Rise from the ashes
Still I Rise
BY MAYA ANGELOU
In honor of Black History Month and remembering the victims of the recent fires in California that changed so many lives, I chose a theme for today about rising up. The music video was created by a friend of mine and the poem is, of course, by the amazing Maya Angelou. To rise up, to stand tall, to remember who and whose you are in the face of such oppression, or such tragedy, or such disaster, is to know, deep in your bones, that you are a royal son/daughter of the King. God loves you with such power that you can never understand but you can slowly live into it by learning to rise with grace and strength when you have fallen.
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise. Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994)