Stanford University.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you and good evening.
I am Professor Harry Elam, the
Vice Provost for Undergraduate
Education at Stanford.
And on behalf of the
president and the provost,
I welcome you to tonight's
very special Rathbun
Lecture with our featured
speaker, Miss Oprah Winfrey.
[APPLAUSE]
Now, I got to tell you that
you're in for a special treat.
She spoke to students
this afternoon,
and the generosity, the
commitment, the concern
she had in terms
of the issues she
spoke about touched
all of us there
and will touch you tonight.
The Harry and
Amelia Rathbun Fund
for Exploring What Leads
to a Meaningful Life
was made possible by an
endowment established in 2006
by the Foundation for
Global Community, which
was directed by the Rathbuns'
son, Richard Rathbun.
"Harry's Last Lecture," as it's
affectionately been called,
is the title tonight.
And a s someone named Harry,
I think it's a great name.
The Rathbun Fund
supports the mission
of the Office of Religious Life
by helping students and others
discover and reflect upon
issues of meaning and purpose
during their time of potentially
monumental growth in character
and spirit here at college.
In this day and
age, when students
are driven by the
pace of technology
and the pressures to
achieve, the increasing
concerns over employment
after college,
it is all the more important
to have time to reflect,
the space to think,
not only about yourself
but about the great
world around you.
The Rathbun Fund has created
both a timeless and timely
opportunity to help
Stanford deepen the student
experience with a focus
on thoughtful inquiry,
the pursuit of
ethical engagement,
and a dedication to making the
world a better place to live.
And now to tell you more
about the Rathbun Lecture
and to introduce tonight's
esteemed speaker,
it is my pleasure to introduce
the Dean of Religious Life, Dr.
Jane Shaw.
[APPLAUSE]
Welcome to Memorial Church,
this extraordinary sacred space
that Jane Stanford put at
the heart of our campus,
and welcome to the
2015 Rathbun Lecture.
All that we do
here in this space,
in the circle, which is
our interfaith space,
and at Windhover, our recently
opened contemplation center,
is designed to explore
together as a body,
as a community what it means
to lead a meaningful life.
In our work as the office
for religious life,
we encourage members
of this university
to explore both
spirituality and religion.
We support the working
out of ethical values
and we host discussions, arts
events, and of course, worship,
all designed to help us think
and practice a meaningful life.
The Harry and
Amelia Rathbun Fund
for exploring what leads
to such a meaningful life
generously supports
much of our work.
It was made possible by an
endowment established in 2006
by the Foundation
for Global Community.
The centerpiece is this
visiting fellow program,
which brings notable,
experienced, and wise people
to campus each year.
It is our pleasure this evening
to welcome and thank the board
members and participants in
the Foundation for Global
Community, many of whom
are here with us tonight
and some may be
watching at home.
And in particular, we warmly
welcome Harry and Amelia's son,
Richard Rathbun, his wife Lacey,
and their two children, Ryan
and Milo.
We're so delighted you
could join us tonight.
[APPLAUSE]
And now, it is my
very great pleasure,
and of course, my privilege, to
introduce the Rathbun visiting
fellow for 2015, Oprah Winfrey.
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERS]
She has to have a little
more of an introduction
than that, because she had
so many accomplishments.
She's known to us
as the talk show
host, who changed the very
nature of interviewing
on her show The Oprah Winfrey
Show, which ran for 25 years.
She's known to us as
a brilliant actor,
who especially starred in
films such as The Color
Purple and The Butler.
She has Harpo
Productions and produced
the extraordinary film, Selma.
She's the founder
of O Magazine, which
has 16 million readers
throughout the world.
She is an acclaimed
author herself,
with a passion for reading,
who has, through her book club,
encouraged so many
others to discover
the pleasure of imaginatively
entering the worlds of others
through books.
She's won many awards for
all her incredible work,
including many Emmys and most
recently the Presidential Medal
of Freedom.
She's an exceptionally
generous philanthropist
who has founded a girls'
school in South Africa.
Miss Winfrey's
accomplishments are many,
and she would say
that they all emerged
from her deep sense of spirit
and her spiritual life.
So she is with us
tonight here to give us
the Rathbun Lecture as one of
the great spiritual leaders
of our time.
She encourages millions
to explore what it
means to have a spiritual life.
And that, she's told us today,
is her very, very favorite
thing to do.
You can catch her having
probing conversations
with other spiritual
leaders on Sunday mornings
on her Super Soul Sunday
television program.
You can read her wisdom
in her most recent book,
What I Know for Sure.
