1 10 11 https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/afb9bb6b83c50a82aba05df10bb65d5b.pdf 6c8f7c3f3b4fae8a3736cd918052a569 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-013_A.mp3 [MUSIC PLAYING] Pitts Theology Library Emory University We have turned aside from the tasks and the duties and the responsibilities which involve us day after day to present ourselves with as much confidence and faith as we can muster-- hoping that in Thy presence and in the great quietness of this waiting moment, we might find the measure of deepened inner peace, without which the enterprise of our private lives cannot be fulfilled. We share with Thy all of the meaning that we have been able to garner out of the days of our living. We see as if by a flash of blinding light, the meaning of some things which we have done since last we were here together-- the hasty word the careless utterance, the deliberate act by which another was injured or confused, the decision to do what, even at the time of the decision, we felt was not either the right thing or the thing which we were willing to back with our lives. All of these things crowding upon us our Father to be sure that what we say in Thy presence and what we feel and in Thy presence will be honest and clear and sincere. As we look at this aspect of our lives, there is only one moving request which we make. And that is for forgiveness, forgiveness for the sin, for the wrong act, for the bad deed, forgiveness our Father. We do not know all together what it is that we want beyond this. We see our lives, the goals which we have set for ourselves, and as we wait now in the quietness, and these goals are weighted and held in tender balance before Thy scrutiny and Thy caring, we see them in a new light. And we trust that somehow as we move into the tasks that await us, the radiance which we sense now will cast a long glow to guide us in tomorrow's darkness. We're mindful also of all kinds need in the world, those needs which are close at hand and about which we have had some superficial concern. We have met them casually out of the richness of our own sense of surplus. There are those other needs at which we have not dared to look, our Father, because we fear what our response to such needs might make us do or become. We might find all of the careful plans of our lives upset and the goals which we have put in focus thrown out of line or discarded. Because as we look into the depths of certain needs, we cannot ever be ourselves in happiness and peace again. And this is too costly for us. And yet, our Father, as we wait here, these needs move before us. We hear the cry anguish of the destitute, of the hungry, of the hopeless, of the despairing. And we cannot be deaf. But we don't know what to do. We don't know how to give and not destroy ourselves. Oh God, deal with our disorder with redemptive tenderness so that we as we live tomorrow and tomorrow may not be ashamed of Thy grace that has made our lives move in such tranquil places These are all the words we have. Take them, and let them say to Thy the words of our heart and our spirit. Oh God, merciful God, merciful God. [MUSIC PLAYING] 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Quests of the human spirit as background for laying foundation for our thinking together for the next few weeks. Will you listen to these words? "A ceaseless search like the ebb and flow of oceans marks all man's days. For him, no rest, no rest. The fever in the blood is answer to the temper of the mind. When time was young, just learning how to walk, it placed its stamp on a single cell, which gave a slant to all that lives today or yesterday, no matter when. Pitts Theology Library Emory University A ceaseless search like the ebb and flow of oceans marks all man's day. Is there some point, some place of rest to bring an end to all man's quest? Something that does not feel? Something that lasts beyond all things that pass when the shadows thicken and the lights grow dim? Some worldly hope that gives retreat from all the winds that beat upon the world? Some sured attachment to another's life that stands secure against all change of mind or heart? Some private dream where only dwells the purest secrets of desire? All these must fade. All these must pass away. There is a sense of wholeness at the core of man that must abound in all he does, that marks with reverences his every step, that has its sway when all else fails, that wearies out all evil things, that warms the depths of frozen fears, making friends of foe, making love of hate, and last beyond the living and the dead, beyond the goals of peace and the ends of war. This man seeks through all these years to be complete and of one piece within, without." And then this from Robert Bridges. "Man born of desire cometh out of the night, a wondering spark of fire. He's striveth to know, to unravel the mind. He wills to adore. He dreameth of beauty. He seek to create fair and fair to vanquish his fate, such is man." I begin this morning by undertaking to lay the foundation for our thinking about the quests of the human spirit. To quest is to seek out, to try, to find. It is to search. It is to bring into focus a goal or a purpose and to put at the disposal of such a goal or purpose, the cumulative resources of one's life. It is in the very nature then of the case that a quest is a creative act. It began there. It is creative because when it is initiated, the individual has to adjudicate between possible alternatives. He has to make up his mind by a series of efforts, which result in the elimination of those things which present themselves as worthy of the questing. But for reasons that may be personal and private and intimate, they are rejected. And the one thing is lifted out above all the rest. It is a creative act then in the first place because it involves a decision of the mind and the will. It is creative act in the second place because once the choice is made, once the object of the quest is selected, then the resources of the individual, slowly sometimes and sometimes dramatically, are organized and made available to the individual as the raw materials of the energy which he needs in order to pursue the quest. And this particular act on the part of the mind, of the personality is important because of what it suggests about how man is put together in the first place. He has memories. And these memories at some far off time in the history of man were not memories as we know them. They were impulses shooting over the nerves, registering their impact as the individual encountered various aspects of his environment, reacting to various situations. And as these became cumulative, the mind then began to how a sense of the history of man's experience with 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu life so that at any particular moment, at levels of which he is aware and at levels of which he is not aware, all the past is present, present. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And this means, you see, that what we are saying when we say that a man is conscious is that he is aware of the past as a part of the living stuff of the present so that when he brings to bear the resources of his personality in an effort to make it possible for him to realize his quest, what he is really doing is actualizing his potential. What he is really doing is putting at the disposal of a specific act or a specific goal, the cumulative resources of all of his life. Now the goals, the objects of our quest very often are not on our own. How can I say this? Sometimes, they are a reflection of what we think we ought to want. Sometimes, they are reflection not of what we really want to see. But there are reflections on our love for someone whose desire for us we embrace and act upon it as if it were our own. We see this very often vocationally. Sometimes you talk with a man who is in the last stages of his personal equipment for the realization of a quest which will be for him an enduring one vocationally. And he says, I don't think I've ever really wanted to be a doctor. I come from a family of doctors. My father is a doctor, my grandfather is a doctor, my great uncle is a doctor. And ever since I was born, I have heard my parents talk about the fact that I would carry on where my father left off. Or I would some day be so equipped that I will be able to join my father in this quest. So that out of love, I react. And I still find that at the end that much of the resources of my life are not at the disposal of that which I have selected as the object of my quest. So I may go on and become, let us say, a very good doctor, a very worthy doctor, an excellent healer of diseases if that is how the vocation is defined. And yet, something deep within me remains untouched. And my mind is in it. But my heart refuses. Now the quest of the human spirit about which I shall be thinking the quests of the human spirit, about which I shall be thinking during these days has to do with those experiences, those goals in which there is the meeting of the mind and the heart so that the total resourcefulness and the total resources of the personality may be available to the quest that has been chosen. Now there's a second aspect of this that belongs in the foundation. And that is that sometimes and individual is so fortunate-- and I think this is the right word-- that he does not have to go through the experience of making up his mind, of making the choice. It is as if something-- I don't quite know how to put this-- but outside of him seems to lay hold on him. And he doesn't know when he knew. The only thing he does know is that he knows that through success and failure, through trial and error, this is the thing that he must do. If I may be personal about this, I remember when I was a high school boy. At the end of my first year in high school, I went to a conference in North Carolina. It was a conference of the student conference of the YMCA. The first night I was there, there was a vesper service. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I sat on the side of a hill. It was an outdoor service. Everybody was sitting on one side of the hill. I said over by myself. I was a stranger, didn't know anyone. So I sat alone in the twilight, the long twilight. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And I listened to a man make a speech. I don't know what he talked about now. I don't know what he said. But as I listened to him, I knew what would be the area and the meaning of my life quest. I did not know in terms of a bill of particulars. I could not spell it out in terms of precise goals. But I knew more deeply than I understood. The three or four months after that I wrote the man a letter telling him about my experience that night. And he answered-- I shall always remember this-- two pages single spaced. It was the first type-written letter that I had ever received. And I carried this letter in my pocket. And you will be embarrassed-- I mean, I should be embarrassed, I suppose, to say it. But I carried it in my pocket to the rest of my school and for four years in college. I changed envelopes I don't know how many times- but the letter was there. It served as a gentle reminder of what I had felt. But it was years after before the feeling that I sensed that night worked itself up into the region of my deliberations and my choosings. And sometimes that happens. All of this is to say that the quest is a creative thing. And sometimes, it is the response of the individual. Sometimes, it is the response of the mind based upon selections. And then there something of the personality are organized and put at the disposal of the thing that is held at dead center in the mind. Now there is something else that needs to be said. This possibility, the possibility of quest, the miracle of being able to seek is writted, it seems to me, in the very nature of life. For you see, if life is fixed, if life is finished, if life is complete, if life is contained in a continuum that is essentially static, then the possibility of seeking, the possibility of bringing to bear upon a goal the resources of the personality so that as the individual begins to actualize his potential and becomes himself more and more, the living embodiment of that for which he is questing, all of this is an impossibility if life itself is not fluid, creative, dynamic. Now if it is true that life is fluid and creative and dynamic, then it becomes a reasonable thing to say that the time and the place of a man's life is time and the place of his body. But the meaning of a man's life is as eternal and as significant. As with all of him, he wills to make it. Now let me repeat this. If life is dynamic, fluid, then it is a reasonable thing to say that the time and the place of a man's life is the time and place of his body. But the significance, the meaning of his life can be as eternal and as creative. As with all of him, he wills choose to make it. Therefore, when a man quests and in his quest he honors a deep and insatiable hunger of his spirit and in response to that hunger, he more and more begins to feed it with all the raw materials of his stuff, then the hunger has to be honored by life, and I think by God. So the Master says if you hunger, hunger, hunger, if you thirst, thirst for righteousness. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu This is the nature of life that you will be filled, that this is the kind of world in which the riding possibility is always present if a man is able to bring to bear upon, even the stubborn and unyielding and recalcitrance stuff and contradictory stuff of life that which will not be denied, he will find. I wonder if you believe this. Pitts Theology Library Emory University I do not mean some casual whim, some impulse that grows out of something that does not reach down deep in me. For you know it may be that I cannot seek for something that I do not have already. This may be it. So a man said to the Master, "will please help my son? There are times when he seems to be possessed. And he throws himself on the floor and he writhes as a madman." And the Master said, do you believe this? Do you mean that anything can happen as a result of what you are asking me to do? Is this the kind of world in which it is possible for a quest like that fundamentally to be honored? If you believe this, then it will be. And the man said, oh yes. I believe. Help Thou, my unbelief. Oh yes, I have faith. And it is the faith in me that keeps pushing me for more of itself. So it may be that seeking and finding, questing and finding are one in the same thing, that what I hunger for grows out of what I am aware of as the most real thing in me already. And it is that multiplies itself, multiplies itself until I am consumed by it, and it is consumed by me. The time and the place of a man's life is the time and place of his body. But the meaning of a man's life is as the eternal and as significant. As with all of him, he wills to make it. And we shall see in the days that follow what this means. Walk beside us, our Father. And leave us not alone either to strength or our weaknesses. But yield to us what we need in order that we may be that which is Thy dream for us. [MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Amen Amen, Amen, Amen. 5 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-013_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (I), 1962 Feb 4 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 394-013_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-02-04 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 his introductory lecture to “Quests for the Human Spirit,” Thurman describes the quest as an act of bringing to focus the purpose of one’s life. Thurman notes that this is a creative work wherein one’s mental resources are organized into the raw materials needed to energize and pursue growth within the human spirit. Choosing between alternatives on the life journey is a matter of mind and heart – resources that drive the quest. Thurman argues that questing is essential to life because it is the quest that actualizes the person who becomes the embodiment of one's striving. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 1, 1962 February 4 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey actualize choice creative act heart mind quest https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/2ee2e1cc88e0c380cd63dca12c254b34.pdf 498d871b4eedce5bcce3316fbc849457 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-017_B.mp3 I'm reading two quotations this morning. One from Atkins' Pilgrims of the Lonely Road and the other from Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The first-- "Life does not grow more simple with the passing years, but its deeper needs are unchanging. The secret of peace is not to be sought at the end of the road but in the spirit in which we journey. It is to be sought in the consciousness of the sustaining love of a God who is committed, by the very nature of His Godhead, to a real participation in all our strife. Who does not release us from the battle but who shares the fight. Who does not set us free from the possibility of pain and tears, but who feels the hurt of our wounds, the salt bitterness of our sorrow. Who spends Himself, not only with us but for us, and in the travail of redemptive passion anticipates the victories of the spirit. And finally, whatever pilgrimage we undertake must be undertaken in spite of the interior loneliness, of all great spiritual processes, in the comradeship of our kind, and all well-being must ever be our goal. We are never to forget that we are all so tied up in one bundle that peace and reconciliation to which others are not involved are quite impossible. The note of service must be deepened. And in our care for those who lie wounded or broken along the road, we shall forget our own wounds and forget our own wearinesses. So conceived and so reinforced, life is never impossible but does indeed become an adventure whose greatness is its own best justification and whose difficulties may become, for the faithful and the discerning, but stairs of ascent to radiant and triumphant regions." And then this-- "I like to feel that strange life beating up against me. I like to realize forms of life utterly unlike my own. When my own life feels small, and I am oppressed with it, I like to crush together and see it in a picture, in an instant, in multitudes of disconnected unlike phases of human life. A medieval monk with his string of beads pacing the quiet orchard and looking up from the grass at his feet to the heavy fruit trees. Little Malay boys playing naked on a shining sea-beach. A Hindu philosopher alone under his banyan tree, thinking, thinking, thinking, so that in the thought of God he may lose himself. A troop of Bacchanalians dressed in white with crowns of vine leaves dancing along the Roman streets. A martyr on the night of his death looking through the narrow window to the sky and feeling that already he has the wings that shall bear him up. An epicurean discoursing at a Roman bath to a knot of his disciples on the nature of happiness. A Kaffir witch doctor seeking for herbs by moonlight, while from the huts on the hillside come the sound of dogs barking and the voices of women and children. A mother giving bread and milk to her children in little wooden basins and singing the evening song. I like to see it all. I feel it run through me. That life belongs to me. It makes my little life larger. It breaks down the narrow walls that shut me in." 