Active on the lecture circuit, she gave commencement speeches and addressed academic and corporate events across the country. Angelou received dozens of honorary degrees, and several elementary schools were named for her. As she approached her 80th birthday, she decided to study at the Missouri-based Unity Church, which advocates healing through prayer.

 

"I was in Miami and my son (Guy Johnson, her only child) was having his 10th operation on his spine. I felt really done in by the work I was doing, people who had expected things of me," said Angelou, who then recalled a Unity church service she attended in Miami.

 

"The preacher came out - a young black man, mostly a white church - and he came out and said, `I have only one question to ask, and that is, "Why have you decided to limit God?'" And I thought, `That's exactly what I've been doing.' So then he asked me to speak, and I got up and said, `Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.' And I said it about 50 times, until the audience began saying it with me, `Thank you, THANK YOU!'"