You can engage in deep
learning in her life class
as it goes on tour
around the country.
But this evening, we are
fortunate, we are blessed,
and we are truly grateful that
she will be speaking to us
about what leads to
a meaningful life.
Distinguished guests,
students, faculty, staff,
Miss Oprah Winfrey.
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERS]
That was great.
Hi, y'all.
Woo!
[APPLAUSE CONTINUE]
Y'all just don't even know what
this means to me to be standing
in this hall.
In 1970, before
you were you even
a thought in the mind of God
or in the seed of your parents,
I was in an oratorical contest
as a junior at East High
School.
And the great victory for
us as a state champions
was to have our national
championship here at Stanford
in this very church.
[CROWD AWING]
And as I stand her today,
I lost the contest,
but I won the prize.
[CROWD CHEERING]
Wow, I know, I came in today and
I went, oh my gosh, I made it.
Dean Shaw, that
introduction moves me,
because one of my
goals as a human being
has been to evolve
to the point of being
a student in the
spiritual realm enough
that I could be
able to bestow some
of my knowledge, the information
I've gathered over the years
from thousands of
interviews in such a way
that I could call
myself a teacher.
And I dared not call myself
a teacher until hearing it
from you, and because you
have said I'm a teacher
and you are here at
Stanford, I believe you.
I'm going to take that.
So thank you.
It's been an amazing
day here with you all.
First of all, I have one of
my South African daughters,
I have 20 girls in college
in the United States
and one of them, [? Shadai, ?]
is here at Stanford.
[APPLAUSE]
And she's a sophomore.
And we came to Stanford I
think late 2011 or early 2012,
I can't remember.
I remember landing on
the campus with her
and we didn't know if she
was going to get in yet.
As we got into the car and
we're pulling away she said,
Momma O, these are my people.
And I can understand why.
Just being here in the
presence of such energetic,
stimulated brilliance makes
us all want to be better.
So I wish I could have
gone to this school
and I'm thrilled that I
have one of my daughters
who does go to this school.
I love everything that
happens here in the bubble.
And I'm really excited,
really excited to be
a part of the Harry
Rathbun Lecture Series,
because I have spent hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds
and thousands hours talking to
spiritual leaders and teachers,
and not just spiritual
leaders and teachers
who have been deemed so, but
thousands of people who came
from levels of dysfunction, who
came from levels of pain, who
were suffering, who were
challenged in their progression
in trying to be the best
human beings they could be.
And they allowed
themselves the opportunity
to come on our show,
The Oprah Winfrey Show
and share their stories.
I am one who believes in
the sharing of stories.
I believe in the process
of sharing, period,
because I know that all life
gets better when you share it.
And those thousands
of people who
have been guests on the
show and many of them
were also audience members
have been my greatest teachers.
And I would say that
one of my gifts,
and it's everybody's job
to know what your gift is.
So when I talk about my gift I'm
not bragging, it's just fact.
It's just a fact, it's a gift.
Hey, he, ha, yes.
One of my gifts that
I've had since I
was a little girl growing
up in Mississippi,
being raised on a tiny little
acre farm with my grandmother,
is that I knew how
to pay attention.
I was a great observer of life.
And I grew up believing that
I was, indeed, for sure,
God's child.
It's because every Sunday
I sat in our little church
down the road, a dirt road from
where my grandmother lived,
no running water,
no electricity.
I was saying this to my great
niece who's eight the other day
and she said, it sounds like
Little House on the Prairie.
And I go, it kind of was.
No running water, no
electricity, but the church
is down the road from us,
and we could hear the singing
as I was getting dressed
for Sunday school.
And I'd always sit on
the left hand side,
the left pew in the second row.
And I would listen to the
preacher preach about the Lord,
thy God is a loving
God, and sometimes
he would say the Lord
thy God is a jealous God.
But most important, I heard
him say, you are God's child
and through God all
things are possible.
And I literally took him at
his word, so that by the time
I had to leave my grandmother
because she became ill
and I was sent to live in
Milwaukee with my mother who
had other children, I got
beat up on the playground
because when people would
ask me, who's your daddy?
I would say, Jesus is my daddy.
Sometimes he's my brother,
and God is my father.
But what I now know and have
learned that my view of God,
although I call
that God in a box
and although my vision
of God has expanded
to be inclusive of all things.
All, all, God is
all, God is law,
God is all, in all things,
not just the guy sitting up
with the beard.
And now that that view
of God has expanded,
I still understand how important
it was for a little colored
girl-- we weren't
even black yet,
not to mention
African American--
you know what I mean, Harry.