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu The quest for peace. The second aspect of our thinking. We've thought together about peace in its [? privately ?] and intimate and personal turns, having to do with the quality of tranquility that, under certain circumstances, pervade the spirit and the mind. Giving to, both the spirit and the mind, a sense of well-being that is not threatened by the vicissitudes of fortune or circumstance. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Today I want to think for a little while about peace in a [? world ?] context. And I realize how difficult it is to think effectively and intelligently about peace in the world, in the vast world outside of ourselves. Man is a political animal. And he finds his sense of persona and his sense of private significance in the context of living human beings. And in order that this context might be stabilized so that there will be provided within this context points of referral in the light of which he may get his bearing and interpret the meaning of his life as a member of the community sustained by such a context, he organizes his life and gives it structure. And he allocates authorities. And we have governments. And governments have character and personality and dreams and hopes which dreams and which hopes are derivative initially from the individual who was strategically placed at faithful moments in the development of the state. But the etiquette and the morality of the state is so often not a reflection of the private dream and the great and farreaching hope that first sent the state on its journey. One of the ways by which states guarantee themselves, and seek to give always some measure of collective security to themselves, is to accept as an instrument of morality and procedure the logic and the force and the vitality of violence. The Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset, says that violence belongs to the structure of human life. He says that violence operates always on an ascending and descending scale in human life. That if a group, or if a man, is a barbarian, then violence is the first thing to which he resorts when he seeks to force his will on another or when he seeks to protect his will from becoming the instrument of another intent. And he says that the civilized man is the man who resorts to violence as the final court of appeal. That when he has exhausted all other measures, when everything else has been done that can be done, and he has no live option left on behalf of the guaranteeing of his own security and life, then and only then will he resort to violence. Well, all parents in this room can think about this in terms of how they relate to their children. It would be an interesting thing to see how you classify yourselves, whether you are a barbarian or whether you're civilized. But that's not the point. Now, the function of the state then is to hold itselves intact, to guarantee the common life, to work out ordinary procedures, and to protect itself from other states. And sometimes, in pursuit of the interests of life and the interests of the fulfillment of the dreams and the aspirations of the state, these activities run parallel to the functions of other states. And as a result of all of this, it's just commonplace to say to you, war is [? about. ?] We are a generation that has been, even in my memory and in the memory of many of you, two World Wars and a long cold war. This is our sobering fact. And in one of these wars, we made a very fateful decision. And this decision was possible for us because of another aspect of problems. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University See, the whole problem of peace, which I'm going to call your attention in just fleeting glances, and that is that we are, man is a part of an encompassing whole. Man is a part of a whole world of nature as well as history. And one of the tricks of the mind-- and I use the word "trick" advisedly-- one of the tricks of the mind is to establish for man a sense of his being separate, distinct, and other than the world of nature out of which he comes and in which his life is embedded and by which he is nourished. And the mind, the creative mind of man, brooding over the stuff of nature as if it were, in essence, completely other until, at last, he is able to unlock its secrets, and then these secrets become his private possession. And in the exercise of these secrets, in carrying out his dreams and his hopes and his aspirations, he feels, under no moral obligation, to have any regard for this wider encompassing world of nature out of which he came and from which his secrets come. So that we find him today with a secret in his hand, as if the secret were now a part of the encompassing whole of which he is a part. And because of the secret and the power that it generates, and all of the utilitarian aspects by which the secret manifests itself, the results of the secret become for him, for modern man, an instrument of violence by which he is able, either by threat or by act, to enforce and to implant his will upon other people. And if they will not say yes, the secret will make them say yes. So we find ourselves today with two great monoliths in our society. We are one, and the Soviet Union is the other. And each has the secret. And each has, in his power, the ability to act as if man were not a part of the encompassing whole world. So that he can think in turn, not merely of the cessation of human life, but he can dare to think in terms of the wiping out of all of the elements in the encompassing whole that sustains him as an individual. And we are confronted then with two very fundamental problems here. One is, how can we think about the possibility of the discontinuity of the human race? And this means-- think hard for just a minute-- this means that for the first time in human history, we are faced with the possibility of the loss of the human race's experience of the remnant. And the remnant, the concept of the remnant, is the ground of all of the gross optimism that man has about the future. For, you see, always there is lurking in the background of man's mind whatever may be the exigences of the moment, however devastating and catastrophic they may be, always lurking in the background there is the notion, the tutoring notion, that there will be somebody left to carry on that which has been interrupted and broken by the act in the present. So this is a ground of hope. This is what is meant by the growing edge. It is this that the prophet talks about. This is what the seers dream about. This is the meaning of the concept of utopias. All of this is wrapped up in the gross grounding that the remnant is ours to preserve and will be preserved. Now we face the possibility of the discontinuity of the remnant. And if there be no remnant, there is no vehicle that can carry the dream, the unfulfilled aspirations, or the magic of man's dreaming and imagination. There will be available no vehicle for carrying this into the future, where perhaps mankind will be able to think more creatively about the meaning of his responsibilities. So our minds are blocked. This is what I'm trying to say. And our thinkers have not begun working on any other possibility, if there be some other possibility. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, the second thing that is relevant here is that the possibility of destroying all of the encompassing elements that nourish us. We haven't thought much about this. That not merely do we have in our hands the power to do destroy man, as if man was some historic unit, as if man was some isolate, as if man was something that was not grounded in the earth and in the world of stuff, as if he were some suspended something. But we have the power of destroying the thing that nourishes life. Not merely the life of man but that nourishes life. And the kind of arrogance, the kind of madness that this represents, is too staggering for my kind of mind to grasp. Now, into this arena, whatever may be all of the political implications that I'm not smart enough to know too much about, and that I certainly don't have enough information, whatever may be all of the ambiguity, the difficulties in the problem area that is created, I think that there is something for the individual to do in his quest for peace in the world. For Americans-- and I see my time is up but I'm not going to stop right this minute. Let me finish, please. For Americans, it means that, first of all, there must be a felt sense of collective guilt and responsibility for initiating, in the modern world, complete violence by atomic bombs. Now, this is the first. That whatever finally is said about the faithful historic moment in which Harry Truman was functioning relevantly, the fact remains that on behalf of us all, he acted. And the guilt, whether he feels it or not, cannot be isolated in these strange and deranged stirrings of that hapless colonel who dropped the bomb, but the guilt is ours, and it has to be felt and sensed and realized. And there is no escape. This is the first thing, you see. And the second thing is that there must, as a part of this, be an effort to try to see if, at the level where we operate, we can enter into another kind of moral revolution. A revolution that will undertake to reestablish the moral values by which we have been tutored and in which we have been nurtured, which moral values had to be violated when we took the faithful step. It is an amazing thing how your life and my life are held together by invisible moral values that are part of the common assumptions of the common life. Even though I may not relate to them privately or personally, but here they are, holding the common life in some sort of structure of meaning and significance. And their roots go back into the past. Now, these had to do with certain basic concepts about the ways of an individual. We have not felt as a people. That men and women and children, who were not involved professionally in carrying out the armed will of a nation, should be included. We have not felt that little children should be killed, and women, and those non-participators in the active military will. But we have not felt-- this is foreign to us. And now suddenly we find ourselves breaking with that whole assumption in our past by participating in an act that included everybody-- men, women, children, those who are armed, those who are not armed. And this means a radical rupture in the collective psyche of the American people. And this has to be redeemed in some way. Then there's a third thing that I think that we can do, we must do. It is so easy to say that I am just one little human being, and nobody even knows that I'm living except my mother and father and a few friends and the people whom with I work. I really don't count. It's easy to say that. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu TR Glover, in commenting on the fall of the Roman Empire, has a very instructive phrase that he gives. He says that the Roman Empire fell not because of the failure of the hay crop and a lot of other crops, and the rainfall, and all these things that belong to a certain interpretation, [INAUDIBLE] an interpretation of history, but the Roman Empire fell because the average Roman citizen lost his sense of personal responsibility for the fate of the empire. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And this is what I am saying, that we, each one of us, must have a sense of responsibility, not merely for the fate of America but for the fate of the world. And we must, at the level of our availability to life, seek to reproduce, in the quality and kinds of our experiences, the kind of life that we feel is the good life, the healthy life, the peaceful life for mankind, so that I will not condemn in the great outer world, where decisions are made by Khrushchev and Kennedy and de Gaulle and all these other power magnets in our time. That I will not give them the prerogative of making those decisions unmindful of me. And in my house, and in my city, and in my state, and in my region. I shall be free to affirm my commitment to peace all the way up to the citadels of power. Because at the level of my own life, I affirm my commitment to peace. And finally, I, in doing this, am doing this, I reject the commitment to extermination on the grounds, not only because it is immoral but because I have no right to act on behalf of existence. So I will practice my commitment to peace, and I will carry its assignment through all the levels of the common life. And I will make my voice heard. I will involve myself with a deep sense, not only of atonement for collective guilt, but also I will seek to repair the damages that have been done to the morality out of which our whole life has been spawned. And not only will I do this, but through all ways available to me, within the resources that I can back with my life, I will be heard. And who knows, who knows, if those who are in power for reasons that I cannot understand or fathom cannot act, then it behooves every man to act that the dream of God for us will not perish from the earth. Let us do that. It is not nothing. Forgive us, our Father. for all the things that which we are so poignantly aware in this waiting hour. And for those failures of the world that have made it so difficult for us to respond to Thy will. Walk with us in the long, perilous journey that stretches out before us. And give to our thinking footsteps, the great, strong rhythm of the purposes of God. And for us, this is enough, oh God, our Father. [HYMNAL MUSIC] [SINGING] 5 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-017_B.html" ></iframe> Internal Notes Notes for project team in a world context >> in a wider context commonplace to say to you, {war is [?about?]} >> {wars come} {[INAUDIBLE] an} interpretation of history >> {economical} - GL 5/15/19 - Edited "economical" to "economic" & "privately" to "private room", "intimate room" - GL 8/3 Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (X): The Quest for Peace, part 2, 1962 May 13 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 394-017_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 10: The Quest for Peace (continued), 1962 May 13 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-05-13 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> 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. Description An account of the resource In Thurman’s second lecture on peace, he focuses on the collective experience of harmony in a world context. While human beings are deeply embedded within the ambitions and structures of governments and states, it is essential for the individual to establish a sense of being separate and distinct from the world in which one is nourished. Amid Cold War politics nearly twenty years after the use of the first atomic bomb, Thurman considers the meaning of thinking about peace in light of the threat of nuclear war and mass death within human populations. Calling for a moral revolution, Thurman explains that we exist within a collective moral web that connects all people. Individual commitment to peace must, then, transcend the self, participate in the shared fate of our world and society, and become felt within the highest reaches of power. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey atomic bomb community peace power Soviet Union state violence https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/3f60abd99b089a06e0240f6234ebdecf.pdf b3f7ac7c3ff8b1b284a82decd0fa1cf7 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-018_A.mp3 May I remind you that as a result of a request of the president of the university, we shall have a worship service-- the regular worship service-- next Sunday morning in the chapel at 11 o'clock. Ordinarily, on commencement day, we do not have a service at 11:00. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The hope of the president is that the families and friends of those persons who are being graduated, and who during the rest of the other part of the year do not have an opportunity to share in the university at worship, will be happy to become a part of this, which is our weekly experience. One other word. Many of you have asked, what is said to the babies. And I do not make the statement so that the congregation can hear it because this, in all probability, will be very disconcerting to the ears of the baby. But what is said is this. The baby's name is called. I dedicate you to God. And to the fulfillment of your life in the religious faith and tradition of your mother and your father. May it be said of you, as it was said of the baby Jesus long ago, that you increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in favor with God and man. So that all who come to know you in the days ahead will find in you a benediction breathing peace. God bless you, and make you a blessing. Forever and ever. Amen. We shall now worship God with our gifts. [ORGAN PLAYING] (SINGING) God, being our Father, the gift [INAUDIBLE] And let this offering be made whole. We give ourselves to you. (SINGING) Spirit of God, descend upon my heart. Wean it from Earth, through all its pulses move. Stoop to my weakness mighty as Thou art. And make me love ye as I ought to love. [INAUDIBLE] from thy presence. Whither shall I flee from thy spirit. If I ascend up into heaven thou are there. If I make my bed in hell behold thou are there. If I take the wings of the morning and fly into 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 from thee. But the night shineth as the day. The darkness, the light, are both the light to thee. How precious also our 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 to know my heart. Drive me to know my thoughts. And to see if there be any wicked way in me. And lead me in the way everlasting. [ORGAN PLAYING] 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu The Quest for God. The final in our series that we have been discussing for several weeks, on the quest of the human spirit. Pitts Theology Library Emory University In all the waking hours the tentacles of time give channel to each living thing-- the bird on wing, the moon moving in darkness underground, the cricket chanting its evening song, the primeval whales spawning in chilly seas, or floating noiselessly in turbulent waters. In mountain crevice or sprawling meadow, the delicate beauty of color-stained flower, a fragile leaf. High above the timber line, the sprig of green, there's wind and snow. In the barren parchness of desert waste, the juiceless shrub and waterlogged cactus. High in the tree top, the green-pearled fruit of olive mistletoe and the soft gray stillness of creeping moss. The infant, the growing child, the stumbling adolescent, the young adult, the man full-blown or stooped with years. The tentacles of time give channel to each living thing. And beyond this, thoughts that move with grace of being. Light thoughts that dance and sing, untouched by gloom or shadow of the dark. Weighty thoughts that press upon the road with tracks that blossom into dreams. Or shape themselves, and plan, and scheme. Thoughts that whisper, thoughts that shout. Thoughts that wander without rest. Seeking, seeking, always seeking thoughts that challenge, thoughts that soothe. The tentacles of time give channel to each living thing. Out from the house of God all things come, and into it each returns again for rest. When I awake I am still with thee. It always strikes me as a kind of impudence, or impertinence, or arrogance, to talk about God. The human spirit must have for its stability-- in its journey it must have for its ground in the private and collective enterprise that we call life, two fundamental levels of re-assurance. And these two levels of re-assurance have to do with what men senses as being ultimate in character. The first is a sense of being totally encompassed. A feeling, really, for a climate that is all encompassing, that gathers up within it everything that is. So that the individual will feel himself held in a kind of reality that has as its dominant characteristic a structure of dependability which the mind interprets by the use of the term "reality." Now, a man's experience of this all-encompassing reality is a living vital thing. It is so important to him that he feels that his mind has a kind of affinity for it. That all the things that are outside of him, and all the things that are inside of him, that he can label. Like feelings. Or like the organs of his body. All of these things, in the curious magic of his mind, seem to belong together in some kind of order, some kind of structure of dependability. So that he is always confident that there isn't anything in his experience, at any level, that if given enough time he will not be able to understand. And why is this? Because in his mind he seems to have an affinity for everything that is outside of him. Now this has far-reaching significance. For it says, you see, that there is a reality-- an all-encompassing reality-- which is given. He didn't create it with his own mind, but he finds it in the world about 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu him. And as he begins to apply this sense of affinity to the external world of nature, for instance, he discovers that all kinds of rare secrets are in his hands. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And when he makes use of these secrets-- in terms of the creation of machines, or other things that are vehicular for his thought-- when he uses them creatively and effectively, as if they were the possession of all of life, he is blessed by it. And when he uses it in ways that are exclusive, and private, and selfish, he's cursed by it. So he discovers the secret of the atom on this principle of affinity that his mind has with all that is outside of his mind and inside of his mind. This all-encompassing thing that is held together by an inner structure of dependability. And when he takes this secret, and uses it on behalf of private, narrow, bigoted, frightened ends, then instead of being blessed by the creativity of God this very thing which is a part of the whole creative synthesis of life, becomes an instrument of evil in his hands. If he uses it to bless mankind then he experiences the love and the benediction of God. If he uses it as something that is private, and exclusive, and narrow, and bigoted, the instrument of his fear and anxiety, he becomes a part of the wrath of God. And so it goes. The machine-- another illustration. He creates a machine growing out of this sense of affinity with all of these things external to him. And when he uses the machine as a blessing and a benediction for all of life then he experiences what may be called the tender regard of the allencompassing, to use a nice way to put it. And when he uses it in narrow and bigoted ways, selfish ways, in terms of, the machine belongs to me for my private profit, then at once he begins to experience all kinds of manifestations of the wrath of God-- depressions, hunger, waste, devastation, angry violences. And this thing, which could be an expression of the love-- the tender regarding of the all-encompassing, this affinity that the mind has for all of these things-- becomes now an instrument of evil. So the mind then has to feel this. It has to have a sense of being at home in the world, understanding the world, revealing itself to the world. And this, in the language of religion, says that this is possible because God is the creator not merely of life, not merely of a particular expression of life, not merely of the living substance, but God is the creator of existence itself. But the experience-- the experience of God in this dimension is always ahead of the interpretation that man may give of his experience. For you see, the experience of God, even as this all-encompassing almost impersonal aspect of reality, the experience of God is a living thing. But the thought about it, the interpretation-- the thing that I've been doing for the last 10 minutes-- this is an invention of the mind. And the invention of the mind is always a little less than the experience. And is always out of date as far as the experience is concerned. Because the experience keeps on experiencing. While the invention has to take time to construct notion, concept, ideas, meanings, evaluate them, interpret them. And then categorize them and give them a label like theology, or dogma, or metaphysics, or philosophy. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University And by the time the mind gets through with this necessitous process, the experience has moved on ahead of it. So that the experience is always attacking the invention. But the mind feels that its security rests on holding to the invention. And that's why, always in the history of the Church, someone rises up out of the vitality of the living experience, and moves in ways that become increasingly destructive of the invention. And you get a reformation or you get something else, something else, something else. Now that's the first thing. Now the second demand is that if I am to have a sense of being at home, and really be secure emotionally, and impersonal all-encompassing is not enough for me, then here my religious faith becomes my great tutor. And it is here that the Christian depends so heavily upon his interpretation of the meaning of Jesus Christ. And what does my faith teach you in very simple words? And the second demand. I say the first [INAUDIBLE]. The first is we are surrounded by almost an external structure of dependability. So that I know that the world isn't going to run off it's-- whatever it's on. That the sun will not rise at 8 o'clock this morning, and then tomorrow decide to rise at 3:00 in the afternoon. That I won't plant figs and then corn will come up. The world will run me crazy if the snow-- so I got to have-- this is a part of it. But this isn't enough. I want to feel that I'm not alone. I want to feel it. Well, the writer of the Book of Revelation expresses it. He has a lot of high-powered things to say about the new Jerusalem coming down out of the sky. It's very dramatic and impersonal. It's a huge city descending. It's a glorious thing. But the heart dies. The heart dies with this. The heart has to feel that it's something personal. So the writer of revelation says, God-- God will wipe away the tears from their eyes. Nothing more personal than that. Have you ever wept, and someone just got up, and walked over to you, and the wiped the tear away? The most intimate sacramental moment of private validation. And this is what religion insists that God does. So my faith then teaches me three little things that are most important. That God is. That when I pray-- when I pray-- that I meet somebody. My words do not fall back dead. And I don't try to let the invention of my mind make the case for the validity of my experience, even though I'm always trying to do it. When I pray I have a sense of communion that is as personal, and private, and intimate as the wiping of the tear from the eye. And then I know what Jesus says is right. And it teaches me also that God is-- not merely is. This is not enough. But that He is close at hand. He is a part of the very stuff of my experience. He is in my tragedy. He is in my joy. He is in my moments of high glory, and in my moments of profoundest despair. That when the night is so dark that I cannot see my hand before me He is there. When the light is so bright that all things are blotted out He is there. When I hate, when I love, when I sin, when I seek forgiveness, I can't shake Him. He's there . Speak to Him thou, for He heareth. Spirit with spirit made me closer. Is He then breathing nearer than hands and feet? This is the second thing. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And the third is that He is love. That when I love, however weak it may be, however faltering, and inadequate, and broken it may be, when I love, in some mysterious way, all the world seems to fall into some kind of sense. And when-- when I hate the sun doesn't seem to be as bright, my feet drag. The world is not quite right. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And when I love the things-- if I'm right in the center of all the meaning there is. So that whatever else God is, this must be what He is most. Even when with my stupidity and hardheartedness I become an instrument of his wrath, even in his pain He holds and redeems. And therefore, for love's sake, then, I will do what no power in heaven, or hell, or on the earth, could make me do if I didn't love. So God, as experience must be like this, I would not snare thee in a web of words. I would not try to reduce all the vast reaches of thy meaning in paltry symbols. I would but open myself to thee. And let thy spirit invade me, fill me, until I do not know what is mine or thine. This would be my fulfillment, oh, my God. [ORGAN PLAYING] 5 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-018_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (XI): The Quest for God, 1962 May 27 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 394-018_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 11: The Quest for God, 1962 May 27 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-05-27 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> 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. Description An account of the resource In the final lecture of “Quests for the Human Spirit,” Thurman discusses three fundamental assurances that underly spiritual quests. First, it is necessary to achieve a sense of being totally encompassed and embedded within a dependable reality. Second, more than maintaining a sense of the all-encompassing, one’s faith must become a “tutor,” Thurman says. Believing that God exists, is “close at hand,” and available to participate in one’s various experiences is fundamental to dealing with the anxieties of aloneness. Third, in understanding that God is love, and engaging in the practice of love, one experiences a kind of rightness with the world. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey all-encompassing creativity dependability God invention https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/77279978e050e1ea4c8bf4792623a4de.pdf b243dcc147d67ae95dc8baa6799299d6 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-013_B.mp3 (SINGING) [INAUDIBLE] Pitts Theology Library Emory University It is of enormous reassurance to us, our Father, the sense that Thou art the sustainer and the holder of life. That despite all of our own limitations and finitudes, despite all of our weaknesses and failures, despite all of the soarings of our minds and imaginations and our spirit, that always we come back to the deeply lying assurance that Thou art the sustainer of life, the holder of all of creation, and the guarantor of all our values. And this is of such overwhelming reassurance to us that we celebrate in simple words of praise this almighty grace. We offer on our part not merely the good deeds of which we are aware at times, not merely the concerns for our fellows, which sometimes lead us to simple deeds or glorious acts of heroic self-sacrifice. But we offer to Thee the things that we might become. All of the possibilities of our lives, the potentials not yet realized. We offer to Thee our failures also, those times when something breaks down and we do not know what, or when something breaks down and we do know what. All that we might have been at a particular time and were not. All of the sense of conscience that disturbs and whips and tortures because we have not been in quality and in kind what we knew at the time we could have been in quality and kind. And beyond all of these expressions of ourselves, our Father, we offer to Thee ourselves. This is what we want to do. And sometimes, sometimes we are able to do it, just to say to Thee, Father, here am I, my life as it is at its depth. I give it to Thee, and I want Thee to hold it so that it is no longer my life to do with it in accordance with my whims, my impulses, my desires, or even my needs. But to take my life and to hold it until it takes on Thy character, Thy mind, Thy purposes. If Thou wilt do this and if Thou wilt help me to do this, then I can be in myself what is truest and surest in me. And this, this oh God, is all, all, all. [MUSIC PLAYING] As background for our consideration of the second in our series, the quest for freedom, it is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of man without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always there is the need of mooring, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give. The urge to be accountable to someone, to know that beyond the individual himself there is an answer that must be given cannot be denied. The deed a man performs must be weighed on a balance held by another's hand. The very spirit of a man tends to panic from the desolation of going nameless, up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no friendly recognition makes secure. Always a way must be found for bringing into one solitary place the sudden look from another's face, for getting the quiet sanction of another's grace to undergird the meaning of the self. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu To be ignored, to be passed over as of no account and of no meaning is to be made into a faceless thing, not a man. It is better to be the complete victim of an anger unrestrained and a wrath which knows no bounds. To be torn asunder without mercy or battered to a pulp by angry violence than to be passed over as if one were not. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Here at least, one is dealt with, encountered, vanquished or overwhelmed, but not ignored. It is a strange freedom to go nameless up and down the streets of another's mind, where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place to call one's own. To be known, to be called by one's name is to find one's place and hold it against all the hordes of hell. This is to know one's value for oneself alone. It is to honor and act as one's very own. It is to live a life that is one's very own. It is to bow before an altar that is one's very own. It is to worship a God who is one's very own. It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of man, to act with no accounting, to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own. The quest for freedom is fundamental to the human enterprise, for freedom is the gift of life. And yet paradoxically enough, freedom must always be realized, achieved. It is given, and yet it must always be actualized. Freedom then is the capacity that is inherent in personality to determine the future by action. Let us weigh this. It is the capacity to determine the future by action. It operates at the simplest and most elemental and elementary level of life while the organism may accept or reject substances which it can and may use to guarantee its own physical existence. It may be the movement of the organism or the staying put of the organism. It may be the exercise of choice to do or not to do. It is to interpret the act available to the individual in terms of the meaning of the act and its bearing upon the future of the life. Therefore, arriving at the very center or at least on the crest of all activity which may be defined as activity of freedom is the possibility of failure. For if the individual could not fail in his act, then freedom of the act has no meaning. So that always in the background of whatever man means by freedom is the threat-- yes. The threat of absolute failure as far as his life is concerned. In other words, the fact of death, which represents absolute failure for the organism. The fact of death then is the guarantor of the experience of freedom. Suppose you couldn't die? Then this would mean that there is not available to you at any particular point any other possibility than the possibility that you are then or that you are now experiencing. But because I can always die, this means that one possibility other than the possibility that I'm now experiencing is always open to me. So that men decide as they begin to think about the meaning of freedom in their own lives, they may decide that the situation with which I am faced now or by which I am faced now is for me a situation intolerable in character. And if this is the decision, then I do not have to accept that. I always have this other possibility. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now that does not mean that I will go around wanting to exercise this possibility. But it does mean that in the background of my mind and in my experience, there is this other option. So Ibsen in The Wild Duck says that-- has the wild duck say that if he's wounded, he will sink himself to the bottom of the lake and give his life up to the waters flowing there rather than to accept life on any terms that life may offer. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now to go back to the working definition, the first part of it, freedom is the capacity of the individual to determine the future by action. This means then that the individual can, standing where he is, project himself imaginatively into another possibility of action and deal with that possibility in his imagination, and decide to accept it or reject it. And if he decides that in order to fulfill what seems to him to be an inner necessity for acting in a way that will determine a future which to him is mandatory for his life, then-- and he knows that if he acts in this way, the result of his action will be his death, then he can choose deliberately to accept this possibility rather than to remain in the condition which he finds himself. So the slave said that he would-- that before he'd be a slave, he'd be buried in his grave and go home to his Lord and be free. The essence then of freedom in the first place turns on how the individual which is given this, how the individual is able to negotiate the frontiers of his freedom, the limitations of his freedom. Now we are always working on the frontiers of our freedom. Next Wednesday morning or afternoon or Thursday, we will be trying to negotiate a frontier of freedom of movement in space in every aspect of our life, because we are rooted in nature. We are always trying to push back the frontiers of our freedom of movement. And we may fail again and again and again. But if the sense of my own possibility to determine or influence the future by my action remains active, I will try again and again and again, and I will not accept the frontier as being final. Now if I'm dealing with a situation in which the frontier must be accepted as final, then I exercise my freedom by the way in which I deal with the fact of the finality. Now this is comparatively simple when it comes to the frontiers that I established by nature. But there are other frontiers that I established by the conventions of society. There are frontiers that are set up by which individuals are surrounded. And when they meet these frontiers of their freedom, they may acquiesce, because necessity fronts them with a kind of an invincible gesture, and there's not a thing that they can do about it. Now, now this is where the essence of freedom moves now. If I decide that there isn't anything that I can do about it period, then the frontier of freedom that is external to me shifts from outside of me to inside of me. But if I decide that there is something that can be done about the frontier so as to make it more possible for me to actualize the potential which is a part of the gift of life, the potential of freedom, then I keep working at the frontier, working at myself. I keep trying to find ways within my environment that can influence the frontier, getting the frontier to move. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu We see this going on in the kind of social revolution that is taking place in various parts of the world. In particular at the moment, that's taking place in our own country. The frontier of freedom set by convention. And the individual decides that he will not accept this frontier. And if he decides that he will not accept the frontier, then he brings to bear upon the movement or the possibility of the movement of the frontier. Pitts Theology Library Emory University First, all of his own resources. And then all of the resources that are within the convention that establishes the frontier. Until at last, the frontier begins to move. Or if the frontier does not move, he may decide that it is better for him to give up his life rather than to accept the frontier as the fact of his life. Now freedom then means first the capacity of the individual to determine the future by action. Now the corollary to that is that freedom means also the sense of alternative, the sense of option. It may not mean the implementation of the option. It may be, for instance, that I decide that I can be what I want to be, but I don't want to want to be what I want to be. So that before I can deal with the possibility of my realizing in the future by action that which I want to be, I must operate on myself so that I will want to want to be what I want to be. Now I remember many years ago when I was a freshman college student in Atlanta, Georgia. One Thanksgiving night, I was going up the hill from town, going back to the college. It was a cold night, and I noticed a fire burning on the side of the street, and there were some men sitting around it, warming themselves. And I decided I would join them to get a little warm before making the last pull up the hill where the college was. And they were discussing the fact that at the Candler Warehouse, which was one of the large cotton warehouses in Atlanta, that most of the men working there had been laid off until the first of the year. And they were discussing all that this involved, not only in terms of Thanksgiving celebrations and so forth, but no toys for their children at Christmas time. And you know, what men under such circumstances would be saying. And then presently a man began strumming a guitar and humming first some melody that sort of insinuated itself into your mind without your permission. And then he began putting words to it, and these are the words. He said, I've been down so long, down don't worry me. And I said to one of the men, this means that for this man, all of the possibilities of his life are canceled out. Canceled out, because the sense of alternative had died. And it is not important, you see, as far as freedom is concerned, it is not ultimately important whether or not the individual is able at any particular point in time and space to realize the option. For again and again, the realization of any particular option is merely one of the external conditions of freedom. But freedom is a quality of the spirit. It is a quality of the mind and the heart. And as long as the individual keeps alive within him the sense of option, then whatever he may be doing at any particular time, there is inherent in that act the threat that this act at last will be 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu an act that can determine his future. But if this dies, then before there can be any movement towards freedom, the personality has to be reborn, and then move. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now this whole idea was illustrated for me in something I heard and about which I've told you before, but it was the most dramatic sermon that I heard during the years of my boyhood. It was a traveling minister who preached a sermon about Hell, and his experience when he was on a personally conducted tour of Hell. He said that here in the sermon he dealt, of course, with the two cardinal sins of that period. And you can date me now, because the two cardinal sins of that period were dancing and card play. And so the first place to which he went in Hell was a huge dance hall, and there were millions of people dancing. And they had to dance forever, and with the same partner. He took them next to a place where they were all playing cards, and the game that they played at that time was a card game called Five Up. And they were playing Five Up, four people at a table. And here they had to sit throughout eternity, playing Five Up. Now the thing that made the situation Hell was not any of the things that we think of ordinarily due to certain imagery that has come down to us. Burning lake, a certain kind of devil with a pitchfork. None of this. But the thing that made it Hell was the fact that they had left to themselves no option. They had no freedom, and freedom is the gift of life. And where there is no freedom, it is death. Freedom then is the capacity of the individual to determine the future by his action. It means, therefore, that in its essence, it is a quality of the spirit. For if a man's sense of option with reference to his ability to influence the future by his action is lost, then freedom perishes. And there is no external force or power that can destroy freedom in this dimension. For even though all external conditions are negative, even though there is nothing that is operable or maneuverable or movable at the frontier, at the moment as far as that which keeps the individual from being able to determine his future by his actions in the present, nevertheless it is one of the fundamental dimensions of personality to keep alive the sense of option, the possibility of being able at some time, somewhere, some when to determine the future by action in the now. And if this is true, then it means that freedom is essential to what a man means when he says that he is a man. A man. It is rooted, then, in a sense of essential human dignity and human life. And he puts this positive, creative quality of the self as a relentless binding pressure against everything within him and without him that would establish without his assent the boundaries, the frontiers of his freedom. And therefore, the quest for human freedom is as old as is the existence of personality. And perhaps this is what it means to be a child of God and not a carrot or a turnip or a tomato. But a man, a man, a man, a man. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Strong son of God, immortal love, who we either have not seen Thy face by faith and faith alone embrace, believing what 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. And in this, oh God, our Father, is our hope and our redemption. Pitts Theology Library Emory University [MUSIC PLAYING] [SINGING] 6 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-013_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (II): The Quest for Freedom, 1962 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 394-013_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-02-11 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> Description An account of the resource Thurman explains that freedom is the “capacity to determine the future by action.” He sees the possibility of death as the guarantor of the experience of freedom because that possibility is always open to the person. The fact that this option is available rather than accepting any present conditions is only to suggest that this means one can imaginatively project oneself into another possibility. For Thurman, grappling with one’s final option opens the door for pushing back the frontier of freedom wherever unacceptable limitations persist. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 2: The Quest for Freedom, 1962 February 11 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey death failure finality freedom frontier of freedom hell option https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/7ea106d33825435364b4963b3a322114.pdf 33720cce5aba7ada888d5833c3554263 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-014_A.mp3 [ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) [INAUDIBLE] Pitts Theology Library Emory University We spread before Thee, our Father, all of the mounting concerns of our lives. And even as we do so, we are not sure within ourselves what Thou canst do about them, but there is within us the great necessity to expose the heights and the depths of our concerns to Thee, whose wisdom transcends our little wisdoms, whose caring contains all the riches of our own love, and whose mind holds all our little minds in their place. We are concerned as we hear the tidings of the destruction and the suffering from the raging storms and the winds and the snows of winter, as in combination, they beat down upon Thy children in other lands. Suffering, the desolation, the panic, the fear, these reach us even in the quietness of Thy sanctuary. The concern that we feel for friends and for that section of North Africa where so much violence and so much evil have been done. We try, from within the quietness of this place, to encompass in the sweep of our awareness the intimate overtones of such colossal misery and frustration, and hurt and pain and hate and love. And on and on we might go, our Father, speaking of our concerns of one kind or another that extend beyond our little lives. But Thou knowest how far our concerns reach and where they are limited and bounded by our ignorance or our indifference or by the intensity of the personal struggle with which we ourselves are faced. Really bare the private concerns of our private lives, the decisions that we must make, and do not know how to make, the anxiety which we feel because of what is going on within our minds or our bodies, the outcome of which we cannot even guess. The little awareness of the little problems of our little lives mount to overwhelming proportions when we still ourselves in Thy waiting presence. We ask nothing. We wait We wait, our Father until at last something of Thy strength becomes our strength, something of Thy heart becomes our heart, something of Thy forgiveness becomes our forgiveness. We wait, oh, God. We wait, wait wait. [ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING] As a background for continuing our theme on the quest of the human spirit, I'm reading one thing and perhaps two. The first is a prayer by Max Ehrmann. Let me do my work each day and if the darkened hours of despair overcome me, may I not forget the strengths that comforted me in the desolation of other times. May I still remember the bright hours that found me walking over the silent hills of my childhood or dreaming on the margin of the quiet river, when a light glowed within me, and I promised my early God to have courage amidst the tempests of the changing years. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Spare me from the bitterness and sharp passion of unguarded moments. May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit. Though the world knows me not, may my thoughts and actions be such as shall keep me friendly with myself. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Lift up my eyes from the Earth and let me not forget the uses of the stars. Forbid that I should judge others, lest I condemn myself. Let me not feel the glamor of the world but walk calmly in my path. Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am and keep ever-burning before my vagrant steps the kindly light of hope. And though age and infirmity overtake me and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thankful for life and for times old and moments that are good and sweet. And may the evening twilight find me gentle still. And this, there is a beauty at the goal of life, a beauty growing since the world began, though every age through every age and race through laps and strife till the great human soul complete her span. Beneath the waves of storm that lash and burn, the currents of blind passion that appall, to listen and keep watch till we discern the tide of sovereign truth that guides it all. So to address our spirits to the height and so attune them to the valiant whole, that the great light be clearer for our light and the great souls are stronger for our soul. To have done this is to have lived, though fame remember us with no familiar name. The quest for value cannot be distinguished in essence, from the quest for meaning or distinguished in essence from man's experience of meaning. There is a characteristic of mind that insists that things make sense. Always, we are trying to reduce the elements of our experience and our living to manageable units of understanding and sometimes control. The mind seems to have an inner necessity that must-- that can only be met when it comprehends and is able to deal with the raw materials, printed experiences, from within the mind itself. There is much to be said for the need for values in our time, and we need not detour too far in an examination of this need. There is this breakdown of authority by which we are surrounded. The points of referral on the horizon in the light of which there is meaning in the private enterprise of man seem to be eclipsed by clouds, we are unable to find our way. And thus, there is a collective feeling of lostness, of wandering. More can be said about the cause for this but that is beside our point. I want to pursue, for the time that I have, what seems, to me, to be at the very center of this quest for value. Now, a part of the given equipment of personality, as it would seem to me, is what I am calling a sense of value, a feeling for values, a continuum of values so that always the things that have meaning for us are found within this vat, within this continuum, within this sense of value. Now, this sense of value, which is a part of the very structure of personality, is not something that the mind designs. It is not something that the imagination creates. But it is something that is indigenous to the very life of personality. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, the content of the sense of value is a reflection, in large part, not in toto, but in large part, a reflection of what we are taught, what our particular social heritage is, the kind of culture of which we are a part, the kind of religious faith or set of beliefs or orientations with which we grow up and by which we are nurtured, these things make up the content, the inside of the sense of value. They do not create the sense of value, and this distinction is important for the purposes of my thought. Therefore, the value content, the content of the sense of value has to do with what at any particular moment is for the individual something that is right or wrong. When I was a boy, I was not permitted to shine my shoes on Sunday morning before going to church or to Sunday school. This was wrong. And this became a very important bit of the content of my interpretation of what was right and wrong. And even 40, 50 years after, if I just take a cloth and dust my shoes, something in me just quivers a little bit. It doesn't ache, but it just quivers a little bit. Even what to you is right or wrong at any particular time is a reflection of how you have been influenced by and how you have responded to aspects of your environment, which aspects gave to your life its sense of personal meaning and value. For it is with reference to some primary, prestige-bearing group, intimate group, in which you, as a child or as an adult, find meaning for your life, find significance, find your persona. It is with reference to these that we are most widely exposed to having flow into our minds into this value continuum the particular meaning of the particular deed so that the conscience, which we feel and which is so influential in our lives at this particular point or that particular point is not merely the presence of some kind of absolute value that is tutoring or judging all the little values. But conscience is, in part, a reflection of those things which we have found to be meaningful in maintaining the security of our relationship with some primary unit of human beings whose existence give to our existence its significance. So that when I try to decide again and again about a particular act, will I do this or should I do that, sometimes I discover that it is only incidental that I raise the question as to whether this act that I am contemplating is right or wrong. I say to myself that that is really the question that I'm asking, but is it? The question that I'm asking is, if I do this, will it interfere with the line of communication that must be held open to those individuals or groups who give to me my own sense of belonging. So then what I decide to do very often is the thing that keeps me assured that I have free and easy access to the sources upon which I draw to keep my own sense of meaning fluid and significant and valid. Now, therefore, it seems to me to be very important in thinking about the quest for values to bear in mind, that the content of values which we have at any particular moment is in large, not in toto, but in large part, a reflection of what we have found to be of most significance in the world of which we are part and to which we have a sense of belonging. Now, to pursue this further then, the goals of our lives-- and it is around these that the meaning of value finally turns-- the goals of our lives are very often a reflection of the goals of the society, of the culture, the life around us that is prestige-bearing. But as we begin to emerge and to have an ever-deepening sense of our own persona, our own significance, something else 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu begins to develop. We begin to develop a way, a private and personal way for assessing the significance of those things on our horizon to which we are under some sense of collective obligation to respond. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So there emerges in our contemplation of our lives a priority of value. And I may decide as a result of insight which I have derived from my own inner experience and responding to those things in my life or in my environment or in my world that impressed themselves upon me, that place upon me their character. I may decide that for me, I will put my priorities in a certain order, and on the basis of this personal priority, I will elect to live my life. I may, for instance, be surrounded in a society that places a great value upon things, upon money, upon the kind of power that money begets or upon position and the kind of power that position begets. And as I look at this and begin to feel my way into my experience of value, I might shift the priorities so that I may say that which gives meaning to my life, that which is the basis for my own sense of value is no longer contingent upon my conforming to the pattern of life, which for so long a time has given to me my own sense of belonging and my own sense of significance. Now, it is of very great interest to me that in this whole quest for values, the religious insight and the religious experience have played a very important and a very crucial part. For there comes a time, I don't quite know how to put this, there comes a time in a man's life when he begins to relate to a meaning for his life and a meaning of life, which seems to him to contain all the other values. And if he has grown up in a religious tradition, then he gives to it a religious assessment. If he hasn't grown up in a religious tradition, he gives to it whatever kind of assessment that will be completely comprehensive. Now, all of this means that in the quest for values, this is given a sense of value as a part of the working equipment of personality. The content of the sense of values, in large part, is a reflection not only of those things which come into our value sense from the outside, but our own reaction to these things. This begins to make for us what is the body of our own values. And this body of value we project into our world as personal goals on the basis of which our embodiment and the living expression. And if the expression of my life is contrary to this body of values, then there begins to emerge deep within my spirit a kind of cleft, a kind of conflict, which has a very devastating bearing upon my whole outlook for everything that I do and everything that I see. Everything that I think now becomes distorted because what I have garnered as of value and of supreme value to me on the basis of which the meaning of my own life and the meaning of life are defined, when my expression of my life is not the for instance of this value counted, then the cleft causes me either to give up the value content and to become agnostic with reference to my own sense of values or to be loaded with the kind of guilt that can only be absolved and absolved-- from which I can only be absolved when I bring my life once again into harmony with my own sense of values. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now, if I do this, I will discover that the areas in my life in which I can be dependent upon, the areas of my life that I feel I can back with my life are only those areas in which I am being true to my priority of values. Pitts Theology Library Emory University So if, for instance, I do something that, as anyone observes it is a very wonderful thing, a very good way, and I'm congratulated because of its quality, but if this thing that I do is not true to the sense of values which I have embraced in terms of my own priorities, then it doesn't matter how loud the plaudits are, deep within myself, I know that the thing that is truest to me, I have betrayed. And if I have betrayed it, then all the felicitations deepen my alarm. So I must then find something that contains my value in the same way that I contain the values of my world. And it is the insight of religion that this is God. So that just as the expression of my life finds its guarantor in the integrity with which I embody that which I have embraced as of most value to me. So beyond my values, in all of their own integrities, there is a guarantor of value. And if somehow in my own religious experience I am able to true my values, my meanings by what seems to me to be God's meaning then I can find forgiveness. that he had there even my truest values have been clouded over by my own unwillingness to expose them to Him in the same way that I have been unwilling to expose my life to the judgment of my own personal values. So the quest for values is a very fragile but persistent quest, and where there is no such strength and resource in the personality to honor such a quest even in its simplest levels, then for such a person, life has no meaning and the continuation of life, no significance. And if that is a man's predicament, he could wish that he had never been born. There is no light by which our steps are guided that is not, first of all, made radiant within our own lives. Teach us, our Father, how we may be true to the little light that we have, how our steps may be guided by the glow that we can claim as our own, lest we spend our years stumbling through the darkness, and this, oh, God, our spirits cannot abide. [ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Amen. Amen. 5 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-014_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (III): The Quest for Values, 1962 Feb 18 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 394-014_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-02-18 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 For Thurman, the quest for value cannot be distinguished from the human experience of meaning. He suggests that ideas regarding value are not created in isolation within the mind, but they are “indigenous to the very life of personality.” The content of values largely reflects our communities of meaning and when one begins to develop a personal way of assessing them through her own experiences, she arrives at what Thurman terms a “priority of value.” This means that individual knowledge of values must eventually come into an alignment of integrity with those of one’s world to arrive at a satisfying sense of self. In monotheistic religion, this is manifest in the awareness 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 3: The Quest for Values, 1962 February 18 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey inner light lostness meaning value https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/52372051c00687df2e4c535b94634ba3.pdf 016283da25e0f32043b7e3ef0a481385 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-014_B.mp3 [INAUDIBLE] Pitts Theology Library Emory University To bring to a point of focus all of the fragmentation and divisiveness of our lives. We ask thee to draw upon thy long experience with thy children. And out of this special wisdom and understanding. And to interpret the words which we say to thee in our prayer. We are overwhelmed by our great inability somehow to manage the imperfections of life. The imperfections of our own private lives. The clear insight which suddenly becomes dim. And often disappears at the moment when we were sure that we could act upon it. And we don't know how to assess this-- the good deed which we expressed. And which, as it leaves us, wings on its way, to fulfill itself in another's life, in another's need. And as we watch, we are horrified at the way in which something goes wrong. And the good deed is not a good deed in the way that it works. And we are thrown back upon ourselves. We don't know how to manage the imperfections of own lives. The imperfections of so many expressions of our lives. We have brooded over nature. We have understood here and there some of its inner mandates. And we have been able to translate these mandates into expressions of machinery and objects. And we have learned how to operate these machines, and to make these objects created out of our insight. Expressions of our intent. We've made these things into servants to obey our minds and our wills. And then, suddenly, we are faced with radical, and quick, and devastating breakdowns. And before the horrified eyes of the world, 95 people who are full of life and hope, riding on their dreams into the future, comfortable in one of these expressions that we have created out of our understanding of nature, something goes wrong. We do not know what. And there's death and destruction. We don't know how to manage the imperfections of our lives. And now we are waiting for a faithful moment, when once again, we ourselves as a nation will begin learning how-- with more finesse and accuracy-- to kill, to destroy. And we feel, some of us, that the only way by which we can survive is to do this. Some are sure that this is but to hasten the end of the age. How to manage the imperfections of our minds and our spirits, our thoughts, even our intents? Oh, God, we don't know how. We don't know how. We don't know how. Take all the cry of our anguish, all the sin, brokenness of our faltering selves. You hold them with such sureness that we may learn of thee. Drop thy still dues of quietness. 'Til all our striving ceases. Take from our souls the strain and stress. And let our holy lives confess the beauty of thy peace. Thy peace. [ORGAN PLAYING] 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu The request for truth. I'll do a rather short paragraph from Tolstoy. "But the old outlived public opinion. To make way for that which is new and living, it is necessary that men will recognize the new requirements of life should speak of them openly. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Yet the man who recognized these new requirements, one for the sake of one thing, another for the sake of something else, not merely refrain from speaking openly of them, but in word and deed maintain what is in direct opposition to these requirements. Only the truth, and the free expression of it, can establish that new public opinion, which will change the out-of-date and pernicious order of life. And yet, far from freely speaking the truth, we know we often even directly speak what we regard as false. The only free man would not rely on that which has not strength, and is never free an external power. But would believe in what is always powerful, and free in truth, and the expression of it. If only man were bolder and clearly speak out the truth that has already been revealed to them. Of the brotherhood of all nations, for instance, and the commonality of exclusive devotion to one's own nation. The dead false public opinion upon which all the power of government and all the evil produced by them rest would drop off of itself like dried skin. And make way for the new living public opinion, which only awaits that dropping off of the old husk that has confined it, in order to assert its claim openly and with authority, and to establish new forms of life that are in harmony with the conscience of man." In the humanness that are [INAUDIBLE], I want to establish the line, along which my own thinking moves with regard to this particular aspect of our quests. The quest for truth in a sense may be regarded as the essence of all the quests. But in a very particular sense, I'm thinking of a man's experience of truth as being something more than what he is able to understand at a particular moment in time. Understand with his mind, and thinking of the mind now in terms of formal thought. Formal intellection. Thinking of the mind as the vehicle for reflective thinking. There is a sense, of course, in which a man who understands something with his mind is sure that this is his understanding of the truth. Always, you see, man's understanding is fragmentary. It is always limited by the ends which he is seeking. It is limited by the conditions of his search. It is limited by how he interprets the significance of the particular moment in which he is living, and how he himself relates to that moment as a person. But the experience of truth, the fragmentary fulfillment of the quest, seems to obtain when a man's personal sense of reality-- and in thinking about this, I tried to find a way to talk about it without using the word "reality," but I don't know how to do it in any other way. Now to go back. His personal sense of reality. When this personal sense of reality seems in a moment, or in a particular relationship, or experience, to become a part of an enlarging reality. This is to experience truth. Now let me see that again. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu When his personal sense of reality seems to him to become a part of an enlarging sense of reality, he experiences truth. And this is more than what happens to the mind. And I want to illustrate this in three ways. And that will be all that I'll have time to do it, even if time for that. The first is taken from Tolstoy. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Tolstoy was interested in-- as an idea-- of the mind now. He was interested in the illogic and the immorality of corporal punishment. He felt that the state did not have the right to take human life, even though it was acting on behalf of established law, and established practice. And much of his writing about this-- he dealt in terms of logic. He made the case for it. And then one day when he was visiting in Paris, and he stood in the public square, and he saw a man being beheaded by the guillotine. And as the man's head was severed from his body and it fell into the wicker basket, now, Tolstoy says, that I knew at a level far deeper than reflective thought that this kind of behavior was evil. When my personal reality becomes a part of an enlarging reality, which gives to me at my [INAUDIBLE] a sense of being a part of this enlarging reality. This is the experience of truth. And now, the illustration. Last Tuesday afternoon when I was in Atlanta, Georgia, I talked with a 17 or 18-year-old girl who had become as a freshman involved in the first group of sit-in persons who were making a mass attack on the lunch counters. And as she talked to me about herself and about what she had been doing, and she tried to assess what had been going on in her as a person, she had this to say. And gave this illustration. She said I entered into this movement, as she called it, entered into this student movement as a freshman. And it was an idea that appealed to me. And I related to it in terms of the kind of sense that it made to my mind. And I was a part of all of the planning and the details of the campaign, and was in all of this. And it had a certain kind of reality for me. But she said, it did not become truth for until standing in the Wal-- whatever the drug-- Wal-Walgreens. Thank you. Standing at the Walgreens counter when all of the counters had been closed because of this disturbance. And then down near the end, I noticed, she said, out of the corner of my eye that some people were being let in at a certain point so that they could get to the seats before we could get over and occupy any. And I moved from where I was and went around there to stand in the gate, as it were. And a man came up to me in plain clothes, and he said, if you do not move I will arrest you. And I said, let me see your badge. So this was a part of the logic. And he opened his coat and flashed his badge. And she said, oh, but that's not a Fulton County badge. And you have no jurisdiction over me so I'm not going to move, she said. And whereupon he took her by the arm, and she said his fingernails were rather long. And as I turned my arm they dug into my arm. And there was a little blood. And then he swung me 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu around, and I fell over against the counter. And when my back hit the counter, I, with all of me now, saw and felt the truth of what I was doing. Pitts Theology Library Emory University It had nothing to do with the possibility even of social change. It had nothing to do with anything other than the Deep inner something in me, now became a part of on enlarged meaning. And what I had been thinking with my mind, now I experienced. No. One other. In 1935, when it was my privilege, along with Mrs. Thurman and one other person, to sit down and have about a four-hour conversation with Mahatma Gandhi, and all the time had been spent with his asking many, many questions about America, about American education, about negro education, about religion, about the church, all kinds of things. And then, suddenly it seems as if all the time was gone, and we had to go back to get our train. And then he said, maybe you'd like to ask-- each one of wants some questions, since I've taken all the time asking all the questions. And one question that was asked of him was this. Why did your movement fail of its objective, namely to bring freedom to the Indian nation-- freedom from the British? And he said, always my one and my sole aim has been the quest for truth. And to act on the truth that I sense, and feel, and see. And it came to me that a creative ethical ideal such as ahimsa could not be supported by people who merely saw it as an idea, or merely as a technique. Because it had to be totally supported. And this required a kind of vitality. And when the vitality was not available, then the ideal itself began to splinter. And all forms of violences broke out. So, he said, I felt that I needed to withdraw them from the political arena. And devote my mind, and the totality of my resources to addressing all of my energies on behalf of truth, to the question of the viability of the masses of the people. And the first thing I discovered in doing this was that the masses of the people did not have the kind of vitality that would enable them to become totally involved in this kind of ethical commitment because they were hungry. And then he talked statistically about the food, and the hunger, and so forth. So he felt that I must do something about that. And this, he said, is why the resurrection of the spinning wheel. If I could put within the reach of the simplest villager a little vehicle, by means of which he could establish even a temporary and limited windbreak, behind which there would be some leisure, and some time, and some ability to get a little more food to eat. So that he would not have to contemplate the fact that all of his life he might live until his death without ever one time, in all the sweep of his years, have the satisfaction of a full stomach just once before he died. And then the second thing that I discovered was that there was a relationship between this lack of vitality, and what we called a sense of self-respect. A sense of being a person, being whole in one's own sight. He said, this sense of self-respect-- and then he looked at me. You know how 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu you-- when someone is talking to you and suddenly they see what you're thinking, and catch you red-handed? Well, this is what he did. Pitts Theology Library Emory University He said, their loss of self-respect was not due to what you're thinking, he said. I said, how do you know what I'm thinking? He said, you were thinking that the loss of self-respect were due to the fact that they had been conquered by the British and the British were here. And then I broke out into a typical laugh, because he did catch me. That's what I was thinking. He said, oh no. Not that. But he said the loss of self-respect is because of the presence of untouchability in Hinduism. For he said, if you were talking about something in Christianity that was negative you would say that this had grown up as something on the outside of Christianity. But when Christians are talking about untouchability in Hinduism they say this is germane to the genius of Hinduism. But it isn't. He said, I felt that we would have to purge ourselves of this. Because this untouchability dammed up all of the, as it were, the spiritual juices of the person. So they could not flow and purify, and make new and charge with energy, and impetus, and insight, and courage, and wisdom. So I did two things about it. The first thing I did was to adopt an untouchable child into my family. And I am a caste Hindu. And when I adopted this untouchable child in my family this announced to all caste Hindus, this is what I mean by the truth that I'm talking. And the second thing that I did, he said, was to change the name. And here was one of the great strokes of spiritual genius. To change the name from untouchables, from shudras, from outcasts, to harijans. And the word "harijan" means "Child of God." Now, he said, I felt that if I could make all caste Hindus-- every time they referred, thought, felt an untouchable, they would not think of him as an outcast or as an untouchable, but think of him as a child of God. There will come a time when this would create the kind of inner moral chaos that could not be resolved until there was a revolution in the private and personal attitude towards the untouchable. And when these things began to work in me, he said, the meaning of the doctrine became total. Total. And I felt that the personal loyalty that I had been experiencing all along to truth, to God, became one now, with an enlarging sense of truth and God. The quest for truth is fulfilled even in its most insignificant dimension. When the little personal reality, which I am totally aware, becomes a part of an enlarging reality. So that the [INAUDIBLE] in me suddenly becomes the [INAUDIBLE] in existence. In existence. Therefore, the master says, you shall experience the truth. And the truth-- truth-- will make you free. Free. Free. Free. Once again, our Father, we have not done it. But we have tried to lay bare before thee the most honest stirring of the mind and the heart. Thou will not despise the fruits of our offering. Oh, God of Gods. God, our Father. [CHOIR SINGING] 5 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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 Internal Notes Notes for project team So that the [INAUDIBLE] in me suddenly becomes the [INAUDIBLE] >> [INAUDIBLE]= "root" - TR The transcript has been updated on 3Play. - SR, 4/23/2019 Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-014_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (IV): The Quest for Truth, 1962 Mar 4 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 394-014_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-03-04 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 When the sense of personal reality becomes part of an enlarging reality, one encounters truth. The quest for truth may be the essence of all quests, Thurman notes. Such striving is a sole aim and may not always produce or correlate with social change. It is more than a technique. The pursuit of what is spiritually true compels something within the individual to participate in a broader meaning. When one’s inner “root” is absorbed into and becomes the “root” in existence, Thurman says, the truth of one’s being embedded within an unrestricted reality makes the experience of freedom possible. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 4: The Quest for Truth, 1962 March 4 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey ahisma Ghandi reality Tolstoy true truth https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/234c6d532216fd20481dd59fee3146de.pdf 38f00f2ba535a65bc43b3dd9f1a93103 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-015_A.mp3 Pitts Theology Library Emory University The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for His namesake. Yea, though I want through the valley of the shadow of death, I will hear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointeth my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Our Father who art in heaven hollow be Thy name. Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever, and ever, and ever, and ever. I have read that, due to certain circumstances over which there is no control, the 7:00 discussion group will not be held this evening. As a background, well, for our thinking together on the quest for stability, may I read several lines from a selection written in 1947 by a Donald Babcock as it appeared in The New Yorker? "Now we are ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. Nay, it isn't a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swell. He isn't cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is part of it. He looks a bit like a mandarin or the lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree, but he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what a philosopher must have. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably, he doesn't know how large the ocean is, and neither do you, but he realizes it. And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity, which it is. That is religion, and the duck has it. He has made himself part of the boundless by easing himself into it, the boundless, just where it, the boundless, touches him." The people were more like this duck than we are. They took life as it presented itself and ran it up in spires of gothic. They crossed few oceans, but they filled it on the sea of time. And a cat is more like this duck than we are. We can radio to the moon and get back a pip for an answer, but a cat can make a hearth rug a haven in the infinite or launch four kitties into life in a crackerbox by the furnace, pouring with price because he has tuned in on cosmic waves. I like the little duck. He doesn't know much, but he has religion. The quest for stability-- a person may be said to have stability when he seems, to himself, to possess that which to him is most significant and most [? grateful. ?] A person who possesses what, to him, is most significant and [? grateful ?] has personal stability. Now when a person is 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu cut off from that, which to him, is most [? grateful ?] and most significant, he is rendered instable. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now if my own personal stability or that which is to me most significant, which thing I possess, is limited, is episodic, is dedicated to the insecurity of others, then even within the context of my stability I am fundamentally emotionally insecure. But if my own personal stability is somehow rooted and grounded in the stability of history, of my age not chronologically, or life itself, then-and it always comes back to something that is within, doesn't it? as the old, the Hindu, medieval, mystic writes about it, I do say that a fish in the water in the water is blessed be. Do you seek the real or the true-- go home, you will, from Dunamis to Mathura. If you have not found your own soul-- your own soul-- the Lord is unreal to you. And as a second suggestion, personal stability is possible when the individual is able to sense to feel his way into other people's needs, other people's predicaments, other people's issues-- thinking of issues in a comprehensive sense, not in a conceptual sense. The line that apostle Paul uses-- [INAUDIBLE] this idea-- my prayer to God is that your love may grow more and more rich in knowledge and in all manner of insight that you may have a feel for what is vital-- that you may be transparent and do no harm to anyone-- your life covered with that harvest of righteousness that Jesus produces to the praise and the glory of God. This, this, dimension of your personality should develop that you sense the other person, and thereby you become Asherah in more and more significant experiences of unity-- which experiences of unity become more and more compelling for you than the things that separate you from each other. This, this, ability to sense the feeling, the predicament, the need of another person, and to lift that relatedness-- that sense of relatedness-- become your tutor in developing all kinds of practical relations by which, at the level of wake-- of fortune-- you multiple the content, so that what you experience in the traffic of your relatedness is identical with that which you sense in this overtone from the other person's personality. It is a tremendous thing. It is this subtle understanding of what has involved here that causes men who wish to dominate and to control their fellow-- to see to it, very skillfully, that they be given more opportunity to develop this overtone relation, and thereby feel under more compulsion to multiply the context-- the strength of the control of one mind over many minds is inherent of the fact of the insulation that the controlled minds feel from all other minds, so that the only outlet of livingness for the controlled minds is the controller of the mind. For that when you see wrongs, whether they are [? wrongs ?] of faith-- whether they are wrongs of diet, whether they are wrongs of concept or of certain, set [? delineated ?] patterns-- whoever you see [? ruled, ?] dividing insulating the people, know that those who stand either inside the walls or outside of the wall are involved in that which fundamentally makes for unstability, because if I am free to multiply experiences of unity with people tutored by this sense of their meaning, then there is no wall of whatever nation cannot abide. Now praise them, I must have personal morale if I am to be stable, and morale means belief in one's cause. I must believe in my enterprise. It may not be the best one. It may not be altogether a good one. I don't know. I won't pass a judgment at this point, but I must believe in my enterprise. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu I must affirm my feeling, and then second, I must relate to my fellows whether they are those of my family, those of my classmates, of my parents, of my friends, whoever they may be, I must relate to them most of all in times of feeling my way into their predicament, so that as I look steadily into their faces finally I'll see my own face. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And if I keep looking, I see God's face, so that then which becomes for me the personal grounds of my own stability, namely that my life meets the approval of the ultimate-- the approval of God, as Jesus expressed it-- I heard it expressed to him, thou art My son, My beloved. In thee, I am well pleased the ultimate sanction. The ultimate sanction of my life becomes real with the discovery that I make about the meaning of my life in communion, and therefor the closer I become committed to the God of my experience-- the more bound I become to you and your experience. One feeds the other, and therefor at last I can find more stability for myself. That is built upon your instability. For better or for worse, at last I can not appear before God if your hand is not in my hands. This is the ultimate ground of my stability. Dropped by still dews of quietness, till all striving cease, take, from our souls, the strain and the stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of Thy peace. Walk beside us, our God, our Father, and be in us and amongst us as we go forth from this place with our hopes renewed and our purposes were fully defined that tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow we may do that, which is pleasing, in Thy sight, o God, our Father. 3 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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 Internal Notes Notes for project team [?grateful?] = "worth-ful" Not sure what [?delineated?] is - GL 5/14/19 Audio with Transcription <iframe width="100%" height="820" frameborder="0" src="/files/players/394-015_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (V): The Quest for Stability, 1962 Mar 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 394-015_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-03-11 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> Description An account of the resource In this brief lecture, Thurman addresses the need for stability. The sense of stability can be experienced when a person possesses what is most “significant and worth-full” to them. One must have morale to be stable, belief in one’s cause, faith in the enterprise to which one has committed, affirm these feelings, and finally, relate to the community. Stability is peace and security within with the vast universe beyond. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 5: The Quest for Stability, 1962 March 11 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey boundless security stability https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/c9ad061d59211df18fdc148d42dec6af.pdf 63b5e394963152b6bd80cbc2f729cc14 PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-015_B.mp3 [HYMNAL MUSIC] [SINGING] Pitts Theology Library Emory University [INAUDIBLE] And the words which we would utter before Thee seem so empty and baron of what we feel and sense, that we would delight our Spirits by being silent in Thy presence. We remember so many things as we wait in Thy presence. The good which we achieved when we were not really intent upon the doing of the good deed. And the good that we did not achieve when we were so intent upon the quality of the deed that we were sure of its effect and its integrity. We remember these things as we wait. We remember the dreams that we have had at various stages in our lives. Some we followed for a season and then abandoned. Some others we followed until we discovered that they had abandoned us. Now, as we wait in Thy presence, we wonder about them. We say to our Spirits, to see if there is, still lurking within the unfulfilled reaches of our minds and aspirations, some goal to which we may respond that will bring into, even these days that are upon us, the strength and the fullness and the vitality which, up and down the years, we have sought. We would not close our minds or our imaginations, our Father, to the concerns that are on the periphery of our minds because our responsibilities for them seem so remote. The concerns for disarmament. And, Father, settling, if happily a way may be found, of the long, bloody tunnel through which France and Algiers have fought in the darkness. If we were wise enough, our Father, we would give to our concern, as we place it before Thee, what seems to us to be the right and the proper thing, about which Thou shouldest concern Thyself on our behalf. But before the thoughts take shape in our minds, all that they do not say, all that they cannot grasp, all that they cannot mean, is so terribly clear to us as we wait, that the thoughts die aborning. And we can only trust that there is in Thy great heart the concern for our well-being, that will steady us through the days and the nights and the journeyings of Thy children on this planet. And what we'll hope for all Thy children, very quietly we seek for ourselves. We do long so much to be better than we are. To be kinder than we have ever been able to manage. To love. To love, oh God. To love. [HYMNAL MUSIC] As a background for our continuation of our discussion on the quest of the human spirit, and dealing particularly with the quest for authority, I want to read the great watershed poem that deals with the critical shift and the whole balance of authority in our society. It's the poem written by Matthew Arnold. It's familiar to most of you, I'm sure. 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu "The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full. The moon lies fair upon the straits. On the French coast, the light gleams and is gone. The cliffs of England stand glimmering and vast out in the tranquil bay. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Come to the window, sweet is the night air. Only, from the long line of spray where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, listen. You hear the grating roar of pebbles, which the waves draw back and fling at their return, up the high strand, begin and cease, and then again begin. With tremulous cadence slow, and bring the eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles, long ago, heard it on the Aegean, and it brought into his mind the turbid ebb and flow of human misery. We find also in the sound a thought, hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith was once too at the full. And round earth's shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar retreating, to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and the naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true to one another. For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. And we are here, as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night." But suppose, even there, I'm mistaken. The quest for authority is as old as man's life on this planet. Our times are troubled times, because it seems as if there is a breakdown in external authority. Those points of referral on the horizon that give to the personal and the collective enterprise its sense of direction, its sense of goal, its sense of purpose. Those points that remain fixed, despite all of the fluctuation of the private life. Those points that seem to be steady because they are beyond the struggle and beyond the conflict, beyond the ebb and flow, beyond the disintegration and the integration. They stand unmoved, like fixed stars. And these we do not see now. And we aren't sure whether we do not see them because they are not there or because of the clouds over our way. The heavy mist that hangs. But meanwhile, we wander, often in darkness. And the quest for authority, at a time when external authorities seem to be breaking down all around us, becomes even more acute. So I want to think a little while with you about its meaning. Well, I want to think with you a little. In the first place, the word itself is a very intriguing word. It's rooted in a word that means self-moving, self-propelling, self-contained, self-starter. And this quality that is inherent in the root of the word has persisted in the use that the word has served in its experience with mankind. So when we think of authority, we think of that which is, in some sense, not merely ultimate, but that, beyond which, there isn't anything but itself. So that an authority means something that we cannot go beyond, so we settle for it and relate to it. But this isn't all. Authority works out in another dimension, for it suggests the limitations that we must honor as we go away from the authority. The authority not only determines how far to us itself that we must move, but what the limitations of our movement away from it must be, so that always there 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu is an element in authority which says, to use the words of the prophet, thus says the Lord. You can't go any further than this or this or this or this. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, man's experience as a human animal is involved in this, because there is a kind of built-in authority in the organism which says, to my little finger, thus far can you go and no further. Or which says to my foot, you can grow this far or this far or this far, and then-- So that man's experience with authority is so intimate that it is a part of the very structure, not only of his mind but of his orientation to all the life around him. Now, why then do we need it, even though we have it built in in this way? Why do we need it? Because I must have some haven. Now, you may not think this. Let me phrase it another way. A man must have some haven against the desolation of absolute autonomy. Now, think about that. I can't abide the baroness of just being only, primarily, essentially, absolutely responsible to me, as if there is nothing else. This I cannot stand, because it takes all of the respiry, all of the oxygen, out of the air so that my soul has no respiration. I need to have somebody in my corner. Some reinforcement. Something that is, for me, so crucially, and other than self-reference, that, by it, I am slowly able to come into a meaning with some feeling of comfort and assurance. For one of the persistent problems which we have in our adventure in life is we have no way by which we can guarantee ourselves against being mistaken, against deception, against selfdeception. So that the role of authority, again and again, is to set up, for the individual, something against which he can put all of the pressure of his chaos and confusion, and the thing will not give. And if it holds, as in his chaos he presses against it, the holding will structure his chaos and give meaning and purpose to his life. I was reading, some years ago in some ladies' magazine, about a psychologist. I think he was a psychologist. Well, it sounds like it anyway. He was writing about the rearing of children. And he was making a case what he called the fishwife. The fishwife. At any rate, the mother who screamed at her recalcitrant boy when he was raving like his father. Now, he contrasted this kind of behavior with the behavior of the quiet mother who does not ever register, so that the little child is like putting his hand in a big pan of dough. It just sinks. So the child doesn't know where he is. He can't get any bearing because he has to be found in order to find, you see? And if there is no one who says no, and the no holds, then there is no way by which the little life can get meaning. I was talking, the summer before last, when I was in San Francisco, I was talking with a young high school girl. She was a senior high school girl. And she said, I don't know where I am. Because, she said, Mother and Daddy let me do anything I want to do, whenever I want to do it. If I want to go out, I go out. And I come in when I come in. If one of them, just once, would say no, just once, then I would be able to find out where I'm located. Now, the role of authority has to push this just a little further. Has been expressed in our society. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu First, you see, I'm insisting that it is something that is built in. As a part of our total heritage, it's a part of being a living thing. This unconscious, perhaps, recognition of some automatic character to life. This is what I'm getting at. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Now, before the external form that it has taken, is in terms of two institutions, two aspects of life. Society, with all of its conventions, its taboos, its definitions of codes, all of its legalistic manifestations. And it is very interesting, isn't it? How, in our quest for authority, we feel that we are involved always in an effort to overthrow the authority, and at the same time, to demand that the authority be authority. It is like having a discussion group with some college students, not all of them, but with some. And they keep pushing you and trying to make you take a stand on the side of a convention that they are out to destroy. And then, when you refuse to do this, and you don't seem to take any kind of stand, then they want you to give them the authoritative statement. They want to hold you to the necessity of speaking with authority in order that they may have the privilege of denouncing this. And in their denunciation, however, there is always behind it a wistfulness. And if you wait long enough, you will see that something else has been put in its place because we are naked without authority. And all we do is to tear down one authority, because we have to, in our growth and development. And then, with all the agony and all the blundering and all the heartache, we build another one. The throne cannot be empty. Now, the other authority is in religion. Religion. And here, in our society, it was a long time. As a matter of fact, not until almost the first decade in the 18th century, before they occurred in western thought, at any rate. Any notion that the individual had responsibility-- How do I say this? That he had individual responsibility, or personal responsibility, for his life. Now, there must be some kind of custodian for the conscience. There must be some resting place, some altar upon which the human spirit may lay bear itself with complete and utter exposure, and feel, at the same time, that it will not be violated. And this is what religion has been doing. But it can't rest there. It has to say something about how a man behaves in the light of what he experienced when he laid himself bare before the altar. So you get creeds and dogma and theologies. And as long as men are convinced that they fulfill themselves and find meaning for their lives when they are obedient, then the authority has no problem. The authority begins to disintegrate, to see it externally, through the medium of the body and its deprivation. Will the heart learn, once again, to obey without question? Now, in Christianity, the role of authority, in the Roman Catholic church, for instance, is in the institution itself. And this is a very logical thing. Because if the Holy Book is a holy book because of the decision of the church, then perhaps the authority should be in the church rather than in the book. But in Protestantism, the authority is in the book. And this always involves such a rich variety of meaning as to what the book says, and what the book means by what it says. But the logic of 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Protestantism would be a wide variety of authorities, all of which are focused in the one single authority of the book. But the time is coming now up and is upon us that there aren't enough answers in these authorities to meet the critical issues of our time. We have to do something, we must find something within ourselves. Pitts Theology Library Emory University It's like when I was in second year high school. For years, since I was a little boy, I prayed two prayers at night and one prayer in the morning. At night I prayed the Lord's Prayer, and I prayed, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." Each night I prayed this. And I went to second year high school with these two prayers. In the morning, just the Lord's Prayer. And then I began studying bi-- what is it, bi-- well, some equation in algebra. I can't think of the name for it. It gave me a lot of trouble because I had no particular either feeling or sympathy or understanding or anything else for mathematics. I just didn't have it. And I found that my situation was so desperate that there wasn't enough in these two prayers, with all of their authority, to cover the extenuating circumstance with which I was wrestling. So I found that, after I had finished the Lord's Prayer and said "Now I lay me down to sleep," then I talked about a concern of mine which was not envisioned by these. And little by little, a sense of authority in my personal religious experience in prayer began to transcend the response to a kind of external authority that had been mine with reference to these two prayers I had committed to memory. And that I prayed occasionally, but not always. But I said them always. Now, it seems to me then that our responsibility, bearing in mind that the role, the function, is not to get rid of authority, but to see if we cannot find ways by which we can orient our own lives to dreams and goals and purposes, that are here and there, in strong ways, and sometimes in weak ways, but goals and purposes that are inherent in certain institutions that are external to us. And in relation to the only way we will have a sense of participating in a collective destiny that includes more and more of all mankind, and the degree to which, in the little world where we live and function and behave, we are obedient to the authority of the vision which we see and in which we share. So that, in the living of our lives in the simplest things that we do, we will be casting our vote for the thing which, to us, represents the way life, at its best and most significant, not only can be but must be. And if I do this, it may be all the bells will ring, and all the sons of God will shout for joy. And I didn't know that a little deed of a little person could make so vast and so cosmic a difference in the meaning and the destiny of life. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou annointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. [HYMNAL MUSIC] (SINGING) Amen. Amen. 5 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-015_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (VI): The Quest for Authority, 1962 Mar 18 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 394-015_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-03-18 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 Authority is more than a final limit. It also the persisting substance of limitations that remain with us after withdrawing from the presence of power. For Thurman, this sense of abiding authority is summed up in the biblical words “thus says the Lord.” We are “naked without authority,” he argues. There must be authority wherein one can lay oneself bare and yet not feel violated. Thurman believes religion accomplishes this. In the act of submitting to a higher reference point, human beings are rescued from the emptiness of absolute autonomy and achieve a sense of participating in a collective destiny. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 6: The Quest for Authority, 1962 March 18 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey assurance authority limit location responsibility self-deception https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/7355edecab0edc6cc8e0b147d527222d.pdf fed3d26499b3611ea65553a1037b3e7d PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-016_A.mp3 [HYMNAL MUSIC] [SINGING] Pitts Theology Library Emory University It is our faith and our confidence, our Father, that Thou dost not become weary because always, before Thee, we present the same sorry spectacle. It is our trust that Thou does not get tired of us, but that always Thou dost remain constant, even with all the things in us that fluctuate. That Thou dost remain true, even when we take refuge in falsehood and error. That Thou dost remain kind and gracious when our hearts are hard and callous. And that Thy scrutiny and Thy judgment holds, despite all of our whimpering and self-pity and shame. And it is so good to have this kind of assurance. And to know that, as we move into the days and the hours that are still left to us, that we are not alone, but that we are not only comforted but straightened by Thy brooding presence. We would ask forgiveness for our sins, but for so much that is sinful in us, we have no awareness. We would seek to offer to Thee the salutation of our spirits and our minds if we can tear ourselves away from the preoccupation with our own concerns and our own anxieties and our own little lives and their meaning. We would give to Thee the nerve center of our consents. If for one swirling moment we could trust Thee to do with us what our lives can stand. Oh God, our Father, take all this chaos and confusion and disorder of our minds and spirits and hold them so completely in Thy grasp. And that the unpure thing will become pure and the crooked thing straight. And the crass and hard thing tender and gentle with Thy Spirit. And beyond this, we have no strength to see and no vision to comprehend. But we trust Thy trust and abide. Oh God, we abide. [HYMNAL MUSIC] Continuing our series on the quest of the human spirit, this morning we are thinking together about the quest for integrity. "I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him down the arches of the years. I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind. And in the midst of tears, I hid from him and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot, precipitated, adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears. From those strong feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy, they beat, and a voice beat more instant than the feet. All things betray thee who betrayest me. Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke. My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me and smitten me to my knee. I am defenseless, utterly. I slept, methinks, and woke, and slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep. In the rash lustihead of my own powers, I shook the pillaring hours and pulled my life upon me. Grimed with smears, I stand amid the dust of the mounded years. My 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, have puffed and burst as sunstarts on a stream." Pitts Theology Library Emory University And then, from Job-- "Till I die, I will not put away mine integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let go. My heart shall not reproach me as long as I live. I was a father to the needy. And the cause of him I knew not I searched out. I was eyes to the blind and feet was I to the lame. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy." "Till I die, I will not put mine integrity away from me." Every person has two views of himself, at least two views. There is a self-image, and this selfimage is made up of several things. Sometimes it is what I think other people think of me. Sometimes it is what I want other people to think of me. Sometimes it is what I think I ought to think of me. And sometimes it is what I think of me. One of these, two of these, three of these, several thrown into a kind of creative wholeness, this is the self-image. And I carry it around with me. I can't locate its origin all together at this point or that point, but I know that it is very real to me, and it is a part of what I call my self. Now, there is still another dimension of this, and that has to do with the facts concerning me. It has to do with what, in the light of my things, the raw materials, of my experience of me, my awareness of my fact, of the details of my fact. My consciousness of that which is literally true of me, literally factual. And very often there's a gulf, a hiatus, between this image and this body of fact. Now, it seems to me that integrity, integrity, is the experience that a person has when the image and the fact flow together as one creative synthesis and wholeness inside the man. When I am unanimous, with reference to the view and the clue, the view being the image, and the clue being the stuff of every day that I know the details about what I am and what I do. Now, the quest for integrity is the quest on the part of the human spirit to arrive at the kind of inner unanimity that enables the human spirit to take a stand, which is as complete and as whole within as it is substantial and positive in its outward manifestation. Now, one of the forms that this takes then is the necessity for trying to find something, something outside of yourself, that is capable of making possible your response to it in terms of wholeness and inner unity. Something that calls you to an inner, total, integrated, whole registration. And one of the obvious places we would expect to find that is in our dealing with the world of nature all around us. I remember the sensations that I had as I sat in front of my television watching the colonel and his thing. And I felt-- I felt suddenly so-- so lonely. And I felt so sorry for man in this vastness. And I said, now, Uranus and Neptune and Mars, and all those other nameless ones, they don't know anything about Glenn. They don't know anything about this little something that he is in. And if somehow the planets could have shouted at him. If somehow all of that vastness of space would have organized itself and asserted itself so that Glenn, in his little shell, could stand up against it. But they went on about their business. Now, I sometimes feel this way about the circumstances of life. We are trying to find, you see, the thing that we can-- how do I say this? We are trying to find the thing that we can put 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu ourselves against, which, in the way that it pushes back, it pulls us into wholeness. This is what I'm trying to say. And circumstances do that for us sometimes. We animate them. Suffering does it. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And if you could ever decide, you see, that the suffering is real and after you. If you can decide that the suffering is really on your trail, searching you out, hounding you, then this is something that you can turn around and face and feel yourself integrated and coming into a sense of utter wholeness within to stand against this thing that is opposing you, not opposing life, but opposing you. Let me read you something that expresses what I'm talking about. In the poem, Henley, there is this conversation that he has with circumstances, and he decides the circumstances are really after him. And if he can feel that way, then he can say that-- "In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have neither winced nor cried aloud. Amidst the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed. It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate." And circumstances can't hear him. Now, this is the truer view of it, as someone has expressed it. "I often groan and yelp aloud, ducking the wallopings of chance. My bloody head is often bowed in the fell clutch of circumstance. I have, as far as I can see, a very conquerable soul. Out of the night that covers me, I howl with grievous mean and dole. I'm full of apprehensive fears. I'm nervous, lame, and short of breath. The looming menace of the years has gotten me frightened half to death. The man who rises up to state in words of hot poetic fire, that he is master of his fate, is nothing but a simple liar. No man is captain of his soul, as all men know who strive and suffer. And Mr. Henley, on the whole, is just a brave, pathetic bluffer." But you see, this is a part of the great tragedy of man. If I felt that, in the estimate of the universe, I rented its private violence, then this would provide for me a basis for answering the searching question of integrity. What is it after all that I ultimately amount to? And this is an answer that I must find. And I do it sometimes by pointing to the things that I create. I remember 25 years ago, I was talking to the president of my college in Atlanta. And as we walked across the campus, he stopped and looked out on the campus, and then he shook his head and walked on. And then I joined him, and I said, Mr. Hope, I don't understand. What had happened to you? He said, I was just looking at all the buildings that have been put on this campus since I became president, and I was tempted to feel that this is the measure of my self-estimate, and I know that isn't true. What we do is the clue sometimes. If I can register myself in a deed so that, to all comers and all generations, it can be said, I did it, just little me did it. But, of course, I didn't. Because there are so many other people who enter into anything that you do, some nameless, some named. There's so much luck, just plain luck, in the events that result in the deed that you are able to create. Things that are almost accidental. And we have no way by which we can assess the 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu meaning and the relevancy of those things that are incidental, that move into the rhythm of our function without regard to anything that we ourselves do. I want to find some radical test for my life. This is the clue, my clue, to my own integrity. If I can do this. If I can stand up and cast my vote and not be dogged by any minority opinion within me. Pitts Theology Library Emory University And this, after all, as it would seem, that this is what religion is insisting upon, isn't it? For it says, you see, that there is a radical test for man. That sooner or later, somewhere in the course of a man's pilgrimage, he has to turn and face what, for him, in that moment, is the ultimate judgment. What, for him, in that moment, is God. God. For it is only in the presence of an absolute judgment that I can define my meaning and know that even when I have been as completely and utterly of one in me, I have not met the demand. Oh, to have available that against which a man can throw all that he is, all that he thinks and feels, all that he can be, to throw it against it and not satisfy it. And again and again the man goes back, reassessing this little thing and that little thing. Combing out this flaw and that flaw. Trying to awaken this dimension of sensitiveness or that dimension of sensitiveness. Always trying to see if, through all the corridors of his being, through all the manifestations of his life, through all the words that he uses, all the things that he does and the things that he says, through all of this there will be moving always the same unanimous voting. "Till I die, I will not put my integrity away from me." And even though, living a thousand years, and a thousand years of failure and inadequacy and limitation, I will say, with Job, that always in me I know I'm looking for the unanimous vote. And I shall be able to cast it, if not before I die then out in the vast regions beyond the time and space limitations by which my life and its meaning are defined. I must cast my whole vote, somewhere, some time, somewhen. There is the same story, our Father. The same broken glances. Oh God, Thou wilt not despise but will redeem. [HYMNAL MUSIC] [SINGING] 4 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-016_A.