1 10 8 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/7bad39897a58540584b201df9e516713.pdf 106efcac9f3b7b159efc18dda8b01875 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-300_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University It is important to make clear that I am not denigrating the reality of the priestly element in the minister's function as the leader of this congregation in prayer. [INAUDIBLE] in his discussion of this point make this graphic comment. Any intrusion of [? angular ?] individuality on the minister's part in the conduct of the service of worship is not only a breach of good taste, it is a frustration of the act of worship. Commenting further, he says, we are inclined to think that intimacy and individuality on the minister's part give reality to the office of worship. It is his judgment that intimacy somehow undermines or destroys the reality of prayer. He says that the minister who leads in prayer is not an individual praying for himself. He is the voice of the people. This is an excellent point which needs to be emphasized, but it does not negate the plea that I'm making for genuineness in the prayer experience which the minister has in leading his congregation in prayer. It is true that he gathers into one sensitive [INAUDIBLE] the yearnings, aspirations, needs of his diverse congregation. But these are channeled through the yearning and outreach of his own spirit. These needs come to focus in him, and in public prayer, he voices them. But the voice is his voice. The sincerity is his sincerity. Prayer is his prayer. Here public prayer at its best is most private. And it well may be said that private prayer at its best is most public. 1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-300_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (II) (Hester Lecture) [Side B], 1971 Feb 10 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-300_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 2 (continued), 1971 February 10 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-10 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Description An account of the resource In this lecture, Thurman considers the challenges facing those who must simultaneously be religious experts and persons involved in the experience of leading a religious life. The dilemma of incessantly performing priestly duties, he shows, demands that public demonstrations of spiritual competence be exhibited in the service of “needy humanity” even as the professional works out one’s private formation. Thurman emphasizes, however, that intimacy with communities must not come at the expense of inward encounters with the divine but through the inward spiritual life that inspires “yearning and outreach” for human connection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey dilemma discipline Hester Lecture mysterium in society public and private prayer religious authority religious experience religious leadership religious living spiritual consumer the priestly role https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/f23246df0f8a67f982f7e15bec7c2e03.pdf 8167639181e5e94f77f6c6836a7f2a2f PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-299_B.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Let me illustrate it from another field. Several years ago, a friend of mine a physician, connected with a certain medical school gave me my annual physical examination. In addition, I was sent to various laboratories for a routine tests. At the appointed time, I reported to his office for the findings. I sat in the familiar chair near his desk as he opened the manila folder with the results of the tests. Despite the fact that I felt all right I was a bit apprehensive. The doctor looked at each page carefully then glanced at me until he came to the end. He closed the folder as he said, you are in good health except you are a bit overweight. Then he talked technically to me about the dangers of extra weight at my age. I found myself looking at him in the light of what he was saying to me. I chuckled, because he was not quite as tall as I, but he weighed easily 220 or 225 pounds. He thought that his body knew that he was a doctor. His body did not know that he was a doctor. His body he knew precisely what my body knew, that he was taking in more caloric units than he was burning up. Hence the bulges. The preferential treatment that society gives to us professionals, as indeed it should and must, does not mean that such persons have any [AUDIO OUT] moral and physical laws with impunity. You may recall that this was one of the major temptations of the master. It is written in the book that the tempter carried Him to the pinnacle of the temple and said, "If thou art the Son of God, jump down. You will not be hurt. God will give His angels charge concerning you. They will bear you up on their wings lest you dash your foot against the stone." And the master replied, "It is written, thou shalt not tempt God." In other words, tempter said to him that this world is not orderly. This world is not structured. There is no fundamental dependability upon which the individual living expression of life may depend. But if you can manage to get into a certain position of immunity, then the ordinary logic of life can be handled and manipulated. And always to the professionals advantage. The implication of the message applied to the tempter is this. If I go up to the pinnacle of the temple and jump down, the possibilities are I will break my neck. Son of God to the contrary notwithstanding, because this is an orderly world. And if I act as though I am immune to the order, the logic itself will destroy me. It is quite reasonable that Jesus may have been tempted to think something like this. Somehow the quality of my character, all of my sense of oneness with my father ought to render me immune to the order of life. 1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-299_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (I) (Hester Lecture) [Side B], 1971 Feb 9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-299_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 1 (continued), 1971 February 9 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-09 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Description An account of the resource In the first lecture of this series, Thurman discusses the meaning of being a professional in society and the distinctiveness of the religious professional. For the religious professional, one’s calling is unique not only because he or she is chosen but because God has chosen that person. While divine calling distinguishes this individual, Thurman shows special election does not leave one exempt from the contingencies and challenges of human experience. Divine calling should not make the minister arrogant but more devoted to the mission of urging others to embrace the love of God. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey calling Hester Lecture minister mission religious experience religious professional spiritual authenticity https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/9c79fdd48739d6b45186dd4e37be7ef6.pdf 76c51da90fcb1068721db68d8e62c8d4 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-299_A.mp3 There's not a word in my tongue but lo, oh Lord, thou knowest it all together. Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand hold me and thy right hand shall steady me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me. The darkness hideth not from thee. But the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me. Oh God, how great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Amen. [INAUDIBLE] Ladies and gentlemen, I have elected to think with you during these mornings about the minister as a religious professional and the integrity and the responsibility that go with the use of words. And I'd like to ask for your indulgence at the risk of great boredom. Boredom on your part, I mean. Because I'm going to begin using the same quotation every morning. And by Friday, if you stick it out, it'll be running out of your nose and eyes and ears. But it's a quotation that has meant so very much to me and in my own journey that I want to pass it on to you with the hope that it might become, in some ways, for you, particularly those of you who are young and who have the sunlight in your face. It is taken from a novel by a South African English woman, a contemporary of Cecil Rhodes. She was the one person, according to one of Rhodes' biographers, who insisted that she was the only human being for whom Rhodes had any respect. And this is the quotation. "The new mother, when she looks at the head of the babe in her arms, whispers in her heart, my child, may you seek after truth. If anything I teach you be false, may you throw it from you and go on to richer knowledge and deeper truth than I have ever known. If you become a man of thought and learning, may you never fail to tear down with your right hand what your left hand has built up through years of thought and study, if you see it at last, not to be founded on that which is. If you become a politician, may no success for your party, love your country, or security for yourself ever lead you to tamper with reality and to play a diplomatic part. If you become an artist, may you never paint with pen or brush any picture of external life otherwise than as you see it. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu In all of your circumstances, my child, fling yourself down on the truth and cling to that as a drowning man in a stormy sea flings himself onto a plank and clings to it, knowing that whether he sink or swim with it, it is the best that he has. Die poor, unknown, unloved, a failure perhaps, but shut your eyes to nothing that seems to them to be the truth." Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, I'd like for this to brood over your minds as we work together as the spirit of the hive broods over the place where the bees make honey. And if the spirit of the hive ever deserted such a place, then the bees could not make honey. They would just be another insect. So let this brood over your minds as we work together on our theme. In this series, I'm using the term minister and preacher synonymously. The first half or two thirds of my lectures will have to do with the preacher as a religious professional. By simple definition, a professional is one who practices a given profession. The persons who practice professions in any society do so by virtue of skill, techniques, and knowledge which they have developed as a result of the disciplines peculiar to their particular profession. As a result of much trial and error of distilled experience and defined need, society evolves certain prerequisites which must be met before one is admitted into the charmed circle of a particular profession. Now the older and more established the profession, the more classical and inflexible are the standards apt to be. As a member of both the society and his profession, the professional himself is under social obligation to maintain high standards, not only by personal efficiency and competency, but also by refraining from being party to any action which might undermine or short circuit the standards and the morality of his profession. In our particular profession, we are acknowledged to be a group set aside even from other professions because of our special calling of God to do the work to which our hands are set. In later times and in many religious groups, a decreasing emphasis is placed upon the call to the ministry, as such. The call itself has become increasingly secularized, as the line dividing the secular from the sacred has become more and more diminished. In the development of Christianity in the world, there has grown up around the minister a very highly specialized ritual or ceremonial. Or in my language, an etiquette. It is characteristic of all professionals that society recognize their entrance into the profession by certain authentic ceremonials. In medical schools, for instance, the doctors have a capping and a hooding ceremonial as a private affair independent of the awarding of the degree at commencement time. It is this idea of having a something that belongs uniquely to the anatomy of the profession itself. Men are inducted into their professions by their colleagues who are sanctioned by society with the authority of veto or certification over the inductees. It is important to call attention to the fact that members of a given profession act not only on behalf of their profession but also on behalf of society when they admit a new member. They exercise such authority on behalf of society to which they have an acknowledged commitment. But for the minister, there is something perhaps more fundamental, or perhaps more uniquely, at work. True, there are ceremonials characteristic of particular religious groups that are honored in the admission of new members. Society demands that there be a ceremonial. But in most 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu instances, the form, the content, and even the significance of such ceremonials are left to the discretion of the particular religious group. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The point at which society is most meticulous, however, is in the function of the religious professional in terms of the admission of new members into society. In other words, in connection with the marriage rights and ceremonies. In most states, the demands of society are met, then the marriage license is duly executed by a religious professional. But even so, there must be a clear indication that the performer of the rights is duly authorized with the sanction of a particular religious group, religious institution, or religious authority. Many years ago, I applied to the state of Massachusetts for the right to perform a marriage ceremony within the laws of the Commonwealth. I wanted to go to Boston. I was living in Washington. I wanted to go to Boston to perform a ceremony for a friend of mine. But in order to have the authority to do this, I had to apply to the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And when I filled out the form, he sent me a certificate, oh, about this length or width, height, whatever it is, delegating me a justice of the peace for 24 hours. So it was as a justice of the peace that I performed the marriage ceremony. But I had to conform to the conditions that the society had set up, very rigid conditions, for determining the conditions under which new members might be permitted and the marriage right might be sanctioned, underwritten, sponsored, guaranteed, whatever the word is. Now, I said a few minutes ago that there was something more at work in the peculiar recognition of the religious professional. Now, his is a special calling, the call of God, to do God's work among the children of men. Now, implicit in this is the concept of a special dedication. It is not merely that he chose the profession specifically. But importantly, he was chosen for the profession by God. Even among those who have no particular interest in religion, there is a psychological reverence for the holy, which is a little more than superstition. But again and again, it obtains. When I was an undergrad here in Atlanta, Georgia, I was riding across town with the local minister. We were so absorbed in conversation that we passed through a stop sign, almost running down a traffic cop. He blew his whistle, ordered us to pull to the side. Simultaneously with turning towards us, he pulled out his blackjack, rushed to the driver's side, reached in to pull the driver's head into striking distance, as he said, "are you blind, nigger?" Whereupon my friend, with perfect calmness, said, "Officer, you would not hit a man of God, would you?" [LAUGHTER] The policeman froze, released his raised club and muttered, "Why don't you watch where you're going? I'd better not run into you again." Now, he was respecting the taboo. For him, I dare say, his act was not one of reverence but the response to a superstition. If I touch the Ark of the Covenant, I'll drop dead. Dead. And there's something so [INAUDIBLE] satisfying about being a part of a goodly company with that kind of protection. [LAUGHTER] 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University As professionals, we are separate from the layman. As religious professionals, we have a sanction that is not dependent for its authenticity upon the permission of our society. And this makes for a great deal of pride and arrogance. And sometimes it makes us as human beings very difficult with whom to live. Now, often this goes to great extremes. It is so easy to construe our calling as that which gives us the exclusive right, mark my words, which gives us the exclusive right to know, but often not to do, the will of God. An elder friend of mine wrote me about a problem in her church. There were increasingly inharmonious relations developing between the minister and his congregation, to state it in very polite terms. But the church regarded itself as a praying church. It was mutually decided that the consigned that was weighing heavily upon the mind and spirit of the church, namely this difficulty, should be placed before God in a season of prayer for a period of two weeks. In the general meeting that followed, it became immediately clear that each was more convinced than ever of his previous attitude. The minister insisted that what God had to say to him was more direct and authoritative than what God had to say to the congregation. For the congregation, after all, were just laymen. God had assured him that his work there was not complete and he must not leave. His claim to a surer knowledge of the will of God by virtue of his calling. Now, every word is critical. By virtue of his calling was insisted upon. The members of the congregation, in the very nature of the case, could not be so sure. What is so easily overlooked and often forgotten is that no man, no, not even a holy man, has a final protection against self deception. Always a man may be mistaken. For the evidence upon which he bases his decision, inspired or uninspired, is never quite complete. I'll never get through this if I stop to comment all the time, so I'll just push along. But it's a great temptation. Incidentally, this is the reason why the religious man is driven to establish some other than self reference to validate the integrity of his religious experience. It is the nature of mind that things make sense. But the mind has to brood over the conglomerates of experience and reduce these conglomerates to concepts, to ideas which can be projected. And the individual, then, can establish some sort of psychological distance between him and the idea and pass some judgment on it. But whatever is distilled, whatever sense is made out of the stuff of experience, yes, the stuff of religious experience, is limited by the fact that all ideas, all concepts, all dogmas, all theologies, in this sense are inventions of the mind. They are what the mind does with the churning, pulsing vitality of the religious experience itself, which is so much more than can be contained by thought and idea. But the mind has to make sense out of things. So it cuts off a hunk and works it over so it can project it as I'm doing with words. Now, here we are face to face with perhaps the most cruel dilemma of the religious life itself. The religious experience is so intimate, so primary, so personal, and yet the mind forces the believer to check out his insight empirically. When he is unable to do so, he still may find the validity of the experience itself. Always the master was haunted by the insistence from those about him. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu If you are the Son of God, prove it. Validate it empirically. While at the same time he knew that the validity of his experience of his Father did not rest upon any kind of external validation. Yet he was never relieved from the necessity for seeking such validation. Pitts Theology Library Emory University This may be one of the fundamental reasons, one, mark you, of the fundamental reasons why the master had disciples. If he could be surrounded by a small group who were an intimate part of the inner quality of his shared religious experience, they would be able to answer to the prying. If you are, prove it. They could say, yes, He is. What are they saying about me? Who do they say I am? Now, you who have worked with me and lived with me, who do you say I am? That there is no immunity from the creative push towards for instancing. And yet the validity of lived experience ultimately is found in the integrity of the experience itself. It's one of the spirituals that I used to sing as a boy in my hometown. If Satan says that I don't have any grace, I will take him back to the starting place. That the validity of the experiences is experience. But even standing within that tight circle, there's a rumor in my spirit that I just might be mistaken. Might be mistaken. I think this is the point that Habakkuk is making when he says, although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be on the vines. The labor of the olives shall fail and the fields shall yield no meat. The flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. All the empirical validations for the goodness and the presence of God check out negatively. Then what does he say? Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength, and He will make my feet like hinds' feet, and He will make me to walk upon high places. I think, my friends, and particularly the young people, I think that a man may live his entire life. Think about it before you say whatever you may say. I think that a man may live his entire life feeling that he has followed the light on his path and discover at sundown that he missed the turn in the road. And it is for this reason that the only attitude that finally life honors in this regard is an attitude of great humility. Just the absence of cocksuredness and a strutting arrogance that you know the truth. And well, I think you understand what I'm talking about. There's a general disposition on the part of society to guarantee many considerations to the professionals which are not available to its lay members. These considerations range all the way from preferential treatment on social and economic matters to a wide range of other kinds of exemptions. It is common knowledge that the minister as a religious professional enjoys many such exemptions. They may range from reduced railway rates, department store discounts, to the professional services of doctors, dentists, and undertakers. [LAUGHTER] Very often, such considerations are given more to Catholic than to Protestant or Jewish religious professionals. And this is due in part to the distinctive dress or garb. Such dress makes it easy for the professional to be singled out from among his fellows with a minimum risk of being mistaken. I think that this is in part responsible for the fact that Roman Catholic priests and nuns were able to ride free of charge on all public transportation in San Francisco for a long time. I do not know whether this still retains, because since I have moved back to the Bay Area, I walk. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu [LAUGHTER] Pitts Theology Library Emory University To summarize this aspect of our discussion, the assumption is that over and above his training and equipment but fundamental to them, the minister is respected as one called of God in a very special way to fulfill a mission. That mission is to urge men to repentance and judgment and to assure them of the grace and the love of God. In Christianity, he is an apostle of his master, and in some branches of the faith, his ordination is regarded as being in the direct line of the apostolic succession. Some 25 years ago, when I first came out to San Francisco for the first time, maybe 25, 30 years ago, I worked in an Episcopal summer school for the northern diocese of California doing lectures in the flush of religion. And the dean and the bishop, rather, invited me to preach the opening ceremony in the summer school. I said, I'm not prepared. I didn't even bring a white shirt with me. Because I knew that not being an Episcopalian, I just wouldn't be asked to do anything but do what I'm supposed to do in the classroom. So he said, well, you can buy a white shirt. And so I did, and I took service. And a few days after that, he spoke to me and he said, you know, we have communion every morning before breakfast. And I said, yes, I know that. And perhaps I will come in one morning to share. He said, well, I'm not insisting that you do. But I want you to know that you are welcome to the Lord's table. And I had studied the prayer book as a student. But you know, when you study the book of the student, it has nothing to do with you. So I went to the dean and I asked him if he would take some time and go over the service with me, because I wanted to feel that it spoke to my need, and I did not want to be in a position of doing anything that would profane the meaning of the communion service for the clergyman. So I went this particular morning to the service. As I came in, a man was getting up from his praying stool. And he saw me come in and immediately he dropped back on his praying stool. And the next hour, two hours, at the end of my lectures, he came up and asked me if he could talk to me. Could he take me for a drive? So he took a long drive, 17 mile drive down Monterey. And he talked to me. And finally, the conversation became so involved that he pulled on the side so that he could really concentrate. And he said, you had no right to accept the bishop's invitation to preach. Because you're not ordained. And that was interesting. And then he said, you presented yourself for communion. And then he said, you shouldn't have done that, because you had not been prepared for this by the church. And then he read something to me from one of the church fathers. And he said, you see, Dr. Thurman, even in the old days, the early days of the church, the heathen was not allowed at the Lord's table. Now, he was a good man. And he was a good man. You know, the difficulty of stopping is that you go on and on. But I will say this. I have a friend down in Southern California. She's 90 years old. She lives in one of the retirement places. She still writes beautiful poetry, and she keeps up with whatever I'm doing. And occasionally, she writes a poem or sends me a little story that might be helpful in my work. So she knew that I was doing this series. My secretary told her. 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University And in the mail, I got a card from her. And it may be very old to you, but I'd never heard it before. She said, since you are going over to the Baptist, I want to tell you a story that the wife of Jerry Voorhis told me many years ago. That the little boy came home from Sunday school greatly perturbed and his mother asked him what is wrong. And he said to her, something happened in Sunday School. I knew all along that God was a Baptist, but I didn't know that Jesus was a Jew. [LAUGHTER] Even among the most cynical and secular persons, the minister stands in a peculiar relation to his fellows, because he is symbolic of the mysterium in human life. Such an attitude has a long history in the life of man on this planet. In every culture and every civilization, however simple or sophisticated, a special consideration is given the presence of the God or gods among the people as embodied in those among them with a transcendent gift. For a wide range of reasons, it is popular in our time to move in the direction of ignoring such distinctions, but without much success. Even among Quakers, historically there is no separate group of clergy, as such. Yet there is a recognition of the call, which at any time along his journey, any friend may receive. Suffice it to say that the minister becomes heir to all the inherited residue from ancient racial taboos and reverences that have accumulated around the holy place, the sacramental, and the holy man. The threat to the integrity of the minister growing out of being cast in the role of special privilege and special sanction is that he is apt to regard this as his due. I mean by this he is tempted to assume that as a person, he reads this. And before he knows it, his attitude towards others will demand this kind of recognition from them. There must be the clear understanding that preferential treatment, in whatever form of social exemption, is given to the professional as a professional, not as a person. If the professional, in this case the minister, begins to think that life will make an exception to the rule because he is different from the layman, only trouble awaits him. Knowledge as such or a sense of special calling do not make for exceptional treatment as far as natural and moral law is concerned. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. For instance, a man's body does not know that he is a clergyman or a doctor or a lawyer. The fact that he is a clergyman does not mean that he is exempted from the human predicament or from the things by which other men are bound. Let me illustrate it from another field. 7 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-299_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (I) (Hester Lecture) [Side A], 1971 Feb 9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-299_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 1, 1971 February 9 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-09 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Description An account of the resource In the first lecture of this series, Thurman discusses the meaning of being a professional in society and the distinctiveness of the religious professional. For the religious professional, one’s calling is unique not only because he or she is chosen but because God has chosen that person. While divine calling distinguishes this individual, Thurman shows special election does not leave one exempt from the contingencies and challenges of human experience. Divine calling should not make the minister arrogant but more devoted to the mission of urging others to embrace the love of God. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Psalm 139: 7-12 Habakkuk 3:17-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey calling Hester Lecture minister mission religious experience religious professional spiritual authenticity https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/22d1414a9a6e3a6e05bcd68bd2773c7a.pdf 8bae1cae4c8014da32c926f03d50a85c PDF Text Text [FOOTSTEPS] "O Sabbath rest by Galilee! O calm of hills above, where Jesus knelt to share with thee the silence of eternity interpreted by love. Drop thy still dews of quietness till all our strivings cease. Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace." Thou who builds the nest for the bird that has lost his sight, build thou for us. For we too, oh God our Father, are blind. Amen. I begin the second leg of our journey as I began the first leg. The new mother, when she looks at the head of the baby in her arms, whispers in her heart, "My child, may you seek after truth. If anything I teach you be false, may you throw it from you and go on to richer knowledge and deeper truth that I have ever known. If you become a man of thought and learning, may you never fail to tear down with your right hand what your left hand has built up through years of thought and study if you see it at last not to be founded on that which is. If you become a politician, may no success for your party, love of your country, or security for yourself ever lead you to tamper with reality and to play a diplomatic part. If you become an artist, may you never paint with pen or brush any picture of external life otherwise than as you see it. In all of your circumstances, my child, fling yourself down on the truth and cling to that as the drowning man in a stormy sea flings himself on to a plank and clings to it, knowing that whether he sink or swim with it, it is the best that he has. Die poor, unknown, unloved, a failure, perhaps-- perhaps. But shut your eyes to nothing that seems to them to be the truth." We began our journey by opening up aspects of a discussion having to do with the dilemma, certain dilemmas, of the minister, the preacher, as a religious professional. And it was pointed out that the professional is given certain recognitions and certain courtesies by society, because he is a professional. And he stands with reference to society as a resource that's over against society, and yet a part of it. And in order to guarantee the security of his place in the total social scheme, the society surrounds the professional with certain courtesies, certain recognitions, and places upon him certain responsibilities. The religious professional stands in even a more unique position with reference to society, because in him, society sees the epitome, a kind of apotheosis, of all that the racial memory has garnered in man's journey on this planet, with reference to the place and the significance of the holy, of the sacramental, the mysterium in society, that uncharted area that is resident in the human spirit and finds its counterpart in the external world, that makes a man feel that the mood with which he must live if he is to get the deepest and most profound sense of belonging is the mood of reference. And the minister is the symbol of this among the children of men. And from within the context of his own experience, he has the sense of being plucked, chosen, called, separated from, and placed in a unique position of guidance and responsibility. And this is pretty strong medicine. And again and again, it tends to delude the man so possessed into thinking that all the things that come to him are his due and that, in some strange sense, he is not bound by the kinds of demands that are built into natural law and moral law, that binds people who do not have his unique calling. And there is a subtle deception at work always in the life of the professional. And in the life of the religious professional, this subtle deception is deeply dramatized, that life will make an exception in this case. And there is a sense in which he operates outside of both moral and physical law and can bend these to his private necessities. Now I'd like to pick the threads now and go on. I mean, pick up the threads. Sorry. It is the unique insistence laid upon the life of the religious professional that what he is by profession, he must also be as a person-- that what he is by profession, he must also be as a person. The physician is not called upon to practice medicine when he is not practicing medicine. When the surgeon takes off his gloves and his other paraphernalia and gets in his car and goes home, when he is a man in the family, he is not practicing surgery. And it is to guarantee that this pattern will not be broken, he will not practice surgery even on his own family. He lets somebody else take that responsibility. But the minister is always ministering. There is no on again, off again. What he is by profession, he is as a person. And 394-300_A.mp3.plain_text.txt[2/13/19, 12:45:28 PM] �this becomes very burdensome. There are moments when you wish that, just for one, swirling period, you could just get out from under this sort of necessity and just be garden variety, you know, without penalties. The minister, however, is dedicated to a private life of religious growth and development on the one hand and a public life of religious leadership on the other. And that's a heavy load to carry. All of his life long, the minister treads the narrow path between knowledge about religion and the religious experience itself-- knowledge about religion and the religious experience itself. It is the razor's edge. Fundamental to the etiquette of his calling is the necessity to subject himself to the discipline and the training which will enable him to minister to the needs of ultimate consumers in some parish which he will serve in the future. So complete may be his dedication to this end that he is apt to forget the very commonplace fact that he, the minister, is also an ultimate consumer of the gospel which he preaches. I don't know how it is for those of you who are now in training. But I know how it was with me. It was very difficult for me to keep a sense of being the object of my own gospel, that all the time, I was thinking-- I was preparing myself to give, to share the Word to everybody but to me. Sounds curious to put it that way. It's so subtle, the thing that I'm feeling. And I'm sure you sense it. I envisioned needy humanity. And I wanted to identify myself with them. And this is right. And I tried to find the words that could blossom in me that would be the word of life for them, for those others. Therefore, the central dilemma of the religious professional is to be, in fact, the kind of religious person which his gospel demands. As one poet has put it, "I will not add my lamentations to the raised voices or probe the wounds of the world till they bleed afresh. I offer no plan for days when the agony is over. Neither will I discuss my neighbor's sins with any man. I have done waiting for some miraculous change in the human heart. Shall peace descend like a dove and suddenly life be cleansed? I watched down the roads of time for a sign of its coming. I watched at the open door. I waited where there is silence and men forget the anguish of war. I turned to the darkened city, to the terror over all. I heard the exhortations of the preacher and read the writing on the broken wall. And I looked to my neighbor for a change of heart. I looked for his spirit to wake, as one in springtime looks to the almond tree before the pale buds break. But I looked not at myself, having no wisdom to see that first, the miracle must be wrought in me." This is what I'm saying. Now I turn to another aspect of the dilemma created by the fact that the minister must be both a religious professional and a religious man. It is in the nature of the religious experience itself that each man who shares in the experience is an authority. He is an outsider and an insider at one and the same time. No one can successfully deny the authority of another man's inner experience. Because religion undertakes to deal with the ultimate destiny of a man's life, few are given the right to guide him there. Few may be trusted with such almighty authority. There is a tremendous autonomy about the religious experience itself. This makes for a radical intolerance and may become the source of the bitterest and bloodiest conflicts known to mankind. In the presence of the testimony of the heart-- of the heart-- all human judgments may be irrelevant and may be regarded by the other person as evil. When I was 12 years old, to use the language of my church at home, I was converted and presented myself for baptism and membership. It was the custom in our community for the convert to appear before the Board of Deacons for examination, for cross-filing and so forth. Now in their judgment, I failed completely. And they told me to go back and come again. I went home, and I told my grandmother what had happened, that they said that I was not ready. So she went to talk with them, taking me by the hand. Now what she said to them in substance was this. "Who made you men the judge of what God has done in this boy's heart? You are not gods. So don't act that way." She ended by quoting the words of the master, "Suffer the little children to come unto me"-- she did this very piously-- "and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven." This is the salve that she placed on their wounds after she had lacerated them. 394-300_A.mp3.plain_text.txt[2/13/19, 12:45:28 PM] �[LAUGHTER] As a religious professional, the minister, in a unique way, has a source of technical authority. And that is the Bible. That is the book. It is the initial and binding source book for his gospel. The assumption is that he is especially trained and skilled to interpret it. In the course of his training, of necessity, he has studied many books about the Bible, the thought authorship of the various books, their dates or guesses about their dates, the person, persons, or groups to which the book is addressed, and all the issues surrounding their historicity. Indeed, it may include the use to which the Bible has been used as a source in the development of the Christian movement in the world, and particularly, in Western culture and civilization. Through the years of his training, he has worked patiently, and often impatiently, in the laboratory of the classroom and the library, running the whole gamut of receding and ascending methods of biblical criticism and so forth. Often, as a part of his training, he become skilled in the use of the tools of criticism. And as a result of the most thoroughgoing study, he has made a utility out of the external verification of texts. So overwhelming is this procedure that it is entirely possible for the minister to lose the impact of the message of the book as the witness of the spirit of God in the individual and collective life of a people. My insistence here is very simple and obvious. It is that the minister must discern, must hear the words anew against the background of his world and his culture, his limitations, his conditioning, his hopes, his fears. He must understand that the tools of investigation are tools, which he uses to clarify, to authenticate the central word of life which is there. The deepest thing in him must respond to the wooing of the word as it is revealed in the book. And here I regard my attitude about this as one which may not be-- I don't know what the word is-- may not be worthy, I guess, certainly not acceptable. But all the years of my own ministry, from the beginning, I have had a certain mistrust of my own abilities to discern the whisper in my own heart and mind coming from my response to the word in the book, if I leaned on commentaries. Now I am taking a moment to say this out of respect for my own thought. It is not to be too suggestive to you, as indeed, none of this is intended to be. This is my witness, my testimony, for all what it's worth. But I was always fearful that I wouldn't have enough character to keep from borrowing and misappropriating. Now that may be a form of arrogance. I don't know what it is. But now that I think about it, hearing myself say it, it does sound curious. But I had a feeling, I guess, that if I understood what my mind needed with reference to the facts about the particular book-- the authorship, all the sort of the things having to do with the historical, the historicity of the whole business-what it meant, what it meant, I did not want to develop the habit of leaning on another mind in order to find out. I wanted to follow the illumination that broke across my path from a naked exposure to the light in the book. When I remember walking in the stacks in our first seminar, I'd never been in a good library before. The library of my college, when I finished college back in the middle '20s-- I have more books in my library at home than we had in our college library. So that when I went to seminary, I had a sense that I hadn't been born, really. The professor would make these references to the books that everybody knew about. But I'd never heard of them, you know? So I spent most of my time in the library. Every weekend, I'd take a bag full of books to study or to read all the weekend. And then when I had free time, I'd walk around the stacks and just take books out and feel them and read the introduction, you know, trying to play catch-up football. And I remember picking up a book. And it was a commentary on the Pauline letters, one of the letters to Timothy, in which Paul says that "I've said this to you before"-- as I remember this-- "and now I say it with tears." And someone had written on the margin of this library book, "Ah, Paul. That makes it a new truth." Because he's saying it with tears. Now the relevancy of that experience, what I'm talking about, is this, that I feel it is important that I bare my mind and my soul to the impact of the naked insight in the book. That isn't filtered. 