A little colored
girl in Mississippi
for whom there was no vision
of hope or possibility,
my grandmother's
greatest desire for me
as she had been a
maid and her mother
before her had been a
maid, her greatest desire
was that I would grow up one
day and be able to do the same.
And she wished for me
that I would be able to.
And she used to say, I hope
you get some good white folks
when you grow up.
I hope you get good white
folks who treat you good.
So my grandmother had no idea
of the life that I now lead,
with good white folks
who are working for me.
She just wouldn't get it.
[CHEERING]
She wouldn't get it.
She wouldn't get it, but
somehow I think she must know.
And she's up around in
the spirit realm saying,
Lord, have mercy.
I didn't see it.
But I now know that having that
belief system, that something
greater than me was in charge
of my destiny, of my fate,
that it wasn't just me alone
having to survive for myself
is the thing, is the value, is
the rock that has sustained me.
So my vision, my
perception, my understanding
of what it means to
be a universal citizen
has grown as I
came to understand
Acts 17:28, my favorite Bible
verse that says, "in God I move
and breathe and have my being."
So my every attempt
in life has been,
since I was a little
girl, to be in that space
that I call God, to literally
live in the breath that is God.
To live in the breath
and allow the breath
to breathe me as God.
And that is the
reason I see I have
been able to manage fame, handle
the success, grow in grace,
grow in the wisdom and glory
that is offered by that space
that I know to be God, because
in God I live and breathe,
I move and breathe,
and I have my being.
In everything that I
do and all that I am
comes up and out from
the center of that
space, even when I didn't
know what to call it.
So I have paid
attention to my life,
because I understand that my
life, just like your life,
is always speaking to you,
where you are, in the language,
with the people, with the
circumstances and experiences
that you can understand
and interpret
if you are willing to
see that always life, God
is speaking to you.
Now it took me a while to
actually really get this
and to understand
it, but once I did
I started paying
attention to everything.
And one of the
reasons why I can now
accept the fact that I can offer
my gatherings of information
and wisdom and call myself
a spiritual teacher,
is that every single person who
ever came on my show-- and I
hear there was like
37,000 guess I've
talked to-- a lot of them
came from dysfunction
and a lot of them wouldn't
appear to be teachers,
but every one of
them had something
to say that was
meaningful and valuable
and that I could
use to grow myself
into the best of myself, which
is what all of our jobs are.
Your number one job is to
become more of yourself
and to grow yourself into
the best of yourself.
And so I had a lot of great
teachers, as we all do.
I mean, old boyfriends are
some of the best teachers.
Woo, boy I got a
doctorate degree from one.
I'll tell you about that later.
But I was doing an Oprah
Show about a decade ago.
One of my greatest teachers
was a man named John Diaz.
We were doing a show
called "Would You Survive"?
And on Tuesday
October 31, in 2000,
Singapore Airlines flight 006,
a Boeing 747 from Taipei to Los
Angeles took off with
179 souls aboard.
Four crew and 79 passengers
perished in that flight,
a total of 83 fatalities.
There was a Typhoon rolling
through at the time,
and the plane went
down the wrong runway.
Now what's interesting,
John Diaz was on that plane,
and he had had several, several,
several indications-- which
I'll talk about later--
whispers that he
shouldn't have gotten on the
plane, but he did anyway.
He got on the plane
and he managed
to be one of the survivors.
And on the Oprah Show
I was asking him,
do you think it was-- what
do you think it was that you
were one of the survivors?
And I said, do you think it
was your position on the plane?
Because he was in first class
and he was sitting on the right
next to an exit door.
He said, yes, I
think it might have
been the position of the plane,
and also my quick thinking,
he says.
And the fact that I
didn't stop moving.
So I said, you don't believe?
You're not a religious man?
You don't believe that
there was some kind
of divine intervention
going on there?
He goes, no, I'm not
a religious person.
I do not believe it
was anything divine.
I don't believe that.
I did see, he said, as I got
knocked back into the plane,
that it looked like
Dante's Inferno
with people strapped into
their seats and just burning.
And it seemed a bit to me, as
I turned and looked backwards,
like there was a light coming
out of the tops of their heads.
I guess you could call it an
aura was leaving their bodies.
And some lights were
brighter than others.
It changed, he
said, it changed me.
It gave me a new
kind of spirituality,
in a sense, that I now believe
somehow, I don't know how,
but life continues on
somehow through that light.
And I thought, you know,
I'm not a religious man,
but I thought the brightness
and dimness of the auras
are how one lives one's
life, so to speak.