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (VII): The Quest for Integrity, 1962 Mar 25 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 394-016_A Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-03-25 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 Integrity is the alignment of self-image with the facts, or, the truths concerning a person. It is the “creative synthesis and wholeness inside the man.” Such inner “unanimity within,” Thurman claims, allows a person to take a stand and possess humility. Never fooled by any single or biased opinion about oneself, one must turn to ultimate judgment – to God. Meaning can only be defined in the presence of sovereign critique. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 7: The Quest for Integrity, 1962 March 25 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey absolute judgment humility inner unity integrity self-image ultimate judgment https://thurman.pitts.emory.edu/files/original/d4ef9026cad37da40a893a8fd66e7601.pdf 179c2c4465a56821b5e74d09d265ed6a PDF Text Text Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu 394-016_B.mp3 [GENTLE MUSIC] Pitts Theology Library Emory University It is so very good, our Father, that we are privileged to be gathered into the silence during this waiting moment. It is very hard for us to be still in Thy presence. Our lives are so fragmented. And there are so many minor absolutes to which we give our strength and our energies that we are embarrased before Thee. Will Thou give out of the great stretches our strength and detachment and calm that gives birth to the dreams that Thou has plowed so lavishly upon us? Some insights that Thou tutor us in quiet and in silence, and in weeping. We seek forgiveness. But again and again, as we wait in the silence, we do not know for what, and perhaps, what we really seek is for an awareness of sin. And failure, shortcomings. Thus we spread this out before Thee. That noise. We would be better than we are. But as we wait in Thy presence, we are not sure that we want to be better than we are. There is so much reassurance in the comfort of the life which is ours. So much confidence has been built up in us and the familiar role, and the familiar style of our life. If, under the aegis of Thy Spirit, our lives were changed, we are afraid, our Father, of what may become of us. Work over us, and need us, do all the things that our spirits need. Not that we may be better than we are, our Father, but that we may more deeply desire to be better than we are. We would not spend all of our time in this waiting silence with the preoccupation, with our own needs and our own little lies. We would be mindful of those others to whom we are related by recollection and by devotion. We would remember those whose lives move in areas in which we are not aware and with which we are not familiar, whose names and whose language we do not speak or understand. The great vast desolation of Thy children. We would remember this even as we savor the essence of our own comfort and security. We would remember those men who stand at the strategic spots of power in the world, making decisions as if they were gods, and on whose decisions so much of the destiny of all Thy children rides with abandon. Oh, God of the human spirits, lead them not to the strength of their weaknesses, or the weaknesses of their strength. Bur brood over them, nudging them, tutoring them, urging them, threatening them with Thy love and Thy patience until, at last, they may find a way to seek Thy wisdom. [INAUDIBLE] require this. Till all our striving cease. Take from our souls the strain and stress. And let our ordered lives confess the beauty of Thy peace, oh, God, our Father, our Father. [ORGAN MUSIC PLAYING] 1 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of man without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always, there is the need of mooring, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give, the urge to be accountable to someone, to know that beyond the individual himself, there is an answer that must be given, cannot be denied. The deed a man performs must be weighed on a balance held by another's hand. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The very spirit of a man tends to panic from the desolation of going nameless up and down the streets of other minds, where no salutation greets and no friendly recognition makes secure. It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of man. Always, a way must be found for bringing into one's solitary place the settled look from another's face, for getting the quiet sanction of another's grace to undergird the meaning of the self. To be ignored, to be passed over, as of no account and of no meaning, is to be made into a faceless thing, not a man. It is better to be the complete victim of an anger unrestrained and a wrath which knows no bounds, to be torn asunder without mercy, or battered to a pulp by angry violence than to be passed over as if one were not. Here, at least, one is dealt with and countered, vanquished, or overwhelmed, but not ignored. It is a strange freedom to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds, where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own. The name marks the claim a man stakes against the world. It is the private banner under which he moves, which is his right, whatever else betide. The name is a man's watermark above which the tides can never rise. It is the thing he holds that keeps him in the wave when every light has failed and every marker has been destroyed. It is the rallying point around which a man gathers all that he means by himself. It is his announcement to life that he's present and accounted for and all his parts. To be made anonymous and to give to it the acquiescence of the heart is to live without life. And for such a one, even death is no dying. To be known, to be called by one's name is to find one's place and hold it against all the hordes of hell. This is to know one's value for oneself alone. It is to honor and act as one's very own. It is to live a life that is one's very own. It is the bow before an altar that is one's very own. It is to worship a God who is one's very own. It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of man and to act with no accounting, to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds, where no salutation greets and no sign is given to mark the place one calls one's own. We are continuing our discussion together on the quest of the human spirit. And this morning, we are thinking together about the quest for identity. It is a commonplace observation that the quest of the human spirit co-mingle and flow together, and separate and come together so that whenever any one of these fundamental quests is discussed, there is always present an overtone from some other dimension of reality with which the individual has to do. 2 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now the quest for identity really is a quest for the sense of self. It is the quest for the magic circle within which one stands in a kind of splendid and austere isolation and yet, at the same time, from within which he is able to relate to the world around him. Pitts Theology Library Emory University There are many reasons for what seems to be the breakdown of this sense of identity in modern life. You are familiar with these. And I need not to check them out for you, except to say that the struggle for selfhood, the struggle for persona, is perhaps one of the most critical struggles of the individual human spirit. You may be familiar with the story that Dr. Loomis relates in his little study on the self. The mother and her boy and her daughter came into a restaurant for a meal. And the waitress asked the mother for her order, and she gave it. She asked the daughter for her order, and she gave it. And then the waitress said to the boy, now young man, what will you have? And the mother said, oh, I always order for him. And the waitress said, but young man, what will you have? And the daughter said, well, if Mother is not with us, I always order for him, and so I'd be very glad to order for him. And the waitress said, but young man, what will you have? And then the little boy now began to gather his outlying regions and bring them into a point of focus. And he said, a hamburger. And she said, onions, relish, mustard, the works? And he said, onions, relish, mustard, the works. So she went back. And in a grave voice, she gave the mother's order and gave the daughter's order. And then with a little extra something, she said, one hamburger-- the works. And the little boy, in utter amazement, turned to his mother and said, Mother, she thinks I'm real. Now the quest for identity is a quest for a sense of self. And this is rooted initially in what seems to me to be a sense of one's own physical existence, one's own body. I remember babysitting with one of my friends. And we heard his little boy making a cry of some sort in the room. And we went in to see. And this little boy was-- oh, I don't know-- about that long. And he put his-- he had his big toe in his mouth. And he was just gumming his big toe and crying, because it hurt. He didn't know it was his toe. He had no sense of, well, of toe-ness-- no toe awareness, is what I'm trying to say. Now he had to become aware of the fact that his body was his body and that once this awareness becomes his private sense, he will never again let his body become the instrument of persons, of forces, that control without his assent. Now the sense of self is not only rooted in this sense of one's own body, one's own physical persona. But it is also rooted in what may be called the sense of one's own idiom-- one's own idiom, one's own flavor. This is the underside or the inside of every outside that you manifest. It is the unique tang which belongs to you. It is-- well, it is your idiom. I can't say it in a better way. 3 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu Now it is this idiom-- this sense of private flavor, this feeling, this awareness of the grain in your woods-- it is with this that you relate to the style of your society. And it is the degree to which this relatedness is worked out that your sense of self and sense of identity is enlarged and grows. Pitts Theology Library Emory University The social style of the family, of the group, of the community, of the nation, of the world-- and then, now and then, an individual is of sufficient vitality and vigor as a person that he is able to reject the social style of this group, of that group, of the other group as he identifies with the social style of an age that lived at some time in the past, or as he identifies with what seems to him to be an age that is yet to come. Now very often, one finds the most meaningful aspect of one's identity. And the degree to which this idiom-- this central thing that marks you, the you-ness of you-- the degree to which it seems to be a part of a lifestyle that in itself undertakes to give ultimate answers about the meaning of life and the meaning of existence. And this is why men find that ultimately they are able to relate to some dimension of religion with some measure of fulfillment and satisfaction, because when they are able to identify with a lifestyle that in itself interprets the meaning of things in terms that are absolute, then one is insulated against the frustrations that come from the shifting of lifestyles that deal with things that are less than the absolute. Now very often, as far as identifying with the religious lifestyle is concerned, there are radical changes and shifts that take place that cause one to feel that when the style has been altered, the insight disintegrates. Just tarry with that just a little. When this lifestyle has been altered, has been changed-- in other words, when one discovers, to put it crudely, that there is no Santa Claus, sometimes all that is fundamental to the impulse that is honored in the myth of Santa Claus is also destroyed. And the individual becomes desolate and naked against a form of reality which has disappeared. Now this happens again and again with people who are in universities and who come into a university or to a college with a certain fixed identification with a particular religious lifestyle. And they begin taking certain courses, thinking certain thoughts, being exposed to certain ideas. And when this happens, then they begin to feel as if the sense of identification breaks down. And they become, well, what they become. I was talking with one such girl. It happened that she was a student at another place, not here. She was a Seventh-day Adventist. And when she entered this particular college, she was very true to her faith. She did not use rouge or lipstick or any of the decorations of the body in that way. She did not eat pork and so forth. And then after about three months-- and she prayed every morning and every night. And after about three months, because of what was happening to her mind, the courses she was taking, the whole thing began to-- the whole religious lifestyle with which she identified began to break down. And she started decorating herself and started eating pork. And she stopped praying in the morning and at night. 4 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And then she was caught up in the non-violent movement in the south. And she found herself one day in a very difficult situation in which she was the victim of a certain kind of violence. And now I continue this in her words. Pitts Theology Library Emory University She said, as the man's hands or knees bit into my wrists and I saw my own blood, a great and deep quiet came into my spirit-- the kind of thing that now and then I had experienced when I used to pray. And the strange thing was that the inequality of the religious experience could be mine, even though I had abandoned all of the formalities. Now, this is what I am talking about. That when the lifestyle of family, of nation, of particular religious faith-- when the lifestyle shifts or breaks down or disintegrates or changes, what happens to the idiom, which is the key to identification? Now if the idiom has been identified with the meaning of the lifestyle-- if it has become a part of the experience of which the lifestyle is merely a transitory or passing manifestation, then the idiom holds its essence of identification until, at last, there begins to be externalized now another lifestyle that grows out of the new experience of the idiom with the essence. Sometimes identification finally is only possible when it is called for by a strong, dominant personality or a strong, positive cause to which the individual makes a yielding. Now to express this in terms that are somewhat negative, but will reveal the quality of what I'm talking about, you may remember, in [INAUDIBLE] dark hours after Judas had betrayed the Master, he went to one of the priests to collect his money. And the priest counted out the silver. And according to the play, when Judas placed the silver in his purse and was putting it away, the priest said, there's just one question I would like to ask you. How did it happen that you came under the influence of this man? And he said, I don't quite know. But one day, I was walking down the street, and I met Him. And he looked at me, and I looked at Him. My eyes descended into His depth, and His eyes descended into my depth. And I knew that He was a man to whom I would be tied forever. And then I followed Him. And every time He began talking about the end and what would happen, He would be looking at me. And one day, as He said, "He who dips in the bowl with me will betray me," and it happened that His hand and my hand met at the bowl. And then one day, He said, "One of you will betray me." And when I looked up, He was looking at me. And he said, if I am an evil man, it is because He has shown me to myself as being evil. He has shown me the devils and how they riot in my streets. If I had never met Him, I would not have seen this. And you remember how the Master, when He met the man who had lost his mind and he was wandering in the woods, in the silent places, and he'd been chained occasionally, but always, under the great super-human strength of what was going on deep within his spirit, he would break the chains and wander up and down the hills making strange shrieking noises in the night time. And then he met the Master. 5 �Pitts Theology Library The Howard Thurman Digital Archive Transcription thurman.pitts.emory.edu And the Master said to him, what is your name? Where do you locate your identity? And you remember what the man said? That's my trouble-- if I only had a sense of self. There are so many of me that their name is Legion. Pitts Theology Library Emory University Always we are seeking identification. Always we are seeking how first to become aware of the distinctive character of our own idiom and how to let this idiom probe into the lifestyle of our family, of our group, of our nation, country, world, seeking always that which will be of such character that the idiom will become more and more articulate and more and more integrated so that, at last, I will be able to say, delight, here I am in my own right. Forgive us, our Father, for the halting, dim insight. And accept our thanks for the vision which we see, even as Thou dost forgive us for our failure to be the clear, translucent manifestation. Our heart is raised. The mind breaks down. The words fail. Oh, God, Thou wilt not despise. [CHOIR SINGING] 6 � 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 Quests of the Human Spirit (1962, Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, MA) Description An account of the resource ”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 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/394-016_B.html" ></iframe> Location The location of the interview, speech, lecture, or sermon Marsh Chapel, Boston University, Boston, Massachussetts Time Period The decade in which the recording was produced. 1960s Original Title Title as transcribed from tape cassette Quests of the Human Spirit (VIII): The Quest for Identity, 1962 Apr 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/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 394-016_B Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Thurman, Howard Title A name given to the resource Quests of the Human Spirit, Part 8: The Quest for Identity, 1962 April 1 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-04-01 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 Possessing a name provides a sense of being situated in the world. It is how the person marks one’s claim against society, Thurman notes. Identity in this regard requires the person to have a sense of one’s own body and idiom. Distinctive character underlies the capacity to probe the social world wherein one exists so that who one is becomes more articulate and more integrated within the whole. 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. 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(-7915565.7490374 5213612.6443988)) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Description by Dr. Tim Rainey identity mooring name selfhood