“We, this people, on a small and lonely planet travelling through casual space, past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns, to a destination where all signs tell us... It is possible and imperative that we learn a brave and startling truth.

And when we come to it… to the day of peacemaking, when
we release our fingers from fists of hostility and allow the pure air to cool our palms.

When we come to it…when the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate and faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean. When battlefields and coliseum no longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters up with the bruised and bloody grass, to lie in identical plots in foreign soil. When the rapacious storming of the churches, the screaming racket in the temples have ceased..

.When the pennants are waving gaily, when the banners of the world tremble stoutly in the good, clean breeze…

When we come to it…   When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders and children dress their dolls in flags of truce, when land mines of death have been removed  and the aged can walk into evenings of  peace… When religious ritual is not perfumed by the incense of burning flesh and childhood dreams are not kicked awake by nightmares of abuse.

When we come to it...Then we will confess that not the Pyramids with their stones set in mysterious perfection…Nor the Gardens of Babylon, hanging as eternal beauty in our collective memory. Not the Grand Canyon…kindled into delicious colour by Western sunsets, nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe. Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji stretching to the Rising Sun;  neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores…These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it…  We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace. We, this people on this mote of matter, in whose mouths abide cankerous words which challenge our very existence… yet out of those same mouths come songs of such exquisite sweetness that the heart falters in its labour and the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet, whose hands can strike with such abandon that in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living.  Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness that the haughty neck is happy to bow and the proud back is glad to bend… Out of such chaos, of such contradiction, we learn that we are neither devils nor divines.

When we come to it... We, this people, on this wayward, floating body, created on this earth of this earth, have the power to fashion for this earth, a climate where every man and every woman can live freely without sanctimonious piety…without crippling fear.

When we come to it… we must confess, that we are the possible, we are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world… That is when and only when… We come to it.”                                   

 ‘A brave and startling truth’ – by Maya Angelo.- American poet, writer and civil rights activist and the recipient of more than 50 honorary degrees. (1928 – 2014)  Maya Angelou wrote her first book, ‘ I know why the caged bird sings’ at the age of 41. An autobiographical account of her early life, it launched a stellar writing career. The book revealed that she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of seven. After testifying against him he was convicted but was murdered 4 days after he was released from jail. Her book implies he was killed by her uncles, believing that she was responsible for his death she stopped talking for 5 years, speaking only to her brother. The book is considered a classic of American literature, the first of many.

Maya Angelou became a pioneer of the Civil Rights movement alongside Martin Luther King Jnr.  Her philosophy was self empowerment  through action:  “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you… If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”