So that's one of the major
things that really has changed
with me since then, he says.
I want to live my life so
my aura, when it leaves,
is one of the brightest ones.
I got chills when he said that.
So much so, nothing to
do but go to commercial.
We'll be right back.
What do you say after that?
I want to live my life
so when my aura leaves
it's very bright.
That's one of those
moments that happens
and you know that it's bigger
than a show about survivors.
Because I always knew
that when I am moved,
at least a million other
people might be too.
Because if I can
feel it and there
are 20 million people
watching around the world,
it means that somebody else also
felt and heard the same thing.
That's what connection is.
So I thought a lot about that,
and thought about it obviously
in thinking about and preparing
to talk to you all today.
About how does one
lead a meaningful life?
Because ultimately, isn't
that what we all want?
We want to lead a life
so that however we
transition people can say, wow,
that was a bright one, that
was a bright light.
First of all, I
think that it comes
from a deep sense of
awareness about who you are
and why you're here.
It comes from being
in touch with,
on a regular basis,
the appreciation
and the holy gratitude that
should fill each of our hearts
on a regular basis, just
knowing what a privilege
it is to be here
and to be human.
Close your eyes for a
moment, will you please?
And breath with me.
Just close your eyes.
And if you will put your
thumb to your middle finger
and gather your
other fingers around.
And lets feel the vibration and
pulse of your personal energy
as you take three
deep breaths with me.
Inhale, and as you exhale just
feel the vibration, energy,
blood pulsating through
your body, through you.
And another inhale.
[EXHALING]
And another inhale.
[INHALING]
[EXHALING]
And keep your eyes closed.
And let's just think
about this day,
this day that you have
been graced to breathe
in and out thousands of times.
This day, where many of those
breaths were taken for granted,
you just expected
the next one to come.
But the truth is,
there's no guarantees
that the next one comes.
This day, how you
started your day,
what your thoughts
were this morning.
How you've carried
yourself through this day,
how you've been allowed to have
encounters and experiences,
some challenging, some
more life enhancing that
push you forward another day
of being here on the planet
Earth as a human being.
Let's just think about that.
After all you've been
through in this day
alone and the many days in
years past, how you got here
to this prestigious, esteemed
university, the choices you've
made that have brought
you to this day.
Open your heart and
quietly, to yourself,
say the only prayer
that's ever needed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You're still here and you
get another chance this day
to do better and be better,
another chance to become more
who you were created, and what
you were created to fulfill.
Thank you.
Amen.
Open your eyes.
That's how it starts.
That is the
foundation for meaning
and purpose in your life
is to bring yourself back
to your breath.
In all situations, in all
ways, in all challenges,
to know that the value of
just still being here matters.
It's really big
that you're here.
It's really big,
because everybody here
has been called from the
ethers to do the will,
to fulfill the highest
expression of yourself
as a human being, and
to do that in truth.
How do you do that?
Well, I think you let every
step you take move you
in the direction
of the one thing
all religions can agree
on, and that is love.
In all the
conversations I've had
with so many people
over the years who
run the gamut of all
kinds of emotions
and emotional
dysfunctions, I've come
to understand that what Marianne
Williamson said is true.
There's really only two
emotions that count,
and that's love and that's fear.
And in all of you are
movements through life
you're either moving in the
direction of one or the other.
In order to have a meaningful
life you have to choose love.
And not the schmaltzy,
daltzy kind of love,
but the kind of love
that really counts,
the kind of love that when
everything else is going wrong
and nobody even knows you're
choosing it you choose love.
The kind of love that says I'm
here for you, no matter what,
you choose love.
The kind of love
that means you make
the right decision, even when
you know the other person
is wrong.
You choose love, because love
is not just-- It's a verb,
and it's everything that
represent kindness, and grace,
and harmony, and corporation,
and reverence for life.
So when you choose when
you're in a situation where
you are mad, you
are mad, and you
know they are
wrong, if you can go
to that space of the breath, in
God I move and breathe and have
my being, and make
the choice just
to move a little closer in
the direction of that which
is going to bring you grace,
that which is going to honor
yourself, and by honoring
yourself you can't help
but honor the other person.
I've learned to choose love over
fear, to choose love and peace
rather than choosing
to be right.
That was a big lesson for me.
Do you want peace,
do you want love,
or do you want to be right?
For a little while I was
like, I'd rather be right.
Rather be right with
a little bit of love.
I am a Christian, I
grew up Christian,
raised in the church
all day long on Sundays.