394-300_A.mp3.plain_text.txt[2/13/19, 12:45:28 PM] �Well. In my course in Disciplines of the Spirit at Boston University, I had as one of the requirements that students use certain selected passages from the Bible as the basis of their personal and private daily meditation. One of the most mature men in the class, who had been serving as a pastor for some 10 years, came to talk with me about the problem of the assignment. He discovered that it was almost impossible for him to use the biblical passages for his own meditation because of the homiletical mindset which had characterized his approach to the Bible. He kept examining the selected sections for preaching material and found it extremely difficult to see what the words had to say to his spiritual need and spiritual growth. What I'm saying is this. The Bible must not merely be a source of texts for preaching, but also must be exploited as a guide for religious living. Now it is not my purpose, wittingly or unwittingly, to denigrate in any sense the homiletical use of the book. Again and again, the minister discovers that when he's making such use of the Scripture, the word of life that is voiced through what he is saying nourishes and redeems his own life. A secondary source is firsthand knowledge through reading what other persons have found help when they have made use of the book in the way that I'm suggesting for the minister. I think that this is a great contribution of men like Thomas a Kempis and Fénelon and certain [INAUDIBLE] men and women with whom you are familiar. There may be individuals in your own parish who live with the book and whose lives are so enriched by this that to tarry with them is to have your own spirit fed and replenished. It is ever a miracle of the work of the Holy Spirit of God to trace His footsteps in the life of even the simplest person who has lived with him through lingering over the pages of the book. Now the minister's major resource is the strength and inspiration which come from the deep cultivation of his own inner spiritual life through meditation and prayer. His major source book, I've been saying, is the book, the Bible, the major. Now the major resource-- and I make a distinction here-- is the strength and inspiration which come from the deep cultivation of his inner spiritual life through meditation and through prayer. Now let me be specific. I dare to speak with you from inside the problem and the constant struggle which it inspires. When I use the second personal pronoun, it is for convenience and clarity. It is not meant to draw a line on one side of which you stand, and I stand on the other. As a preacher, you are a professional prayer, a professional prayer. It is fundamental to your role as a religious professional to offer words of prayer on all and sundry occasions, to invoke, to bless, to benedict. As a dinner guest in a home in which it is far from the custom to have prayer before meals, there's a moment of embarrassed silence. Then half-apologetically, and sometimes with an act of bravado, the host or hostess asks you to say a blessing. At such a time, it is most often expected that you utter a devotional cliche about the food, its nourishment, and the hands that prepared it, sometimes with a faint gesture in the direction of the hungry and the needy in the world. With the interlude safely negotiated, the business at hand is attended to. But always at such a moment, if the minister can manage to pray, a great moment of redemption might open up for the invasion of the Holy Spirit to quicken the mind, sensitize the heart to human anguish, and make of the meal a sacrament indeed. I was visiting in a home and was called upon to do this. And I knew the children in the home very well. I knew they had no interest in any kind of grace. I didn't know anything about the mother and father. But I discovered that entertaining with them also. So when the father looked at the mother, she looked at him. And there was this exchange. And she sort of nodded a little. And then he said, "Dean, will you say a grace? I want to be honest. We don't do this." I said, "Well, that helps us get off to a good start." I said, "At the risk of spoiling the meal by delay, I would just like to establish something for you. I'd like to say this. Even if you have no interest in thanking God for food and so forth-- if you think that there's no point in that-- if you are a gentleman, you at least would pause in reverence for the sacrifice of the life that has taken place in order that you might have this food." 394-300_A.mp3.plain_text.txt[2/13/19, 12:45:28 PM] �I said, "For instance, here is a rib roast. Some months ago, this was a cow or a steer enjoying life on a hillside somewhere or in some enclosure and sort of whatever cows do, moaning their gratitude to God for one more day in fresh air and good water. And they were experiencing life at the level of a cow with an abiding enthusiasm. [LAUGHTER] "And then without any announcement, without asking their leave, not asking, without their voluntarily making the sacrifice, they were seized and killed and butchered. And now we're eating. The least we can do, if we are gentlemen, is to pause and be reverent in the presence of the life that is sacrificed that we might live." "Now," I said, "let us pray." [LAUGHTER] It is my growing conviction that the level of expectation of individuals and congregations does not anticipate that the minister will actually pray on these occasions. Because of this, the minister is apt to reduce the demand of his high calling to the level of such expectations. Thus, without scarcely realizing it, he falls into the temptation to select the happy phrase, the sensitive image that listens well to the people who are in our congregation or assembly. It is my experience that when the minister actually prays, there is yielded to the waiting congregation the sense of immediate communion with the living God, and sometimes with embarrassment. Some years ago, when I was a guest preacher at Pennsylvania State College, the prayer was given by a young lady in undergraduate. It was a prayer which she read, giving full credit to the author. The total experience was so moving for me that at the end of the service, I asked her if she would please give me a copy of the prayer which she had read. "Oh," she said, "oh, you may have this one. I have a copy in my room." When I read the prayer back in my own room, I noticed in pencil underscored at the bottom of the page, "Be sure to pray." That was underscored. Now this is-- she sensed what I'm talking about. During my days in developing Fellowship Church, I was invited to give the opening prayer for the first Constitutional Convention of the Cooks and Stewards Union International meeting in the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. I arrived early and sat in the back. And after the auditorium was full, a committee of four men escorted me to the platform, where I was introduced to the president. Immediately thereafter, he stood at the podium, rapped his gavel three times, saying, "The first Constitutional Convention of the Cooks and Stewards Union International number so and so and so is declared open. The first item on the agenda-- we stand in silence while 'Taps' are sounded in memory of all of our brothers who have gone down in the seven seas." This was during the war. The lights were lowered. The fan was turned on so that the American flag would wave over the platform. And "Taps" were sounded. At the end of this, while everyone was standing, the president announced to the assembly, "A Dr. Thurman will now make a statement." I went to the podium, and I said, "Let us pray." And I prayed. At least, for me, it was prayer. When I finished, as I turned to walk back to my seat, I met the president going to the podium. We sort of passed. He stopped, took my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Hell, that was good." [LAUGHTER] I recognize that this is but one side of the coin. But it is a temptation which rarely leaves us for long-time intervals. There are men here in this very room who live in an atmosphere of presence, of presence. And they gather their needs and the needs of their parishioners and the needs of the world into one creative sweep of their spirit before the living God. To put this another way, when the minister prays publicly, he is experiencing essentially the same thing that happens when he prays privately. He is in face-to-face encounter with his God. And it is as if he and God were alone in all the universe. True it is that his burden of concern may be for the well-being, the needs, the vast urgencies of his people and the world. But all of these are enveloped in the privacy of his solitary sharing of the deep inward reaches of his own spirit before the living God. In this sense, it is as if he were living his inmost privacy in public. 394-300_A.mp3.plain_text.txt[2/13/19, 12:45:28 PM] �394-300_A.mp3.plain_text.txt[2/13/19, 12:45:28 PM] � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-300_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (II) (Hester Lecture) [Side A], 1971 Feb 10 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-300_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 2, 1971 February 10 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-10 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Description An account of the resource In this lecture, Thurman considers the challenges facing those who must simultaneously be religious experts and persons involved in the experience of leading a religious life. The dilemma of incessantly performing priestly duties, he shows, demands that public demonstrations of spiritual competence be exhibited in the service of “needy humanity” even as the professional works out one’s private formation. Thurman emphasizes, however, that intimacy with communities must not come at the expense of inward encounters with the divine but through the inward spiritual life that inspires “yearning and outreach” for human connection. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey calling dilemma discipline Hester Lecture minister mission mysterium in society public and private prayer religious authority religious experience religious leadership religious living religious professional spiritual authenticity spiritual consumer the priestly role https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/47c0a838d37d926e368e70237a67ae33.pdf 1b372c0186840a5d3fb1e8e3ea6e1d5b PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-301_B.mp3 It may be simpler to try to put into words the inner feelings that a person who is the object of love experiences-- what does it feel like? What's the texture of the feeling? Now the Master illustrates this in the most dramatic fashion. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Such a person has a sense of being touched, at a point in himself, that is an essential part of his very being. It is beyond all of his qualities of goodness or badness or pretension. It bypasses all of his limitations. It's a sense of being met where he is, and being dealt with there as if he were where he should be. Do you remember the incident in which the woman was taken on adultery and the men brought her to the Master? And they said to the Master, "Here she is. She was caught in the act of adultery. And you have been proclaiming that you did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. And the law says that she should be stoned to death. Now, what do you say? Do you hold with the law and let us kill her? Or do you go against the law and save her?" The Master, you remember, said-- "Let the man among you who is without spot or blemish cast the first stone. After that, anybody may throw." And He doodled on the ground. Then after a while He looked up and all the men had gone. And the Master now looked at the woman, for He was a gentler one-- He did not at first mingle His stare with the stares of those others. But now He looked at her, and He said-- "Woman, where are they? Where are those who would condemn you? Does no man condemn you?" "No. No man, Lord." "Neither do I," He said. "Go into peace and don't do it any more." Now He met her where she was and He dealt with her there. Admittedly, as if she were where she should have been. And by so doing, He placed a crown over her head that for the rest of her life she was trying to grow tall enough to wear. This is what it means to love. To-- how to say it? To have a sense of being totally dealt with. Of being touched at a point in yourself that is beyond all of your faults and all of your virtues. There is a steady anxiety that surrounds man's experience of love. Sometimes, the radiance of love is so soft and gentle that the individual sees himself with all harsh lines wiped away, and all limitations blended with his strength in so happy a combination that strength seems to be everywhere and weakness nowhere to be found. Sometimes, the radiance of love kindles all the fires that have long since grown cold from the neglect of despair, or new fires are kindled by a hope born full-blown without beginning and without end. Sometimes, the radiance of love blesses a life with a vision of its possibilities never before dreamed of or sought, stimulating new endeavor and summoning all latent powers to energize life at its very core. Behold the miracle. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Love has no awareness of merit or demerit. It has no scale by which its portions may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Love loves. This is its nature-- but this does not mean that love is blind, naive, pretentious. It does mean that love holds its object securely in its grasp, calling all that it sees by its true name but surrounding all with the wisdom born both of its passion and its understanding. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Here is no traffic in sentimentality, no catering to weakness or to strength. Instead, there is a robust vitality that quickens the roots of personality, creating an unfolding of the self that redefines itself, reshapes it, and makes all things new. Such an experience is so fundamental in quality that an individual knows that what is happening to him can outlast all things without itself being dissipated. Now, whence comes this power? No created thing, no single unit of life can be the source. For in the experience itself, a man is caught and held by something so much more than he can ever think or be. That there is but one word by which its meaning can be encompassed-- God. Hence, the song-- it says, that as long as the love of God shines on us undimmed, not only may no darkness obscure but also we may find our way to a point in other hearts beyond all weakness and all strength. Beyond all that is good, and beyond all that is evil. 2 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-301_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (III) (Hester Lecture) [Side B], 1971 Feb 11 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-301_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 3 (continued), 1971 February 11 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-11 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Description An account of the resource The third installment of Thurman’s lectures concerns the religious professional’s prayer life. Thurman emphasizes that the act of praying must be more than a demonstration of professional skill, it is a practice, rather, of “cultivating the soul.” Thurman illuminates the dangers of limiting devotion to oratorical instrumentation or reducing the related practice of love to a technique. He encourages the religious professional to devote time to the private life and to employ meditation as a method of locating God within oneself and the ethics of the Gospel in everyday life. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey discipline of prayer habit Hester Lecture inner life inner light love ethic meditation prayer public and private prayer silence silent worship https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/283427326c92358235215ea7fafb6113.pdf b10615c43eb0c166700852dee80bfc27 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-301_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University Strong son of God [? and love of ?] love, whom we have not seen thy face, by faith and faith alone embrace, believing where we cannot prove. Our little systems have their day. They have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of thee. But thou, oh lord, art more than they. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, oh lord, my rock and my relief. I begin this morning as I have for the past two mornings, and will tomorrow, with the same quotation. The new mother when she looks at the head of the baby in her arms whispers in her heart, my child, may you seek after truth. If anything I teach you, [? these thoughts, ?] may you throw it from you and go on to richer knowledge and deeper truth than I have ever known. If you become a man of thought and learning, may you never fail to tear down with your right hand what your left hand has built up through years of thought and study if you see it at last not to be founded on that which is. If you become a politician, may no success for your party, love of your country, or security for yourself ever lead you to tamper with reality and to play a diplomatic part. If you become an artist, may you never paint with pen or brush any picture of external life otherwise than as you see it. In all of your circumstances, my child, fling yourself down on the truth, and cling to that, as a drowning man in a stormy sea flings himself onto a plank and clings to it, knowing that whether he sink or swim with it, it is the best that he has. Die poor, unknown, unloved, a failure, perhaps, but shut your eyes to nothing that seems to them to be the truth. This morning, I will hopefully conclude my discussion on the minister as a religious professional, so that tomorrow I can deal with somewhat with the minister and the spoken word. It was pointed out yesterday that the technical source book for the minister is the Bible, and that because the Bible is also used as one of the great binding areas of exploitation for homiletical material, it is very difficult, and sometimes rather awkward, for the same book to be used by the minister as a source of private, personal, devotional enrichment, a source for excavating a larger area in his inward parts, that the flow of the Holy Spirit of God might have a more comprehensive and fruitful outpouring in him. So the dilemma between honoring the necessities of the homiletical mind and also honoring the deep and abiding hundreds of the human spirit as one turns to the book is the dilemma that I have in mind. The other resource-- or the [? resource, ?] as [INAUDIBLE] the source-- the source of greatest utility, I suppose, is the word in terms of the enrichment of the private life, is the inner struggle, the confrontation of the minister in prayer, the developing of a disciplined interior life. And I suggested that one of the problems created by this is that the minister is a professional prayer, and he has to have, by expectation, he has to have prayers on tap ready to be turned on as the occasion demands. I don't know whether you've ever had this experience of finding yourself leading in the Lord's Prayer, and not realizing that you were through until you said Amen. So your mind moved around in interesting ways, but you, [INAUDIBLE], you had this thing down so that if you put 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu your mind and yourself into it, you'd forget the words. Well, you know what I'm talking about. I don't have to just wear you out with this. Pitts Theology Library Emory University One of the great-- to pick up the threads, then, the last line in our lecture yesterday was this. And it well may be that private prayer at its best is most public. Public prayer at its best perhaps is most private. One of the great losses in the disappearance of the weekly prayer meeting in many churches is revealed here. For often, it was in the weekly prayer meeting, once the minister was able to take for granted certain pep phrases which were part of the prayer etiquette of some of his parishioners, that the minister could get an inside feel of the inner needs and concerns of his people. Stripped of the canned or devotional cliches, the central concerns, needs, and aspirations of the people were shared before God in the intimacy of the prayer fellowship. If he knew his people and loved them, he would get more insight into their hopes and fears and joys and sorrows by sharing with great sensitivity in their own struggles in their periodic or weekly prayer experiences. These insights, together with what has come to him from them in his counseling, placed a desperate content into the public prayer, which he, the minister, offered on their behalf. Now, the wider concerns of the country and the nation would also become a part of his offering to God in prayer. But having said all of this, at long last, it is the minister himself, the struggling, aspiring, succeeding, [? feeling ?] disciple, who stands at the altar on behalf of his people and himself in the act of public prayer. It is my judgment, then, that it is easier to preach about prayer than to pray. The former draws upon one's professional skills and trainings and techniques and expertise. There are many books dealing with the problems of prayer, the psychology of prayer. And as one such book indicates in its title, Prayer in an Age of Science, the list is long and easily available. It is entirely possible for a man to put together excellent and often inspired arguments on behalf of the meaning and significance of prayer in the life of a practicing believer, and to be sure these are very real problems that must be dealt with in an objective, definitive statement or presentation, so that I am not denigrating this. But here, the warning indicated at an earlier point in the series is most appropriate. The minister must not confuse the prayer experience with knowledge about the prayer experience. My interest is not to denigrate such concerns. He must know about the prayer experience, but from the inside. They do provide excellent opportunities for teaching and for interpretation. There are critical questions that the thoughtful mind raises about prayer. Can it accomplish anything outside of and beyond the life of the man who prays, for instance? Is it therefore purely subjective? May it be merely the cry of fear and panic in the presence of the conflicts and contradictions of human experience? The list is searching and long, varying with the times, the cultural or personal crises, and the anatomy of the human situation. But after all the words have been said and all the problems carefully researched and analyzed by the preacher, the essential question remains as crucial as ever. Is he, the minister, a man of prayer? Or, just stated very personally, am I, a minister, a man of prayer? Are you men of prayer? 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu My point is that it's not nearly enough merely to believe in prayer as a part of one's equipment, as a part of one's stock in trade, or as the necessities to of one's craft. Deep within, as a minister, you are convinced of the efficacy and the vitality of prayer, or you are not. Under the white heat of that inner convincement, technical questions having to do with the psychology, the theology, and the philosophy of prayer become academic in the light of the consideration before us. Pitts Theology Library Emory University It was Pascal who said that it doesn't matter how many temples men erect to science. There must always be hard by a little Gothic chapel for wounded and bruised hearts. This is what I'm talking about. In any discussion of the prayer life of the minister, perhaps the distinction must be made between his prayer life and the prayer life of a non-professional Christian, but I think the distinction is a gratuitous one. I perceive, therefore, in this aspect of my discussion with a curious sense of ambivalence. The minister himself is a committed Christian, while at the same time he is a committed professional Christian. For purposes of my discussion, it may be most helpful if the distinction between the professional and the layman at this point [INAUDIBLE] or be obliterated entirely. What I am saying is that the distinction in function between the professional and the nonprofessional Christian need not obscure the issue that is at stake-- having to deal with the prayer life of the Christian. The discipline of prayer remains the discipline of prayer, applicable to lay and professional alike. Obviously for the minister, there is a very exacting dimension that calls for consideration. It is important that he provide time for the deepening and the enriching of his own inner life. And here, I am talking about the kind of preparation beyond that which goes into studying, for sermons, for lectures, for discussion groups, for study groups. But I am talking about the time that the minister gives for the cultivation of the life of his own soul. Here again, the great book from which material for meditation and prayer can be drawn is the Bible. In it, he may enter the fellowship of men and women who wrestle with God and the sharp insistence of deep inner turmoil in an effort to understand his will and to participate in his mind. To draw upon the Bible as a spiritual source, which may open up channels of communication with God, creates at once one of the critical psychological stumbling blocks in the development of the personal spiritual life of the preacher. He may be tripped, as I've said several times, by the wilds of the homiletical mind. Let me call your attention now particularly to the ministry of silence and of quiet. There is in every man an inward sea. And in that sea, there is an island. And on that island, there is an altar. And standing God before that altar is the angel with the flaming sword. Nothing can get by that angel to be placed upon that altar unless it has the mark of inner authenticity and authority. Nothing passes the angel with the flaming sword to be placed upon your altar unless it be a part of the fluid area of your consent, the fluid, the dynamic, the pulsing area of your inner consent. This is your crucial link with the eternal. We must find sources of strength and renewal for our own spirits, lest we perish. At the risk of seeming pedantic or even mechanical, let me be very specific. We must learn to be quiet, to settle in in one spot for a period. And this is very difficult in our kind of world, and it's been true a long time. In my first parish, there was a lady who always sat about three or four distances from the front. She was present and accounted for through the worship, until the moment came for the sermon. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And then she settled in and had a Sunday morning sleep. I don't talk in a hurry. There was a lot of breathing spaces between my words. And this was very quiet [INAUDIBLE]. As soon as I sat and the final hymn was being sung, she was all present and ready to go home. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Well, I took this personally at first. And then, I had an occasion to call on her. It was the noisiest house that I had ever seen or heard. And as I was walking out of the door, she was doing the courtesy of seeing me through the door. I said, now I understand the contribution that our church is making to you. It means-[LAUGHTER] That at least once a week, in the broad open daytime at 11:30 in the morning, you can be in a situation that is quiet enough so that you can take a nap and be refreshed. And this is perhaps a very important contribution to the Kingdom of God. Sometimes, during each day, everything should stop, and the sheer art of becoming still be practiced. For some temperaments, this will not be easy, because the entire nervous system and organism have been geared over the years to activity, to overt intense functioning. Nevertheless, the art of being still must be practiced until development and habit are sure. And one of the things we forget in this is that the nervous system is a living thing, and it can be conditioned, it can be trained, we can school it. Now, we know this in rearing our children. We surround them with certain things that will condition them in certain ways so that there shall come a time when the habit pattern will be established. And this is what we call training. But we forget that the same thing applies to our nervous system-- our nervous system as adults. The first day that Mrs. Thurman and I were in Colombo on our journey-- pilgrimage in India many years ago, a friend had come over to talk to us about various things, washing, not eating any food, any raw food, and all the things about how to take care of yourself since you're not accustomed to that way of life. And then he told us about the cobra and the way the cobra functioned, and that because the houses were open, that they may move in and out. So if you're thoughtful, you sleep with a flashlight under your pillow so that if you have to get up at night for any reason, you can make a circle of light on the floor so as not to disturb the unsuspecting meanderings of some cobra on night watch. And so, after he left, I remained in my chair, and Mrs. Thurman said, well, tomorrow's a hard day, and you better get to bed. And I said, yes, I am going to do that, but I have a little ceremony I have to go through. I'm conditioning my nervous system so that after tonight, it will not be possible ordinarily for me to make a blunder that will cause me, for instance, to walk around in the dark without a flashlight. So I won't have to refer it to a volitional act. I will be conditioned. Now, this is what I'm talking about. And we do it all the time. Now, what I'm saying is that we should take our nervous systems, our nervous organism, and discipline it into stillness so that it will get the habit. Now, this is mechanical, it's psychological, whatever the words you want to use, but it is fundamental to the development of inner life. The art of being still must be practiced until development and habit are secure. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, if possible, find a comfortable chair or an unmolested spot where one may engage in being, and-- well, I'll make a word-- in -ising. Just when you aren't reading a book or paper, not thinking about the next course of action, no rejecting of remote or immediate mistakes of the past, no talk. What you're trying to do is to quiet the silent noises inside of you. One is engaged in doing nothing at all except being still. At first, one may go drowsy and actually drop off to sleep. The time will come, however, when one may be quiet for a spell without drowsiness, and with a creeping quality of creative lassitude, creative lassitude, that makes for a renewal of mind and body. Such periods may be snatched from the greedy demands of one's day's work. They may be islanded in a sea of other human beings. They may come on at the end of the day, or in the quiet hush of the early morning. We must, each one of us, find his own time and develop his own peculiar art of being quiet. The fear of rest must be lost, relaxed. Many of us in our profession keep up our own morale by always being busy. We have made a fetish of fevered action. We build up our own sense of security by trying to provide a relentless, advantageous contrast between ourselves and others by the fevered intense activities in which we are engaged. There is something very ego-stroking about a reputation for being busy working. Many parishioners compliment us often in our absence by saying how busy and how hard working we are. That isn't all that they say. But again and again, we must be reminded that activity may become very easily a substitute for the hard-won core of purpose, direction, and commitment. The time will come when all activities become increasingly depressing and heavy. Please hear this. The time will come when all activities become increasingly depressing and heavy, and the dreaded question, what's the use, will have to be faced and dealt with. The first step in the discovery of sources of strength and renewal is to develop the art of being still physical and mental sensation from inner churning. There is a special ministry of silence which is recognized in all religions. It is embodied most dramatically in the breathless moments before God reveals himself in the experience of prayer and meditation, as well as in those experiences in worship that are sacramental in character and quality. In the [? appendixed ?] [INAUDIBLE] idea of the holy, there's a rewarding commentary on this point. It is well worth examining if you are not familiar with it. And silence is not a part of a particular tradition. It is apt to be sterile, and empty, and boring. Often, it is even noisy. In Protestantism, we have given a complete monopoly on silence over to the Quakers. So true is this that to think of Quaker worship is to think of silent worship. It is interesting to observe, however, how silent worship is declining now, even among them. Personally, I lament the increasing disappearance of silent [? needing, ?] because it is a constant reminder to the rest of the church that, again and again, God speaks loudest in the silence. And one other observation in this connection. That-- I don't quite know how to put this-- that there are things in our interior landscape that we can hear, can see, and sounds we can hear within, that are there, but we do not know they're there until we are still enough to hear them. One of my students who was an ex-deep sea diver for the Navy was telling me about an experience that he had in the Caribbean. That he went down a certain number of fathoms, however you measure it, and he had some time on his hands before doing whatever it was he was sent down there to do. So he thought he would sit on one of the coral rocks and just relax and 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu enjoy the scenery. And when he was comfortable, he said various fish would come up and look at him through these goggles, and he would wink his eye. And a little game was going on, and those fish would tell other fish. And after a while, a whole community of different kinds of fish that tolerated each other were enjoying the visit. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And then he suddenly realized that his time was gone. And he looked around, he noticed that he was sitting in what was a kind of-- well, it looked like a garden of weeds. There were things about that high, and they were waving and moving with the flow of the tide, and they were very [? gated ?] in color, reflecting the light from the sun. And he wondered why he hadn't seen when he first sat down. And then, when he moved to get up, they all disappeared. They were in this middle passage between animal and plant. And when he became a part of the landscape, then the landscape became a part of him. Now, this is what I am saying, that there are things in you and me, there are urges, whisperings-from God, I think-- that we can't hear until the traffic in us quiets. And to miss this is to pay a great price with our spirits. My point is that our nervous system must be conditioned to a regular rhythm of quiet, and once this happens, it will lay hold upon us with its healing without being bitten. This is the experience of all who have accustomed themselves to meditation, for after all this is, in essence, what this part of our discussion is all about. Isn't it interesting that literally thousands of our youth today have turned to teachers of meditation, to gurus? Many of whom are outside of our own religious tradition, and often are of no particular religious traditions. What has happened to us? We have been unable to meet the hunger of the heart which is manifest in this dimension of the behavior of our youth. Conventional Christianity provides small room for this aspect of the religious life, and this aspect of the hunger of the heart. I summarize this then by saying that the minister must devote time to his private, personal encounter with God. I have a very good friend, a fellow clergyman, who is deeply exercised, because the only time he says that he has a real sense of meaning in prayer is when he is leading his congregation in public prayer, particularly in services of worship. For him, the absence of a congregation somehow throws him out of the mood or the context of prayer. As a religious professional, he can pray with a sense of holy presence. As a man, he echoes the words of Hamlet's uncle-- my words go up, my thoughts remain below, words without thoughts never to heaven go. It is my experiential judgment then that the minister must devote time for his own private, personal encounter with God. There must be, for him, the sustained experience of waiting, of listening, of agonizing, of muted or stirring ecstasy in the living presence of the living God. Now, I will cut that short, because I have only one more chance at you, and I want to do this. The major materials with which the minister works-- the major resource-- is this inner light, this light of spirit. And the technical source book is the Bible. Now, the major materials with which the minister works, as the minister of his flock, are the emotions, anxieties, dreams, aspirations, and the needs of people, and the holy things that go to make up the interior sacraments of the spiritual life. And this is why the minister must either become more and more holy, to correspond with him to sacramental stuff that he handles. Or, he has to develop some kind of 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu immunity against it, so that he can handle these things with detachment, and not be involved inside. And that's why perhaps it is so hard for him to be a Christian. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, one of the persistent temptations, therefore, is to deal with his people as if they were abstractions. The minister's [? have ?] very unconsciously to regard persons in his parish as his parishioners, his trustees, his officers, but not as persons. When our younger daughter was on the threshold of her teens, I had occasion to speak to her about a concern of mine in which she was very much involved. Without any apparent premeditation, she turned to me, and as I recall her outburst, she said, daddy, when are you going to stop treating me like a daughter? I'm me. I'm Anne. I'm 12 years old. In other words, she said, I am not a daughter. A daughter-- nobody's ever seen a daughter. A daughter's an abstraction. And I'm concrete. Now, after that moment, with the coming modesty, I was sure that at least I was one of the rare fathers on the planet. I was shocked to discover that she thought that I regarded her as an abstraction, not as a private person in her own right. This, as difficult as it is, the minister must deal with his members on the principle of concretion rather than the principle of obstruction. All the private personal feelings, tones, predicaments, desires, that he's acquainted in himself are the interior materials with which he is dealing in them. I suppose at the heart of my concern at this point is that the minister must love his people. And I know this is old to you. At the moment, I'm not thinking about the insistence that as a Christian he is under obligation to love everybody, or to love humanity. It may be in order to insert here that there isn't any such thing as humanity. Nobody has ever seen humanity. Here, we are dealing with another abstraction. Humanity is people who have names, who live in houses on streets, who are weak and strong, good and bad persons. Just as a minister is regarded as a professional prayer, he is also apt to be regarded as a professional lover. One of the great betrayals of Christianity, of the gospel and the life of the master, is the fact that the love ethic, which is so central to the genius of the gospel, has been permitted to degenerate into a technique, often into a methodology, into a dogma, into a metaphysic. Now, such a development is one of the catastrophic consequences resulting from the institutionalization of the creative genius of religions. Now, to illustrate this from another religion-- perhaps if we can get perspective looking at another great world religion, you can see more clearly what is happening within our own. We will take the doctrine of our hymns, so the doctrine of no killing, which is fundamental to-- was for a long time fundamental to the ethic of Hinduism. But the Hindu religious experience worried, sort of-- yes, worried all of the ethics out of this, and it became a dogma, a theology, taking a rather encapsulated term, reverence for life. And this became the metaphysic fundamental to Hinduism. And it is this degeneration, this draining off of the ethic, of the doctrine over [? himself, ?] was a thing that forced out of the bowels of a disintegrating Hinduism-- Buddhism, with its concept of mercy. It re-established the ethical dimension in what originally was an ethical insight. But under the worrying of the institutionalizing of the religion, it was stripped of this and became a manipulative technique. 7 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now this is, I think, the kind of thing that has happened to us in Christianity. Not only does the minister have to be a professional lover, or a lover by profession, but within the context of his religious community, he addresses himself to people who themselves, by confession of faith, are professional lovers. The result is the world, as distinguished from the Christian community, does not expect that the believer will practice the love ethic where the world is concerned, because there often is so little witness to the practice of the love ethic within the Christian community itself. What I am saying in substance is this. Just as a man may be a professional hater, or a hate monger, without himself being a man of ill will as a person, so a man may become a professional lover, a love monger, without himself being personally involved in participating in the experience of love. If the minister is genuine, he must learn what it means to love people in his own right, as an expression of his commitment to his master, in response to the pull of the will of God in his life. So I ask myself in this context, what does it mean to love? It may be simpler to try to put into words the inner feelings that a person who is the object of love experiences. 8 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-301_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Internal Notes Notes for project team Edited transcript - GL 5/22/19 Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (III) (Hester Lecture) [Side A], 1971 Feb 11 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-301_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 3, 1971 February 11 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-11 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Description An account of the resource The third installment of Thurman’s lectures concerns the religious professional’s prayer life. Thurman emphasizes that the act of praying must be more than a demonstration of professional skill, it is a practice, rather, of “cultivating the soul.” Thurman illuminates the dangers of limiting devotion to oratorical instrumentation or reducing the related practice of love to a technique. He encourages the religious professional to devote time to the private life and to employ meditation as a method of locating God within oneself and the ethics of the Gospel in everyday life. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey discipline of prayer habit Hester Lecture inner life inner light love ethic meditation prayer public and private prayer silence silent worship https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/52e578602916b32146e733a55aea122c.pdf 8714d291f997a35950560c0943aadf0f PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-294_B.mp3 He must get bearings concerning the road ahead. He must not lose sight of the way of which we have come and how it relates to the past or the way in which we are walking and how these are related to the road ahead. To state my meaning categorically, it would be something like this. Pitts Theology Library Emory University He place before his congregation and, of course himself, the vision of a great ideal for mankind, the ideal of one community for the children of man, the vision is of a collective destiny, which includes more and more of the entire human race. And second, he calls attention to the quality of mind, the quality of devotion, the quality of commitment, and the kinds of skills, techniques, and methods by which the literal truth of this ideal may become literal fact for the individual and for society. And in this, he becomes an agent of redemption in the hands of God. But ever has been a part of the demonstration and his particular tradition, he must be made relevantly current. And whatever may be learned from any other tradition made available in supreme effort of the implementation of their ideal. And you may not think as I think about this, but it is my profound conviction that the things that are true in any religion are to be found in that religion because the things are true. They're not true because they are in the religion. The things that are true in any religion are to be found in that religion, because the things are true. And wherever you find them, they're true. It is not the context that determines their truth. He must expose the resources of on which he and his people may draw that can be enabling in this process. The resources of individual testimony from the past or present of those who are part of the tradition, the resources that are to be found in contemporary life, whether they fall narrowly within a context regarded as religious or not, resources that layer a deeper level ground than the deliberate intent of the individual or the impersonal direction of the social process, resources which in my language are to be found finally, ultimately, and uniquely in God. The assignment is not a lecture. It is not merely an academic or intellectual exercise for the stimulation of the mind. It is not a commonplace homily that lulls into quiescence of sedation. No. The sermon must always have the smell of a ammonia about it. It must be vital and contagious. It is the voice of man and the voice of God. 1 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-294_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (IV) (Hester Lecture) [Side B], 1971 Feb 12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-294_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 4 (continued), 1971 February 12 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-12 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Description An account of the resource In the final lecture, Thurman transitions from his meditations on inwardness to a more technical discourse regarding the uses of language by the religious professional. Recognizing the limits of language, he discusses the transcendent meaning of the Gospels whose wisdom must be communicated with the least amount of interference from the speaker. The minister’s speech must then participate in what Thurman calls the “community [or “continuum”] of meaning.” As a beacon of the collective experience of God, the religious professional sees the road ahead for humanity and thus becomes an agent of redemption. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey experience Hester Lecture imagination intimacy minister speech https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/84373a7ad30f7c75f7f82c1220da7060.pdf 7aa9e1e9c98bcd8ef999123cf8e6e587 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-294_A.mp3 How precious are Thy thoughts unto me, oh, God. How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with Thee. Search me, oh, God, and know my heart. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Try me, and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight. Oh, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. I begin this final morning, as I began at the beginning. The new mother, when she looks at the hairs of the baby in her arms, whispers in her heart, my child, may you seek after truth. If anything I teach you be false, may you throw it from you and go on to richer knowledge and deeper truths than I have ever known. If you become a man of thought and learning, may you never fail to tear down with your right hand what your left hand has built up through years of thought and study. If you see it at last not to be founded on that which is, if you become a politician and know success for your party, or love of your country, or security for yourself, ever lead you to tamper with reality and to play a diplomatic part. If you become an artist, may you never paint with pen or brush any picture of external life otherwise than as you see it. In all of your circumstances, my child, fling yourselves down on the truth, and cling to that as a drowning man on a stormy sea flings himself onto a plank and clings to it, knowing that whether he sink or swim with it, it is the best that he has. Die poor, unknown, unloved, a failure, perhaps, but shut your eyes to nothing that seems to them to be the truth. I want to take just one minute to say my own personal appreciation to the administration, to the faculty, students, friends for the experience, which has been mine during this week. In so many little ways, you have shared simple, gratuitous expressions of kindness to which my own mind and spirit respond with enthusiasm. And I simply want to say thank you. We now come to the last leg of our journey. And I want to see if I can get in the compass of the time available what my reflections are about the word and the preacher sermon. The minister's tool is the spoken word. We've talked about his technical source, and we spent quite a bit of time on the resources. Now, I want to think with you about the tool. The minister's tool is the spoken word. Human speech is perhaps the greatest single miracle in human life. Someone has very wisely suggested that in order to kill a man or man might have been silent, but to communicate with him, bind himself to his fellows-- child to mother, mother to a child, the sexes to each other, man to reach man, belonging to his social organism. In order to do these things, man was obliged to blossom into speech. Think of what this means. Of all the welter of sounds in the world of nature, certain sounds have been caught, trapped, quarantined, given special content, so that these sounds express or reveal what is deep within the mind. Such sounds became the embodiment of ideas, of concepts, of 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu dreams, of loves, of hates, of joys, of sorrows. The spoken word is the great revealer of the secrets of the mind and the heart. Pitts Theology Library Emory University I hear a series of sounds coming from you. These sounds are transformed within me into meaning inside of my mind. These meanings trigger certain responses that are at once judgments of value, which inspire action and reactions of various kinds. This is the miracle of human speech. What a priceless possession is the gift of speech. To be able to make sounds, to make sounds, think about it now. To make sounds convey special meanings and deliberate notions, to be able to put at the disposal of another person the feelings that nestle within your life, to be able to reveal one's self in symbols which make clear and do not betray, this is the miracle and the test of human speech. It is with the world that man becomes human and thus, makes possible the cycle of relationships, which make fast his sense of self. It is the word that gives man power to hurt, where no [INAUDIBLE] can touch, to harness the wild horses of the mind, and make them become the burden bearers of the hearts, to give wings to earth-bound values until they lose themselves on far horizons. It is the word that can create or destroy, splinter or make whole, redeem or damn. It is now wonder, then, that man tends to worship the sound of his own voice and to give to this an authority greater than anything that remains and all words have been said. If a man can put together the words of conveyance, then he thinks that communication has fulfilled itself. Silence often is not trusted. It is regarded as being subversive. It must be hidden. Fear of silence is the offering that we place upon the orator of our words. This is due, in part, to the richness and the experience of speech. And we do not wish to let it escape into the vast, empty region, where there are no words and there is no speech. Therefore, it is important to remember that it is out of the silence that all sound come. It is in stillness that the word is fashioned for the meaning it conveys. Hear the sound without sounds. The sound without sounds can be most clearly heard. And the meanings out of which all values come can be plumbed. Now, to illustrate what I mean by the sound without sounds, one of the most dramatic moments of my early ministry came when, as a summer assistant, I was called to the hospital to minister to a dying man. When the nurse took me to his bedside, she leaned over and said to him, Mr. X, you've asked for a minister, and the minister is here. And she disappeared. A complete and utter sense of helplessness and impotence swamped me. I took his hand in both of mine. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was heavy and unsteady. I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and emptied myself in private supplication to God, without uttering a single sound. And after a long, and what seemed to me to have been an interminable period, my spirit found rest and quiet. I opened my eyes simultaneously with his opening his eyes. Then with great effort, he said, thank you. I understand, and he died. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Words are sometimes so charged with feeling, so crowded with concentrated thought that they are shattered, smashed. And all their training content spilled to burn their way, like liquid fire through the mind. Always, the preacher must understand that to separate words from true and hallowed meanings, to sift words of their acquired close, to make words serve in strange lands and far-off places of the mind, to use them as agents of deceit, as fangs to flail and abuse as manifestations of pride and illusion. All this is to degrade a most precious gift of God, and betrays the high calling, which is the minister's command from God. Permit me to digress just sufficiently to point out that prior to human speech, prior to human speech, there must have been communication between developing man and his fellows. It is for this reason that even now, when our feelings move to their profoundest level, what happens? We become inarticulate. We become speechless. It is as if the mind dropped back into a previous vast feeling continuum. Have you not observed that there comes a time in any profound relationship between two human beings when words seem at once inadequate, too limited? Communication, then, takes place in a dimension of relatedness which obtained to the development of human speech. Now, this may sound far out to you. I don't know how it sounds. But what I am saying is that, in my thought, there is a previous continuum of awareness, of the grounds of communication that anti-dates the articulation in utterances. A lot of interesting work is being done in this field, just to further digress. And I won't do it again, because I've got to get through today. I'm not going to turn a lot of pages, because I worked too hard on this. [LAUGHTER] In the Journal of Wildlife, about six, eight months ago, you may have seen this. There's an article written about the man who developed the lie-detecting machine, a polygraph. He was working in his laboratory in New York. And he had made an interesting discovery. And that was that if he attached the instruments to the polygraph, to the plants in his office that the plants reacting to the emotional content that was his at the moment and at the time. Well, the newspaper reporter was quite cynical about this. And he said, I'll give you a demonstration. Now, my assistant can't stand these plants. When I go away, he won't even water them, and I'm sure they don't like him. So he attached the instruments, the wires to his plants. So the indicators were clearly there operating. Then he buzzed for his assistant to come into the office. And as soon as his assistant hit the door, the dials just-[LAUGHTER] Under certain circumstances, we drop back into, what seems to me, to be an original continuum of awareness, of consciousness of which the spoken word is an articulation. The word is this symbol through which meaning from this continuum leaks. That's why words have to be tightened, because they develop leaks. And you use the same words that you use, in particular, in the preacher's vocabulary, words that leak. So the meaning can hold. It drips all over the place, and he needs to take the word out and work on it. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, the spoken word is the preacher's critical tool. He must be on friendly and intimate terms with the private life and, in particular, history of the words he uses. He must be familiar with their flavor, so that, in his use of them, they will be authentic carriers of the meaning which he seeks to convey. Pitts Theology Library Emory University He must never betray his words. He must understand that there are words that fly and soar high above the plains. And their dwelling place is the mountain peak. There are some words that are like the cascade eagle in Moby Dick. When the cascade eagle is flying in the gorge, he is higher than the highest soarer above the plains, because his gorge is in the mountain. There are words that nestle close to the ground, then fall back quivering and helpless when forced to breathe that is high and too rarefied. There are words that sing. And if they're not used as a part of a chorus true to their nature, their sound will be discordant and unharmonious. This is not to suggest that they are not hollow words, which come into their fullest glory when they are alone and unaccompanied. They make the music of their kind. They are words of struggle and stammer. Because they're so big with meaning, that sound and form are utterly adequate through which their meaning can be expressed. There are words that agonize, and groan, and shed their travail over all the landscapes of the mind. There are gentle words, whose tenderness moves straight to the heart, bypassing all the regions hard won by the rational and reflective process. The critical tool for the preacher is the word. It should be clear now that he must have a sense of responsibility for the integrity of the word. If he does, he will be very aware of the limitations of the word, in fact, the limitations of language itself. One of the hazards of his profession is that he himself may become language-bound. And by this, I mean, he may be so enamored of the magic of the word that he fails to recognize that language, in essence, is an abstraction. Even as language may convey meaning, it also restricts meaning. We are never able to say all that we mean when we use our words. In fact, at various stages in our lives, we may use the same words, while what we mean at these various stages may be very different. For instance, when a baby who is just learning to talk says, mommy, I love you, when the same baby is five years old, he says to his mother, I love you. When he's a teenager, he may say to his mother, unless he's too self-conscious, I love you. When he's a young adult, he says to his mother, I love you. When he's mature, with two children of his own, he says to his mother, I love you. When he's full of years, he may say to his mother, I love you. All the way, he uses the same three words. But each time, the meaning carries with it something inclusive of, but more than, what was meant previously. When in the vernacular, or in desperation, or in anger, we say, words fail me, this is apt to be a truism. Language limits, restricts, imprisons meaning often. Are perilous, this fact is for the preacher. It is so easy for him to become language-bound to the detriment both of communication and his message. There are times when the preacher, under the inspiration of a high moment, may give utterance to a transparent way through which vast meaning leaps into the mind of the hearer. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, when that happens, so satisfying may be such an experience to the preacher that the phrase-- mark my words-- the phrase that was luminous continues to be a part of his working verbal equipment, even though it is no longer transparent and symbolic of great insight. Pitts Theology Library Emory University My first preaching assignment at the university was out in California at Stanford in the winter of 1929. As I traveled to Palo Alta from Atlanta, Georgia, where I was living, I worked hard and long on fashioning and refashioning, shaping and reshaping, pruning and repruning the message until in my mind, it was a finished, artistic expression of the word. After the ceremony, Dr. Gardener, who was a chaplain at the time, invited me to accompany him to his home for a spot tea, as he said. He was an Englishman. Before, I would be called for to have lunch with a group of students. We walked down the road. They had road in Palo Alto in those days. We walked down the road, his arm in my arm, as he, in a mood of great creative nostalgia, described the beauty of the English countryside in the springtime. Suddenly, he stopped, released my arms, squared my shoulders with both hands, looked me straight in the eye. And he said, too beautiful, too beautiful. Truth comes out in hunks, dripping. Young man, he said, God has blessed you. Now, don't show your ingratitude to Him by taking His insights and working them over, polishing them over, until all the life is taken out of them, so that they are beautiful but dead. And with that, we resumed our walk. And he picked up the threads of his conversation about the beauties of the English countryside. [LAUGHTER] The vision which the Gospel inspires can never be contained in the spoken word, however pregnant of meaning that word may be. Somehow, the meaning has to transcend the limitation of language and move directly into the stream of the life of the hearer. This is the indication of those familiar words from the road to Aeneas. Our hearts burned within us, as he talked with us in the way. That old minister, when asked about his sermon preparations, said to a young man, I read in the book until I come to a place where the Master is showing His love to someone. And then I brood on this inside and outside. And finally, I get words that are too hot for paper. Now, this is what he's talking about. You remember in the introduction to Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah? Eve is talking about Noah. And she says that Noah spends all of his time wandering around in the hills, listening to the voice. And he's listened to the voice until he has become the voice. But it will take many years before Noah fully experiences the voice. All of this is to say that the word, with all of its limitations and strictures, if it is to illumine the mind and warm the heart with the dynamics of the Gospel, it must be a part of what I am calling for convenience, a community of meaning. There can be no communication between people through the medium of language if the agendas from which they're talking are not the same. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu It is the common agenda of meaning that gives to the word its power to communicate. If, when I talk to you, I am talking from one agenda of meaning, which is different from your agenda of meaning, then what I am saying cannot be heard by you. This is what is called the gap, whether generation or theological. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The assumption in our religion is that religious experience is the essence of the common agenda out of which the word is spoken and by which the listeners listen. To state it categorically and in fine, the testimony of the spirit, of which the preacher's word is a form of witness, finds a response in the witness of the spirit in the heart of the listener. The common experience of the living God is the continuum of meaning out of which the preacher preaches and with which the listener listens. A preacher may be brilliant, eloquent, erudite, and articulate, but a sounding brass and a tinkling symbol if his words are not a witness to the spirit. A preacher may be slow of speech, fumbling with an aptitude, even unlettered, while the words that he utters strikes fire to the heart. There is no substitute for the preacher's experience with the word to which he gives utterance. Let your words, then, the Master says, be yay, yay and nay, nay. Anything else, anything else is from the corrupting one. Now, I turn to part 2. Yeah, I'm doing pretty well. You may recall that in previous discussions, I've spoken somewhat of the spiritual demands that are made up of the life, character, and commitment of the preacher. My assumption is that a necessity is laid upon him to preach the gospel in his own life and in the special exercise of his function as a deliverer of the word, to use the phrase. The weighty responsibility of the word has been discussed somewhat. I turn now to another aspect of the preacher's equipment. He must have the gift of a disciplined imagination. A word of caution is important here, because often, there is a very thin line between imagination and exaggeration. The [INAUDIBLE] after this vehicle for exhibiting one's ego for the vanity of point-making and various other forms of self-aggrandizement. A disciplined imagination is very different. Its function is to provide windows for the mind and spirit, to look out upon the landscape and see the mighty works of God among the children of men. Many years ago, a brilliant young sociologist at Columbia University, who died at the beginning of what was the most promising career, left among his notes this paragraph, half cynical and yet, carrying a very important insight. And I quote this. "And God saw everything that He made and behold, it was very bad. On the seventh day, therefore, God could not rest. In the morning and the evening, He busied himself with the terrible and beautiful concoctions. And in the twilight of the seventh day, He finished that which was of more import than the beasts of the earth, and the fish of the sea, and the lights of the firmament. And He called it imagination, because it was made in His own image. And those under whom it is given shall see God." The gift of imagination, what is it? It is the peculiar quality of mind that enables a man to stand in his own place, defined by the uniqueness of his life story, and project himself into another person's life or situation, even as he remains himself. He makes soundings there, looking out of a 6 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu life through the other person's eyes, even as he remains solidly rooted in his own context. It is to inform one's self of the view from the other side. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Most children have this. And it is my suspicion that this is one of the reasons why the Master insisted that we must become as little children if we are to enter the kingdom of heaven. I was visiting with a friend as an overnight guest. This illustrates what I'm meaning by this aspect, this critical and dynamic aspect of imagination. I was visiting with this friend as an overnight guest. In the morning, I was sitting in the living room, reading the morning paper. And this little boy, who was just learning how to ride his kiddie card, rode in, and stopped his kiddie card at my feet, and said, Mr. Thurman will you please help me change my tire? I just had a blow out. So I put the newspaper down. I helped him. Jacked up his car, and we went through the etiquette of changing the tire. And then we put the jack away, and he got in his car, and stepped on the starter. But the motor wouldn't turn over. Then he pulled out the choke and nothing happened. So he got out and walked around, raised the hood and tinkered on that side and the other side. Then got back on the car and stepped on the starter. But the motor wouldn't turn on. And I didn't want to watch him to too directly. I kept him in my side view, and I noticed that his shoulders tightened, and a grim look came in his tender, pre-adolescent face. And out of his mouth, I heard language that belonged to a sort of village barber shop or something. He was using the words that he'd heard his father use under such circumstances. And still, the motor wouldn't turn over. So he got out of the car, and came over to me, and he said, Mr. Thurman, do you have a pencil? I said, yes. I gave him my pencil. He took the pencil, walked around behind his car, took the top off the tank where the gas belonged, and put the pencil down in the tank. And he held it up and said, ah, the tank is empty. No wonder. So he went out into the kitchen, asked his mother for a glass of water. Came back, sat on his kiddie cart, drank the water, started his motor up. And it still wouldn't start. [LAUGHTER] Now, this is what I'm talking about. A sensitive, self-projection that enables you to put yourself utterly in another context, in another individual's living stuff, and make soundings from inside there, and report these soundings back to inform the quality of your own mind and your own understanding, and desensitize the impact of your own gospel. This is what I'm talking about. And if you're wooden-headed, you can't do it. Our Master had this gift in its most supreme dimension. So sensitive was He in his spirit, and the living quality of His being that he seemed more and more to stand inside of light. When you read the Gospels, this is the thing that comes through. He seems to stand inside of light, looking out upon it as a man who gazes from a window in a room out into the yard and beyond to the distant hills. He could feel the sparrowness of the sparrow, the leprosy of the leper, the blindness of the blind, the crippleness of the crippled, and 7 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu the frenzy of the mad. He could feel these. He became joy, sorrow, hope, and anguish to the joyful, the sorrowful, the hopeful, the anguished. Pitts Theology Library Emory University It is the preacher's gift of imagination that enables him to make available to his heroes the outpourings of his compassionate spirit, his tender heart, and his understanding mind. At such moments of outpouring, the word becomes flesh. And he shares with God in the great work of healing, redeeming, and blessing. But the gift goes beyond the personal and the private. It provides the brooding quality to the mind, as the mind brings into focus the conditions in the world. Conditions which make up the social climate in which he and his people live. Here, the gift takes on a different character. The tool in the hands of the imagination is what may be called a sense of fact. It is TS Eliot in his essays on literary criticisms that suggest that the literary critic must have a sense of fact, with reference to an increasingly wide area of fact. This is what I'm suggesting. That at the core, this gift of imagination must be this sense of fact. And I think sense of fact as contrasted at the moment with a sense of reality. In addressing himself to the times in which he and his people are living, he must take pains to know what he's talking about. Wherever possible, his information must be first-hand. He must not lean too heavily upon authorities unless, in his judgment, they have won the right to be authorities. This means steady investigation, reading, digesting. And this takes time. It is the preacher's sense of fact that is the raw material, which his gift of imagination uses to discern the hand of God at work in the world of men and faith. Therefore, he is not a preacher or a declaimer of rumors, of heresays, of gossips, or fads which feed the neuroses, the fears, and the prejudices of his people. Always, his first question has to be-- and this is particular-- what are the facts? We must be reminded that rumors and gossips are facts also. They must be judged or interpreted by other facts, but are never to be discarded as a part of unreality with which the minister deals. Modern life is so complex that a sense of fact with reference to government, politics, war, peace is very hard to come by. Therefore, a man has to settle for selected authorities, upon whom he must depend for certain hard facts concerning contemporary science. Once he is satisfied at this point, then he must interpret their meaning in the light of the illumination that comes from the gospel of God. The miracle of holy insight that pervades the brooding mind of a man who seeks to understand the will and the purpose of God as revealed in the events in the world of man and nature is the special grief that comes to the preacher who has put his mind and life at the disposal of God. All of this is to say that the preacher must address himself to the problems of the day under the aspect of the eternal. In his interpretation of these problems, he must remain true to his calling and to his dedication. In addition to the gift of imagination, nourished always by riding sense of fact the preacher must have another gift, the gift of intimacy. It is in the exercise of this gift that the minister's role as teacher, guide, and reassurer finds most creative fulfillment. The worship service is the setting or the context in which this gift may be most effectively expressed again and again. For it must never be forgotten that the central moment of celebration of the human spirit is the worship of God. 8 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu The service of worship is a collective and binding act of shared celebration. The sermon is, at once, then, in this context, the lung through which the worship service brings one breath. When this is achieved, the worship will sense that in the spoken word, all the meaning that they had been experiencing up to that point is made uniquely and available to each his own private insight. And this is the miracle of preaching. Pitts Theology Library Emory University I'm not saying that the function of the sermon in the worship service is to confirm prejudices or idiosyncrasies, and to make a sacrament of triteness, mediocrity, or bigotry. No, it is simply to say that the sermon belongs to the worship service and must, in many ways and at many levels, confirm the human spirit in its great quest for meaning, for significance, and for intentional living. I repeat, the highest act of celebration of the human spirit is the experience of the worship of God. It is the moment of all moments when the worshipper images himself in the presence of his god, when he has a sense of encounter with the supreme object of his devotion, and the ultimate ground of his self-respect is now authenticated. In such an experience and in such a moment, he is not a Unitarian, a Trinitarian, a Methodist, or Baptist, a theist, or atheist, male, female, black or white, capitalist or communist, good or bad, but a human spirit laid bare, in vital touch with what he recognizes as the god and creator of his spirit. It is as if the tidal wave of communal fellowship, which he experiences in the congregation cast him up to the surface, and he stands there alone with his god. I bring this discussion to a close and by some reflections on the sermon itself. The sermon is the distillation of the thinking, reading, observation, brooding, and meditation of the preacher. The assumption is that in his privilege, it is his privilege to withdraw from the traffic of life periodically and regularly in order that he may take the kind of long, hard look at the world, the society, his fellows, and speak the authentic word, which will stimulate the mind and form, even as he kindles the emotions and inspire his fellows with a sensitivity to the presence of the living God. He is a part of the company of his fellows, making the same journey along the same way as they, which is their journey and their way. But he has a particular task and a particular responsibility. He must get bearings concerning the road ahead. 9 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of the Religious Professional, Hester Lecture Series (1971, Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, CA) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Howard Thurman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Description An account of the resource “Dilemmas of the Religious Professional” is a four-part lecture series by Howard Thurman focused on the religious professional who is distinguished by a sense of divine calling and unique challenges. The lectures address the uniqueness, duties, prayers, and words of persons elected into religious professions. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Descriptions by Dr. Tim Rainey AudioWithTranscription Audio that is shown through the 3Play Media embedded interactive transcript Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-294_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Golden Gate Seminary, Strawberry, California Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1970s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Dilemmas of Religious Professional (IV) (Hester Lecture) [Side A], 1971 Feb 12 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-294_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Dilemmas of Religious Professional, Part 4, 1971 February 12 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971-02-12 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rp8k9">MSS 394</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a href="http://pitts.emory.edu/">Pitts Theology Library, Emory University</a> Description An account of the resource In the final lecture, Thurman transitions from his meditations on inwardness to a more technical discourse regarding the uses of language by the religious professional. Recognizing the limits of language, he discusses the transcendent meaning of the Gospels whose wisdom must be communicated with the least amount of interference from the speaker. The minister’s speech must then participate in what Thurman calls the “community [or “continuum”] of meaning.” As a beacon of the collective experience of God, the religious professional sees the road ahead for humanity and thus becomes an agent of redemption. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant GEOMETRYCOLLECTION(POINT(-13637365.795771 4563241.023354)) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img style="border-width:0;" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/80x15.png" alt="80x15.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>. 2019. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey experience Hester Lecture imagination intimacy minister speech