendship, she called up the man and said, "It is Maya Angelou. I'm back again. I would love to pick up our friendship where we left it off. I enjoyed you so much before."
He said, "Terrific. Let me tell you a little bit about what I have been doing during the interval." He had been in Europe working with the problems of the American troops stationed over there.
She said, "How did it go?"
He said, "The black troops have a particularly hard time because they are black and there aren't many blacks around. But our boys, also..."
She said, "What did you say?"
He said, "The black troops have a particularly difficult time for various reasons but our boys, also..."
She said, "What did you say?"
A third time she went through it. All of a sudden, as she described it, he, himself, heard what he said and said in effect, "This is the most awful thing I have ever done. I can't continue the conversation. I have got to hang up, to have said such a thing to you, Maya Angelou, 'the black boys, our boys.'"
She said, "No. This is just why we must talk because that is what racial prejudice is. Beneath the superficial liberal utterance, there is the deep, ingrained sense of 'black boys, our boys.'" Nonetheless, they continued the conversation and agreed to meet.
What happened then was she tried a number of times to get hold of them, to meet him and see him and his wife. Again and again, the calls didn't go through. She left messages which weren't answered and finally the whole thing just fizzled out. So that was, in a way, her answer to the question, "How about racism?"
It moved her and upset her and that was the last question she took that day.
The next day, the second set of lectures we were to give, she returned to the podium and said, "I'm sure you noticed that I was moved by what I told you yesterday in answer to your question about racism." Then she said, "A remarkable thing happened as I was leaving the hall. A man in the audience stood up and said, 'Here I am.'"
It was the man she had been talking about. As she said that, the man himself again rose up, a small, white, Episcopal clergyman as it turned out. He walked up to the platform and threw his arms around Maya Angelou and she around him. They embraced one another and they wept. It was one of the most moving moments I have ever been part of in many, many ways.
What makes it so moving? I think that what we saw was not only racial barriers but so many different kinds of barriers that separate us as human beings -- fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger, loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, even those we love the most and are closest to. In so many ways, we move through our lives like lepers, the untouchable ones, the unclean ones, afraid to touch other people's lives and let our lives be touched by other people, ashamed of our own uncleanness, suspicious of other people.
What was so moving was that when that large, black woman and that small, white man embraced, we saw that no one is untouchable, not even ourselves. We saw that as Maya Angelou said, "We all do have the same story when you get right down to what life is really all about." We saw that the kingdom of God, as Jesus said, is really among us, potentially, always, as the capacity we have, as those two people at that time had, to love and to forgive and to allow one's self to be loved and to be forgiven.
When you and I fail to embody what happened at that moment in the church when Maya Angelou and the white man embraced each other, when the church fails to embody that moment, all that we do in church becomes sort of empty, a kind of ecclesiastical vaudeville and the laughter is bitter laughter.
When the church does not embody that kind of forgiveness and love, it becomes in so many ways like a dysfunctional family which consists of sort of a superficial togetherness and yet a kind of inner-loneliness, hidden agendas, ministers who are out to hide their humanness behind their sermons and parishioners who are out to hide their humanness from their ministers.
Where the church does embody what happened in that moment of grace that I have been describing to you, when it does embody that, then the laughter and the laughter room is, of all laughter, I think, the holiest, because we have not only the "good news" but in a sense we have become the good news. Like lepers, we are cleansed by the love of God working among us and within us. That is what healing is about and what wholeness is about and what the church and the kingdom of God are all about.
...The most moving thing that happened was when, following one of her lectures, there was a question and answer period during the course of which a man stood and said, "Ms. Angelou, tell us something about racism. Do you find it better than it was or worse? Are you more aware of it on the East Coast than on the West Coast?"
She said, "Let me tell you a story."
