Free Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

anticipation of full growth.
    Gratefully I am a member in good standing of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I am under watch care at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and I am a present member of Glide Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco, California.
    In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable in the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting.

Keep the Faith
    Many things continue to amaze me, even well into my seventh decade. I’m startled or at least taken aback when people walk up to me and without being questioned inform me that they are Christians. My first response is the question “Already?”
    It seems to me that becoming a Christian is a lifelong endeavor. I believe that is also true for one wanting to become a Buddhist, or a Muslim, a Jew, Jainist, or a Taoist. The persons striving to live their religious beliefs know that the idyllic condition cannot be arrived at and held on to eternally. It is in the search itself that one finds the ecstasy.
    The Depression, which was difficult for everyone to survive, was especially so for a single black woman in the Southern states tending her crippled adult son and raising two small grandchildren.
    One of my earliest memories of my grandmother, who was called “Mamma,” is a glimpse of that tall, cinnamon-colored woman with a deep, soft voice, standing thousands of feet up in the air with nothing visible beneath her.
    Whenever she confronted a challenge, Mamma would clasp her hands behind her back, look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and draw herself up to her full six-foot height. She would tell her family in particular, and the world in general, “I don’t know how to find the things we need, but I will step out on the word of God. I am trying to be a Christian and I will just step out on the word of God.” Immediately I could see her flung into space, moons at her feet and stars at her head, comets swirling around her shoulders. Naturally, since she was over six feet tall, and stood out on the word of God, she was a giant in heaven. It wasn’t difficult for me to see Mamma as powerful, because she had the word of God beneath her feet.
    Thinking of my grandmother years later, I wrote a gospel song that has been sung rousingly by The Mississippi Mass choir.

    “You said to lean on your arm
    And I am leaning
    You said to trust in your love
    And I am trusting
    You said to call on your name
    And I am calling
    I’m stepping out on your word.”

    Whenever I began to question whether God exists, I looked up to the sky and surely there, right there, between the sun and moon, stands my grandmother, singing a long meter hymn, a song somewhere between a moan and a lullaby and I know faith is the evidence of things unseen.
    And all I have to do is continue trying to be a Christian.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Poet, writer, performer, teacher, and director, M AYA A NGELOU was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, then moved to San Francisco. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
she has also written a cookbook,
Hallelujah! The Welcome Table,
and five poetry collections, including
I Shall Not Be Moved
and
Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?

ALSO BY MAYA ANGELOU
    AUTOBIOGRAPHY
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    Gather Together in My Name
    Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas
    The Heart of a Woman
    All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
    A Song Flung Up to Heaven
    ESSAYS
    Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
    Even the Stars Look Lonesome
    POETRY
    Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie
    Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well
    And Still I Rise
    Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?
    I Shall Not Be Moved
    On the Pulse of Morning
    Phenomenal Woman
    The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
    A Brave and Startling Truth
    Amazing