Sunday school in the morning,
church in the afternoon,
Bible school at night, prayer
service Wednesday night,
choir practice.
I grew up in the church.
I would say I don't go to
church as much anymore.
My church is nature from me.
My church is my life.
I experience church
in every encounter
with every person I
try to have church.
And I try to live my
life from the tenant
of the law, the third
law of motion in physics.
If I had only one wise offering
for you it would be this one.
The third law of
motion and all the laws
of the universe actually,
are, in my mind, divine laws.
And my favorite
is the third law,
which says for every
action there is
an equal and opposite reaction.
There are lots of different
religions and philosophies
that call this other things.
In this country sometimes
we call it the golden rule.
What I know for
sure is, it doesn't
matter what you do unto others,
it's already done unto you.
So anybody who's seen the
movie The Color Purple,
there's a line in there when
Miss Celie leaves and she
says to Mr., everything
you done to me--
and she holds her two
fingers-- already done to you.
That's the third law of motion.
Newton didn't know
that Celie was
going to articulate it
that way, but everything
you done to me,
already done to you.
So that is the tenant
that rules my entire life.
And before the
third law of motion,
which says every action there's
an equal and opposite reaction,
before there's even the
thought or the action
there is the intention
for the thought.
And if there's one force
field that rules and dominates
the meaning of life for
me, it is living my life
with a pure sense of intention.
Now this came to
me because I used
to be one of those people who
had the disease to please.
I said yes many
times when I knew
I should've been saying no, and
then I would be mad at myself
for saying yes.
Anybody ever done that?
You say yes, then you mad
when they come back again.
Because when you say yes
when you really mean no,
people follow the
intention of the yes.
Because why do you say yes?
You say yes because you
don't want the person
to be upset with you.
They're not.
You don't want the
person to be angry,
you want the person
to think you're nice.
They do.
And that is why they
keep coming back.
I couldn't understand it.
I just gave you some money,
and now you are back.
Oh, that's because I didn't
really state the truth
and so now you
think me giving you
the money meant I wanted
to give you the money
and that's why you're back
asking me for some more.
So I tested this
principle of intention
when I first came to discover
it in Gary Zukav's book
Seed of the Soul.
I say, I'm going to see if
that intention thing will work
for this disease to please,
because people are always
bothering me.
So this is what I learned
through intention,
nothing is showing
up in your life
that you didn't order there.
If it's there, it's there
because you needed to see it.
So I have a big life, and things
show up for me in big ways.
So one day Stevie
Wonder calls me.
I'm not name dropping,
it's true, he called me.
No brag, just fact.
It was Stevie, an he
didn't call to say
he loved me either, he was
calling because he wanted
something, but that's OK.
And I, at the time,
this was early on.
Because when I first started
making money and it was
my salary or my earnings were
published all over the place.
I mean the first year
I was like, really?
Did I make that much money?
Oh, my god.
It was very difficult
for me to figure out
where my boundaries were,
because I'd grown up
poor and didn't have anything.
So it's easy when you don't
have anything and people ask you
for money.
And they say I need $500,
and you say, I don't have it,
because I'm just trying
to get my rent paid.
It's harder when you're
multi-billion dollar salary is
now in the paper, and you get
a lot of friends and cousins
you didn't have before.
So how do you set
boundaries for yourself?
I was having trouble setting
boundaries for myself
for even strangers.
People would show up
at my door in Chicago
and say, Oprah, I left my
husband, please help me.
And I would, because
she knows I have it.
So, don't try that
now though, OK.
Don't try that now,
I figured it out!
So what I learned is that
oh, the reason why people
keep showing up is because
my intention is to make them
think that I'm such a nice
person that you can ask me
for anything.
You can get me to do anything.
I'm going to say yes,
I'm going to say yes.
So when Stevie
called me this time
I thought I'd try out
my first no on Stevie.
Let's start big.
He wanted me to donate
some money to a charity,
and I didn't want to
donate to the charity,
because I have my
own charities and I
care about a lot of people.
But the problem is when you have
money everybody thinks you just
want to give to everything.
So every letter I ever
get starts with, we
know you love the children.
Yes, I do love the
children, but somebody else
is going to have to
help the children.
So I said to Stevie,
I said to Stevie no.
And as a person who has
that disease to please I
was waiting for
him then to say, I
will never speak to you again.
I will never call you.
I will never sing
a song for you.
And he didn't, he just said OK.
OK?
OK?
It's OK?
He said, OK, check you later.
And what I learned from
that is, many times you will
have angst and
worry about things
and put yourself in
a state, like someone
said this morning because
her phone went off
they were mortified.
