TODAY'S Liberating Word || Subscribe Today! || HOME
Send Page to Friend || Contact Rev.Piazza || Archives

Day Three

In her book Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now , Maya Angelou tells about how her grandmother who raised her in Stamps, Arkansas tried to warn her about complainers who came into their country store:

As soon as the complainer was out of the store, my grandmother would call me to stand in front of her. And then she would say the same thing she had said at least a thousand times, it seemed to me. “Sister, did you hear what Brother So-and-So or Sister Much to Do complained about? You heard that?” And I would nod. Mamma would continue, “Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.”

Blessings,

Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice

TODAY'S Liberating Word || Subscribe Today! || HOME
Send Page to Friend || Contact Rev. Piazza || Archives