This poem, “Mourning Grace” by writer/master storyteller Maya Angelou, comes to me as I take in the news that she has just passed away in the United States at age 86. I listen over and over to the voice of Angelou herself as she recites these brief but touching words from a recording she first made back in the late 1960s.

I mourn her passing as I also celebrate her memory. Her words have touched and inspired millions of people around the world, and I am no exception. She is one of the writers I include as members of my extended spiritual-literary family around the world who have helped clear the path and led me to become the writer I am today.

Millions of people lined up for miles and miles over the course of three days in late April 1994, many of them voting for the first time in their lives in their country’s first democratic elections — who can forget such images?

The whole world seemed to hold its collective breath as it watched South Africa take its first steps away from the brutal apartheid racial segregation polices of the preceding 48 years (and from centuries of European colonialization of southern Africa before that) and into a new era of liberation and freedom.