Over a phone, I said?
Really?
You will put yourself in a state
when the other person really
isn't even thinking about you.
So learning that I
could specifically
determine for myself what
the boundaries were for me,
what I wanted to do, give
my money, give my time,
give of my service,
to who I wanted
to give it to when I did, that
I get to make that decision.
And just because you
get 100 requests a week
doesn't mean you have to
try to fulfill all of that.
Just because you have all of
these demands on your time
and on you doesn't mean
that you have to say yes.
You get to decide,
because you're
the master of your fate,
the captain of your soul,
as William Ernest
Henley said in Invictus.
And understanding that really
changed the meaning of my life
in that I was no longer driven
by what other people wanted
me to do, but took
charge of my own destiny,
making choices based
upon what do I feel
is the next right move for me.
So being able to go
continuously to that space,
that I called the power station
of God, universal energy,
the Divine flow.
Being able to tap into
the space where you
and all of life and
me and all of you
in this room, all beings,
all things are connected.
We had a meditation this
morning where we talked
about entering that space.
That space is real.
You cannot, in my opinion,
have a meaningful life without
a life of self reflection, of
spiritual and moral inquiry,
and knowing who you are
and why you are truly here,
spiritual self reflection, to
understand who you are and why
you are here.
And when you understand
the depths of that
and you allow yourself to tap
into the space of that which
is the force, the universal
energy, the Divine flow,
and you do that with a sense of
authenticity that only you can,
that only your
energy can bring, you
become untouchable in whatever
it is you choose to do.
So one of the reasons
I believe that I've
been able to be so successful is
because during the years where
we had fierce competition from
other shows and other people
I would always say
to my producers,
you can't run their race,
you can only run yours.
And you really can only
run what you're doing.
You can't even worry about
your own fellow produces,
you can only run your own race.
That lesson that
Glinda the Good Witch
gives to the Wicked Witch of
the West when she says, go away,
you have no power here,
that's a powerful lesson.
Because I have seen over the
years in so many interviews
and even in my real
life experiences,
people losing their
power because you're
giving your power
to other people.
You lose your power when
you try to take control
of somebody else's
energy, because you
have no power in any energy
field other than that
which is your own.
And your real job in
life is to figure out
how do you master your field.
How do you do that?
By consistently
choosing love, by living
in the space of
gratitude, and knowing
that that power that you
feel from time to time
comes from a source that
is greater than yourself.
Because nobody gets out
of here alone, nobody.
Nobody is making it alone.
And when you are trusting
when you are afraid,
when you are sad, when you are
unable to make a decision, when
you are challenged, when you are
moving in the direction of all
that which is fearful,
it's because you're
trusting in your own power.
I couldn't get here by
my little baby ego self.
When you look at
where I've come from,
a little town, apartheid
town in Kosciusko,
Mississippi in 1957
where there were
more lynchings of black man
per capita than any place
else in the world, where you
had to be off the streets,
literally, when white people
walked down the streets.
Where there was no
vision or hope for you
as a black man or black woman,
other than being a domestic
or teaching in the
colored school.
And my ability to step into
literally the flow and grace
that I called God is
what has gotten me here.
And I consistently mine that,
because having a spiritual life
isn't something that you can
attain because you already
are a spiritual life.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said,
"we are spiritual beings having
a human experience."
I know this to be true.
So it's not like you can go
out seeking a spiritual life,
you already are one.
And the real job is
for you to become
aware of the soul's calling
and the spirit that resides
in, above, around,
and through you,
and be about the business
of fulfilling that.
There is no one else
in creation like you.
There's nobody like you.
And what you've come to do
and what you have to offer
is like no other,
even if they're all
doing the same thing.
I met a bunch of people today
majoring in human biology.
I go, woo, a lot
of human biologist
coming out of Stanford.
A lot of great ones.
And although everybody's
in the same class doing
very similar things,
no one brings
the level of uniqueness
and authenticity
that you can bring.
Nobody does it like you.
And understanding that
what you have to offer,
what you've come to
give to the planet
is your gift, your offering
in a way that nobody else can
and how much that matters.
It matters to you, it
matters to the people
that you love, and matters to
our planet that you are here.
It's just, you know,
it's a miracle.
It's a miracle that
we get to be here.
And when I think of
my life and the fact
that nobody really kind of
wanted me in the beginning.
My father had sex with
my mother one time.
Can you imagine?
That's a powerful seed.
Woo, honey child.
But one time, one time.
And he wasn't in love with her.