The story she told was this. She had been in the San Francisco area ten or fifteen years earlier for the purpose of putting on a Public Television show on African art. Before the show was to go on, she had a call from a stranger who said that he happened to have a collection of African statues of some kind which he thought might be very useful to her on this program and perhaps she would like to see them and maybe use them. Of course, she accepted the offer and saw them. They were indeed just what she wanted. He lent them to her and she used them in her program in very artful ways which were appealing to the man who lent them.
As a result of that, they started a friendship. She got to know the man and his wife. They had dinner together a number of times and got to be really good pals. When the Public Television thing was over, she went back to the East Coast.
A few years later, she returned to the Bay Area and remembering this friendship, she called up the man and said, "It is Maya Angelou. I'm back again. I would love to pick up our friendship where we left it off. I enjoyed you so much before."
He said, "Terrific. Let me tell you a little bit about what I have been doing during the interval." He had been in Europe working with the problems of the American troops stationed over there.
She said, "How did it go?"
He said, "The black troops have a particularly hard time because they are black and there aren't many blacks around. But our boys, also..."
She said, "What did you say?"
He said, "The black troops have a particularly difficult time for various reasons but our boys, also..."
She said, "What did you say?"
A third time she went through it. All of a sudden, as she described it, he, himself, heard what he said and said in effect, "This is the most awful thing I have ever done. I can't continue the conversation. I have got to hang up, to have said such a thing to you, Maya Angelou, 'the black boys, our boys.'"
She said, "No. This is just why we must talk because that is what racial prejudice is. Beneath the superficial liberal utterance, there is the deep, ingrained sense of 'black boys, our boys.'" Nonetheless, they continued the conversation and agreed to meet.
What happened then was she tried a number of times to get hold of them, to meet him and see him and his wife. Again and again, the calls didn't go through. She left messages which weren't answered and finally the whole thing just fizzled out. So that was, in a way, her answer to the question, "How about racism?"
It moved her and upset her and that was the last question she took that day.
The next day, the second set of lectures we were to give, she returned to the podium and said, "I'm sure you noticed that I was moved by what I told you yesterday in answer to your question about racism." Then she said, "A remarkable thing happened as I was leaving the hall. A man in the audience stood up and said, 'Here I am.'"
It was the man she had been talking about. As she said that, the man himself again rose up, a small, white, Episcopal clergyman as it turned out. He walked up to the platform and threw his arms around Maya Angelou and she around him. They embraced one another and they wept. It was one of the most moving moments I have ever been part of in many, many ways.
What makes it so moving? I think that what we saw was not only racial barriers but so many different kinds of barriers that separate us as human beings -- fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger, loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, even those we love the most and are closest to. In so many ways, we move through our lives like lepers, the untouchable ones, the unclean ones, afraid to touch other people's lives and let our lives be touched by other people, ashamed of our own uncleanness, suspicious of other people.
What was so moving was that when that large, black woman and that small, white man embraced, we saw that no one is untouchable, not even ourselves. We saw that as Maya Angelou said, "We all do have the same story when you get right down to what life is really all about." We saw that the kingdom of God, as Jesus said, is really among us, potentially, always, as the capacity we have, as those two people at that time had, to love and to forgive and to allow one's self to be loved and to be forgiven.
When you and I fail to embody what happened at that moment in the church when Maya Angelou and the white man embraced each other, when the church fails to embody that moment, all that we do in church becomes sort of empty, a kind of ecclesiastical vaudeville and the laughter is bitter laughter.
When the church does not embody that kind of forgiveness and love, it becomes in so many ways like a dysfunctional family which consists of sort of a superficial togetherness and yet a kind of inner-loneliness, hidden agendas, ministers who are out to hide their humanness behind their sermons and parishioners who are out to hide their humanness from their ministers.
Where the church does embody what happened in that moment of grace that I have been describing to you, when it does embody that, then the laughter and the laughter room is, of all laughter, I think, the holiest, because we have not only the "good news" but in a sense we have become the good news. Like lepers, we are cleansed by the love of God working among us and within us. That is what healing is about and what wholeness is about and what the church and the kingdom of God are all about.
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