Rainbow in the Clouds

One of the things I’ve been wondering about is what it looks like to be a female voice of influence and empowerment in the world. I feel that I’ve been enculturated to think that to be feminine in the larger society is to be objectified, frivolous, weak, even altogether irrelevant. In the past, my solution to this was to extract the feminine out of my voice, or at least to present it with enough academic qualifiers to justify its presence. Recently, though, I’ve been wondering what it looks like for a woman to maintain her sense of self (not just as a female but her whole self of which her gender is one aspect) and command others’ attention and respect.

Last Friday, I went to hear Maya Angelou speak at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. I was working as a press guide for the Oscars last week so it was a bit of a to-do to rush to Downtown from Hollywood on time after my shift. I got there fine, though, and I felt a sort of wonderful, melancholic solitude as I insulated myself against the wind in my ratty coat. Hope Street was so deserted and quiet as I marched up the hill to the Music Center but the Pavilion itself was abuzz with families, friends and couples lining up to get in. Sometimes there's such a pleasure in getting lost in the crowd.

I was so exhausted and worried that I wouldn't be able to focus. I was at the edge of my seat through the whole talk, though, and the exhaustion just made me emotionally open – I pretty much wept through the whole thing.

Maya Angelou’s presence was so magnetic. She got a standing ovation as soon as she appeared on stage. Her voice was so commanding and yet so at ease. She knew herself and her place in the world. She was at complete peace and yet not resigned or complacent. Her knowledge and her peace had movement. She not only moves herself through the world but she clearly causes movement in others too.

She spoke of how, in Genesis, God gave his people the gift of the rainbow to ease their worries that the rain would never stop. She spoke of how one can see rainbows even in the clouds, that even though the rain hasn't completely stopped, there is the hope that it will someday. Then she spoke of those who were rainbows throughout her life, and how she strives to be a rainbow for those who are lost in the tumult of life. How all of us can and must be rainbows in the clouds for others. Maybe it sounds cheesy but the way she spoke of these things was so grounded in the timeless truth of humanity and its needs that she cut through whatever cynicism we are accustomed to exulting as reality, intellect, enlightenment. I think this is why I wept.