He said she was
wearing a poodle skirt
and he wanted to know
what was up under there,
and she showed him
by an oak tree.
Now I got a yard
full of oaks, I know
that's where it all started.
And to think that something
as random as my mother's
poodle skirt and my
father walking out
the door at the time.
She'd had her eye on him for a
while, so she was working it.
To think that
something as random
as that would create a little
Negro child in Mississippi who
grew up and had, and
has had, and continues
to have the opportunities
that I've had.
I can assure that is
nothing but grace.
It's grace.
It's grace because I was allowed
to step into the flow of it
and let it carry
me to this moment.
And I'm not telling you what
to believe or who to believe
or what to call it, but
there is no full life,
no fulfilled, meaningful,
sustainably joyful life
without a connection
to the spirit.
I haven't seen it happen.
And the way for sustainability
is through practice.
You must have a
spiritual practice.
What is yours?
Well, for some people it
is going to church, that's
where they nurture themselves.
I believe that creativity,
artful expression, prayer,
conscious kindness, empathy,
consistent compassion,
gratitude, all
spiritual practices
in the way of becoming
more of who you are.
So I started a
gratitude journal,
I mean, I was journaling
since actually I
was standing here in 1970.
I actually have in my
journal about visiting
Stanford and what it meant
to come here as an orator.
And for years all
of my journals were
filled with he don't
love me, I can't
believe she did that to me, and
this is what happened today.
And about the late '80s
someone introduced the idea
of a gratitude journal to me.
Gratitude journaling has become
a spiritual practice that
leads to an enhanced, a more
enhanced and meaningful life,
and you can start it today.
And you can, I
guarantee, if you did it
for a week you would
see a difference.
Because every day, and
I'll do it when I go home,
five things I write down
that I am grateful for
or that brought me joy
or opened my heart space.
And by practicing
gratitude, what
you realize is, is
that you wake up
in the morning thinking
about, what are those five
things going to be?
Because some days
there's only three.
And then you have to
take a breath, inhale,
that's one, exhale, that's two.
OK, I made my five,
that's all I got today.
So practicing
gratitude in a way that
allows you to take
stock of your life,
that's why it's a spiritual
practice, because you're now
taking stock of your life.
You're assessing where
you are spiritually.
And in order to maintain a sense
of growing yourself forward
it requires also being
in a place of knowing
that after you've done
all then you can-- there's
a wonderful song by
Donnie McClurkin, it says,
you just stand.
There comes a time
in everybody's life
when you've actually
done all that you can do
and you really want
something so badly
but it still isn't coming
forward for you in a way
that you feel that it should.
I know that what is for
you will come to you.
I know that for sure.
And I know that many times,
when it appears that something
is happening to you, it is
always, always happening
for you to strengthen you.
Because my definition
of power is
strength over time-- strength,
times strength, times
strength, times strength.
So I'll leave you with
my favorite story.
I said this today
about The Color Purple.
It's one of my favorite
stories because it
changed the meaning
of my life and changed
the trajectory of my life.
First of all, when I was doing
The Color Purple I had just
come to Chicago and started
a show called A.M. Chicago.
And I had asked my
bosses for the time off,
and I needed two months
to do The Color Purple.
And they said to me, you
don't have two months,
your contract says you
only get two weeks a year.
So in order for us to
give you the time off,
you're going to have to
give up your remaining
time on your contract
to do The Color Purple.
I wanted to do it so badly
that I said, all right,
I'll give up the next
five years of my contract
in order to do it.
What happened was after The
Color Purple, after I filmed
The Color Purple and
The Oprah Show was
so successful, becoming so
successful-- it was actually
still called A.M. Chicago--
the bosses at my channel
wanted to renegotiate
the contract.
And my lawyer at the time said,
remember The Color Purple.
You never want to be in a
position where something is
that important to you to
do, and you can't do it
because the boss says you can't.
You want to be able to
own yourself and make
your own decisions about
what's important to you to do,
and that was something that
was really important to you.
So the fact that I had not been
allowed the time for The Color
Purple is the reason why I made
the decision to take the risk
to own my own show.
And that has made
all the difference
in the trajectory of my career.
But let me try to
shorten this Color Purple
story because it changed
the trajectory of my life.
I wanted to be in
The Color Purple
more than anything I've
ever wanted my life.
I read the book on a Sunday.
I got up, went back
to the bookstore,
got every other
copy of the book.
I passed it out to
everybody I knew.
I was clearly obsessed
about The Color Purple.
People see me coming
go, here she comes,
talking about The Color Purple.
Here she come again.
I literally would walk
around with it in a backpack.
I see all these backpacks,
y'all are loaded down here.
I would walk around with
it in a backpack in case
I ran into somebody
who hadn't read it.
And I'd say, oh,
you haven't read it?
I have one right here.
And as life would have
it, because you're always
drawing things to you,
you're drawing energy to you.
Out of nowhere, supposedly,
coincidence, no such thing.
But I get a call from a casting
agent saying that they're
casting for this movie
called The Color Purple,
this movie called Moon Song.
And I said, are you sure
it's not The Color Purple?
And he said, no, it's
called Moon Song.
Because at the time,
Steven Spielberg
didn't want anybody to know he
was shooting The Color Purple.
So I go and audition
for the movie.
I can't believe that God
has allowed this to happen,
because I am auditioning
with a character named Harpo.
Do y'all know Harpo is
Oprah spelled backwards?
I think that is a
direct sign from Jesus.
But not only am I
now auditioning,
I'm auditioning with somebody
named Harpo, amazing.
When all I'd really asked
God, I'd said, God please,
help me get in this movie.
Help me get in this movie.
I don't know anybody
in the movies.
I'm in Chicago doing a
show called A.M. Chicago.
I thought I could be script
girl, best girl, best boy,
whatever, the last
credit on the movie.
Bottom line is, a long time
passed, I call up the agent
and the agent said, you
don't call us, we call you,
and I didn't call you.
I hung up the phone.
I was so upset I decided
to go to a fat farm,
and I'm going to
lose the weight.
That's what they
called them the time.
I'm going to the fat farm.
I'm going to starve myself
because now all the weight is
caught up with me.
I know they hate me
because I'm fat, I said.
I'm going to go and I'm
going to lose weight,
and I'm going to try to
release this obsession that I
have with The Color Purple.
I'm going to try to let that go.
Because now much
time has passed.
And I am on the track,
running around the track,
and I can hear my
thighs rubbing together.
[FLOP, FLOP, FLOP]
And I start crying, because
oh, gosh, now my thighs
are rubbing together
and it's raining
and my hair is getting wet.
So I started to pray.
And I started, I'm
praying and I'm crying.
And I'm asking God,
actually God, please
help me let this go.
I'm obsessed, I want it.
Reuben Cannon had told me that
real actresses had auditioned
for that part and then
I wasn't a real actress,
and that Alfre Woodard
had just left his office.
So I thought for
sure Alfre Woodard's
going to get that part.
And I'm running around the
track praying and crying.
And the way prayer
works is, you can pray,
but if you don't release it,
if you don't surrender it,
it goes nowhere, it's just
you talking to yourself.
So I started singing this song.
Do you know this
song? (SINGING) I
surrender all, I surrender all.
All to thee my blessed
savior, I surrender all.
I sang and I prayed and I
cried until I could release
the pain, the suffering
of the rejection
that Reuben Cannon had
caused be by telling me
that I don't call you.
And then I realized, oh,
I'm still carrying it around
so I won't be able to go
to see the movie so I'm
going to now pray
that I can bless
Alfre Woodard in the movie.
Let me bless Alfre
Woodard so I'll
be able to go see this movie.
I start singing again,
I surrender all.
Please don't let me have
now a grudge against Alfre
Woodard who took my movie.
Let me have peace in
my heart about that.
So I pray, I pray, I pray until
I'm singing, I surrender all,
a woman comes out and
says to me that there's
a phone call for you.
And in that phone call
I was told next day,
show up in Steven
Spielberg's office,
and if you lose a pound
you could lose this part.
So I stopped at the Dairy Queen.
[CROWD CHEERING]
But the point of this
story is surrender.
And the point of the
story is I thought
I could just be a script
girl, best girl, whatever.
I was just happy to be
anywhere in the film.
The point of this
story is God can dream,
the universe can dream,
your creation can dream,
the flow of your life can dream,
has a bigger plan and a bigger
dream for you then you can
ever even imagine for yourself.
When I finished The Color Purple
Quincy Jones said to me baby,
your future is so
bright it burns my eyes.
And I say the same
thing to all of you.
You Stanford students
with this amazing gift
to be at this institution
and let your light
so shine, your brilliance.
Your future's so bright
it burns my eyes.
The glory that the universe,
God has in store for you
is unimaginable to you,
you can't even imagine it.
You can't even imagine it.
If you will surrender
that which is
yourself in alignment
with the greater self
and allow yourself to become
a part of the force of all.
Take your glory, it's waiting
for you, and run with it.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]
